"...What a weird question."
"This is a story I came across in a book from my sister's shelf. It goes like this. There is a cat inside a completely sealed box that one cannot see through. After an hour, there is a 50% chance that the cat will die. There is no way to know whether the cat is dead or alive until you open the box. After one hour, in what state would you find the cat inside the box?"
-Intro Dictionary Opening
Cat in the Box is an RPG Maker horror game released May 2020, and the sequel to Stygian. It is available on Steam, created by Gustav (the creator of Leave and Tide Up) and published by PsychoFlux Entertainment. It is available in Korean, English and Simplified Chinese.
You play as a girl who enters the manor of a cult leader, investigating the mysterious overnight disappearance of said cult for her YouTube channel. As can be expected, things quickly go From Bad to Worse.
The game is relatively short and can be completed in around two hours. However, one of the major mechanics is its Replay Value, and wealth of secrets and easter eggs. As such, it is recommended that readers play the game before looking further.
This game contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: If the Girl decides to reject doing the ritual, she accidentally kills the stranger, her other self, trying to cut the tentacle growth from her face, because she was moving in panic.
- Apocalyptic Log: You can find notes written by cult members and hidden audio tapes about a police officer infiltrating the cult to gather evidence and uncover what they're up to. You can also find a note telling you to get out or else become cursed which is heavily implied to have been written by another version of the girl.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Occasionally, the Girl will appear to communicate with the player. Most notably, in the library with the wooden board and a bunch of bookshelves, examining the shelves enough times will have the girl ask the player to stop and investigate something else.
- Chekhov's Gun: The cliff found south of the manor, which has a sign warning you to be careful. In most endings it has no relevance, but in one ending, she falls off it and dies.
- Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Of the "curiosity is bad" variety, although the reason for the girl entering the manor isn't purely curiosity, but also to try to make a career as a paranormal YouTuber. She winds up getting trapped and put in danger.
- Dying Dream: One ending has the girl escaping the manor, only to wake up suddenly back at her house with her sister, as though none of the game had actually happened. It turns out to be a dying dream as she falls to her death off a cliff (the same cliff that was shown at the beginning of the game).
- Eldritch Location: It becomes quickly apparent that the house doesn't abide by any rules of space and time. The layout changes often, loops back into itself and overall doesn't make sense. This is because whatever the cult summoned is possessing the house.
- Eye Scream: The stranger always has a bandaged eye, which is either from when she gouges the girl's eye out to coerce you into the ritual or from the manor's corruption causing her to possibly scratch it out from itchiness. It gets worse when tentacles start erupting from her socket.
- Fingore: Completing the ritual requires sacrificing some part of yourself. In most cases, it's a finger amputated by a bolt cutter. Either the girl or the stranger will have her finger chopped off.
- Fisher Kingdom: Staying in the manor for too long eventually turns people into some sort of tentacle monsters.
- Foreshadowing: The girl has a specific brand of chocolate as her Trademark Favorite Food. So does the stranger, who asks you for some twice. This hints at the stranger being an alternate self of the girl.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Appears to be the nature of the house, as the girl is stuck in a loop of entering the manor, getting trapped, sacrificing herself and escaping (ad infinitum) but it's... a lot more complicated than that. See, the loop isn't linear; rather, the events are stacked. Much like Schrodinger's Cat, everything is happening and not happening at the same time. Whether the girl survives, dies, is entering, is escaping, is only confirmed the moment it happens for that iteration of the girl and only that iteration. What happens to any given version of her is in a constant flux of limbo.
- Jump Scare: A ton, most of it leading to a Non-Standard Game Over.
- Mind Screw: Schrödinger's Cat and Quantum Physics play a big role in the plot, which can be rather confusing the first time around.
- Multiple Endings: Four main endings and some secret, short ends that do not formally result in a Game Over.
- In the first ending, if the girl complies with the ritual and cuts off her finger, the stranger- her alternate self- escapes and leaves the girl, thus stranding the heroine in the manor and leading to her becoming the stranger.
- In the second ending, if the girl refuses but then fails to fight off the stranger, then the stranger will lock her up and force the girl to comply with the ritual, and the girl will begin slowly turning into the stranger.
