A woman stands before a dilapidated ruin of a cathedral. Somewhere inside is her missing husband, and with him, an ancient and secret horror lurking in the shadows. To find him, she'll have to navigate haunted hallways, mines, and sewers, using whatever tools she can find and making allies whereever she can.
Black Home is a horror-adventure-RPG made using RPG Maker XP and published by Warfare Studios, centering around a lone location and using found tools like brooms, rope, and meathooks to solve puzzles and navigate.It's also notable for NOT having respawning enemies - once a room is cleared, it's cleared permanently, making grinding an impossibility. A sequel was released, set several decades later and dealing with the fallout of the first game.
It can be downloaded from Steam.
Has a sequel, Black Home 2.
This game provides examples of:
- Badass Bookworm:
- Lecia is an alchemist and a scholar, and fights with spellbooks.
- Lesnar, too. He cobbles together a bomb out of torch oil and wax and uses it to save the party from an ambush.
- Badass in Distress: Lecia finds Galant gravely wounded in the library, and has to find medical supplies before he can be recruited.
- Bad Habits: The Big Bad is an undead abbot called the Monsigneur, and an equally zombified nun called Mother Superior acts as The Dragon for the Monsigneur.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Father Brachtmar. Being the sole surviving monk at a monastery full of eldritch zombies and unnameable horrors for weeks on end will do that to one, but he does get better after Lecia saves him.
- Determinator:
- The Shape, a massive, demonic monstrosity that appears sporadically and cannot be fought, only escaped.
- Lecia qualifies, too. A simple (pregnant) scholar against a cult of undead demon-worshippers, and she refuses to stop or even slow down.
- The Dragon: Two are mainly featured - The Mother Superior, and The monstrous Shape, who will follow you through the halls until you can find a place to hide
- Distressed Dude: Lesnar Coy, Lecia's husband. He was a scholar studying the monastery when the evil living beneath it woke up and had it's undead minions slaughter his colleagues and capture him for a ritual to awaken an Elder God.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Literally. You could take the easy route and unleash the Shape on it's own masters, but that leads to the Downer Ending. Instead, you have to fight Mother Superior and the Monsigneur to get the happy ending.
- Eldritch Abomination:The cult worships a "God of Madness" named Kaleyh'ik, whom they're trying to raise by sacrificing Lecia's husband.Galant: We're not afraid of you.
Kaleyh'ik: Yes you are. Yes. You. Are. You're thinking, "we've seen all sorts of magic tricks tonight, and he's just a frail looking human, so why can't we step forward and slit his wisand? What is keeping us firmly rooted here like a gaggle of stupid children while this stranger dresses us down?
The answer, dear boy, is plain. Fear. I let you see me as a human...but I have depths and dimensions you cannot fathom. My skin is a shade of blue that would engulf your head in flames. My voice is so melodious that it would shatter the seas and boil mountains. My true size makes your planet look like a grain of sand by comparison. And here I am, all of that, just having a civilized conversation with you.
It's somewhat akin to if you decided to talk with the bacteria in your yogurt. - A Form You Are Comfortable With: As Kaleyh'ik puts it:Kaleyh'ik: I let you see me as a human...but I have depths and dimensions you cannot fathom. My skin is a shade of blue that would engulf your head in flames. My voice is so melodious that it would shatter the seas and boil mountains. My true size makes your planet look like a grain of sand by comparison. And here I am, all of that, just having a civilized conversation with you. It's somewhat akin to if you decided to talk with the bacteria in your yogurt.
- Ghostly Goals: Aelysia wants nothing more than to atone for bringing the cursed object that corrupted the monastery in the first place.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Some of the puzzles involve having the right tool to clear a path, or break down a wall, and none of them are very clearly marked.
- And then there are the chess pieces. Thirty-two in all, hidden throughout the monastery, and some are missable. But if you can find all of them, and place them on the chessboard in the right order, you can unlock the best gear in the game.
- Jump Scare: On more than one occassion, enemies will erupt through windows when you least expect them. On the low end of the scale, it'll be one bat flying through a window - at it's worse, it'll be multiple zombies.
- Multiple Endings: Two, depending on how you deal with the cult. Release the Shape, and it'll tear through the cult without you having to fight them, but Lesnar and Galant will die, and Lecia will be left alone to raise her unborn child. (And according to Aelysia, Galant's sudden death means he may be damned to haunt the monastery for all eternity) But if you confront the Monsigneur head on, everyone lives (except for the villains) and Lesnar and Lecia leave together.
- Pregnant Badass: It's revealed at the end that Lecia was pregnant the entire time, and that her urgency at telling Lesnar the good news was the entire reason she was so determined to brave the cursed monastery.
- Shout-Out: The Merchant is pretty much the Merchant from Resident Evil 4.Merchant: Got a collection of good things on sale, stranger!
