What can possibly go wrong?
You play as a fly with a love for sweets and writing novels when one day, you are drawn to a sweet-smelling cafe. Despite some ominous elements of the restaurant such as the Venus flytraps, the fly is nevertheless fascinated by the food. But when he wakes up after hours, he learns the awful truth.
Cafe "Venus Flytrap"
was created by Circus Rat Games as an entry for its "Sweet to Sour" game jam, and published on March 20, 2023.
Since the game's pretty short, all spoilers will be unmarked.
The game provides examples of:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Our protagonist wears nothing but glasses and a green scarf. Averted with the other flies, who wear nothing at all. The frogs, meanwhile, are decked out in dresses, jackets, bowties, and chef's whites.
- Big Bad: While the frogs don't seem to have a real leader among them, the chef frog comes the closest to this trope since he is directly responsible for preparing the meals for Harvest Day and decides to give the titular fly a chance to run to prolong his terror.
- But Thou Must!: The frogs will inevitably drug you and trigger the second act of the game, no matter what sweet treat you chose to order.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Instead of immediately calling the police, the fly instead calls the ambulance to tend to the chef stating that unlike him, he was not a murderer. The chef frog is taken aback by this.
- Faux Affably Evil:
- The chef frog speaks in a gentlemanly fashion, polite and pleasant, even as he gleefully confesses to killing and turning countless sentient insects and animals into food.
- This also applies to the other frogs, who all pretend to be extremely nice when doing their job and interacting with customers.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The chef frog casually mentions how frogs eat their own children if they are hungry enough.
- Man-Eating Plant: The fly is told that the Venus flytraps around the cafe emit a sweet-smelling nectar which brings flies into the store. In truth, the plants are meant to trap flies and the frogs would retrieve them before they are digested.
- Multiple Endings: There are two endings, both of which depend on if you grab the knife from the kitchen before fleeing for the front door.
- If you do, you stab the chef as he advances, causing him to collapse to the floor. You call an ambulance instead of finishing him of, showing you have the moral high ground.
- If you don't, the chef says he's unlocked a few more doors in the cafe and gives you a head start, implying he's going to chase and eventually kill you.
- Sapient Eat Sapient: The frogs are revealed to eat just about anything sapient: flies; mice; even their own kind if they are hungry enough.
- The Sociopath: The chef frog is a low-functioning one: he enjoys what he does and takes his time prolonging the main fly's suffering.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The other four frogs disappear completely in the second half of the game and their fate in each ending is never shown.