- In the third ending, if the girl refuses and defeats the stranger, then uses her finger for the ritual, it seems to work... only for the camera to move and show that you inadvertently ran off the cliff. And from the number of bodies, she is not the first iteration of herself to do so.
- In the fourth ending, if the girl defeats the stranger and then uses her own finger, you get the True Ending where the girl gets to truly escape. Her sister visits you in the hospital... but it seems that the nightmare isn't quite over yet, as a couple of tentacles appear as a shadow after a lightning strike, hinting that the girl is beginning to be possessed.
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: The stranger tries to invoke this so you do not discover you are her, but this is otherwise averted. The killer(s) are alternate versions of the Girl, and she can find the skeletal remains of herself stuffed in a closet. In a special ending, if she stands idle in the first room for over five minutes, another version of herself comes out of the left room. If you repeatedly move between the foyer and the left room, you'll get the same ending but from a different perspective. And when being chased by the killer, if you lead her in a loop instead of escaping them as normal, you'll meet another killer (likely the stranger, who was coming to kill the first one) coming down the stairs. This causes everyone to freeze in confusion.
- Nightmare Face: The "dream" versions of the girl have a Ghostly Gape. There's also a particular special portrait of the girl, only used in one Non-Standard Game Over and a random event, where her face is unnaturally smooth and she has realistic eyes.
- Nameless Narrative: The player can choose the protagonist's name, but otherwise the default is "Girl". Likewise, her sister is only ever referred to as such. Same goes for the stranger, the killer, the cult members, and the entity possessing the manor. The only characters with names are Everet, the girl's friend, who is only heard through a phone call; the Almighty, the entity worshipped by the cult who never appears; and Alto, a herald of the Almighty who also does not seem to show up aside from the vague implication that he is the mirage of the sister.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- The manor is abandoned and much of the time there isn't any music, only the echoing of your own footsteps and things moving. You know you're not alone but you don't know what else is with you.
- The cult would choose children to "receive god's grace". What this entailed is never explained.
- Whatever happened to the undercover cop.
- Whatever the cult did for the house to become an Eldritch Location. The stranger implies that they did bigger and worse things than just sacrificing a finger for the ritual for such a thing to happen.
- What the "dream sequences" are, if they are at all dreams.
- What exactly happened to the cult itself is never explained either. Whether what you're experiencing is unique to you or not is unknown.
- Quick Time Event: Infrequent but present. Usually there are clear indicators when they're happening.
- Schmuck Bait: There are many in the game, though some are more obvious than others.
- After escaping the monster the first time, try checking the door it's trapped behind a couple times.
- Why not talk to that person trapped in the prison cell?
- It sure seems like a good idea to go back into the hallway with the creepy moving statue, that exiting from made the current room briefly resemble a Meat Moss nightmare.
- In one room there's a suspicious closet that takes some effort to open. Though this is only a trap if you try to open it after running into the killer for the first time.
- In general, repeatedly examining things or entering rooms. Guess curiosity killed the cat, hm?
- In a meta sense, the girl going to the manor at all. Going to a haunted mansion in the dead of night to investigate the disappearance of an entire cult congregation is one thing, but going alone and with minimal supplies?
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: With enough persistence, it is possible to leave the manor as soon as you enter it. Unfortunately, you were doomed the moment you entered.
- Stealth-Based Mission: One segment involves sneaking past a giant eye without being seen.
- Take a Third Option:
- Dialogue options when talking to the stranger often give you two choices for what to say. However, you can also cancel out of the text box, resulting in you not answering at all. The first time around, the stranger just asks you why you are being quiet. If you do it during the next conversation, she breaks through the door and kills you.
- During the climax, after accidentally killing the stranger, you can either sacrifice her finger or your finger. Or you can choose to leave the room entirely... at which point the stranger will become a monster and kill you.
- The Walls Are Closing In: A possible trap that can be triggered. It's actually entirely optional but players will often trigger it on a first playthrough due to the desire to be thorough.
- Wham Shot: Two in rapid succession in the endings. If the girl refuses to do the ritual, then the stranger will finally come out of the shadows, revealing the same Sackhead Slasher that had been chasing the girl during the early part of the game (though they are actually two alternate selves of each other), and then she removes the sack to show the exact same face as the girl, revealing that the stranger and the killer are two alternate versions of the girl.
