Video Game / Cthulhu Mythos RPG: The Sleeping Girl of the Miasma Sea

That isn't even her final form...

Cthulhu Mythos RPG - The Sleeping Girl Of The Miasma Sea is a Survival Horror RPG based on the Cthulhu Mythos. It was developed by Alchemy Blue, and released for PC through Steam on September 26th, 2018.

You play with a custom character and their friends who enter an abandoned mansion for a "test of courage." They soon find they're not alone and have to confront everything from enlarged insects and ghosts, to Lovecraftian monsters like zombies and Yuggothians. To make matters worse, they encounter a creepy girl who chases them around the place after transforming into a horrible monster. With their companions, it's the player's job to overcome the terror of the mansion and unravel its secrets, all while relying on what few resources they can find to maintain their health and sanity.

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Cthulhu Mythos RPG - The Sleeping Girl Of The Miasma Sea provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abandoned Laboratory: The second half of the game takes place here.
• Abusive Parents: Sure, volunteer your daughter for an experiment that wants to establish risky contact with other worlds. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that, Godo. Never mind that even before that, he was rather neglectful of Sakura as well, choosing to absorb himself in research after his wife died. The true ending has him make up for his misdeeds and from what the player can tell, he redeems himself as a father.
• Achilles' Heel: Specter enemies take more damage from anti-ghost weapons. In fact, it's the only way you can even hit them. Certain other skills characters can possess can also help them do more damage to certain enemy types as well.
• Action Girl: Yurie definitely qualifies, as she's skilled in karate. She can also find brass knuckles early on which help her deal lots of damage to most enemies. The protagonist, if female, can also be made into one with the right combination of attributes and skills. Sachi is more of a Combat Medic. And Female!Mamoru is a Squishy Wizard.
• All-Powerful Bystander: By the final boss' own admission, they are this. They could simply resolve the issues plaguing the mansion especially since they're the one specifically responsible for the miasma. They simply choose not to.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The New Game Plus feature lets players carry over their levels so they can have an easier time in their next playthrough. Players even get a note in-game that encourages this (via the lore-friendly excuse of "past lives") and even highlights the text explaining this in yellow. Insanity is also not a permanent status change and it can be recovered from through use of the Mental Recovery skill. Characters can even restore some sanity as they level up, with the justification being that they're steadily getting over their fears. Most healing items can also be used multiple times before being fully consumed and characters who split off from the party can still use the Investigate skill even if they don't normally have it.
• Anyone Can Die: If any of your characters take damage again after their HP enters zero, they're dead, and there are no items in the game that can revive dead characters. Interestingly, the only characters who can possibly die are those the players control. The other three you don't select will always survive the events of the mansion unless you fail to save Sakura, in which case Godo kills himself, or if the player's party falls to the Outer God, in which case it's implied everyone died and monsters then took their advantage to invade the world.
• Apocalyptic Log: You can find a variety of items like this, from notes to video recorders and wristwatches. You either learn more background information about the truth behind the mansion, or you simply learn about the final moments of their former owners.
• Apologises a Lot: Godo. He apologizes to the protagonist if they choose to leave the mansion early, he apologizes to everyone for getting them involved with the mystery of the mansion after he finally tells them the truth, and he apologizes to Sakura if he manages to find her. Considering how much at fault he is for her predicament, never mind his role in the secret research the scientists there were involved with, he has a lot to be sorry about.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: There are six playable characters but you only get access to three at the most, and you only get one chance to decide who will be on your team. The other characters handle other objectives on the opposite side of the mansion, which comes in handy towards the end of the plot. They also fight against the Chaos Beast in their own final battle while you and your characters handle the Outer God.
• Boys Like Creepy Critters: Averted. Daiki has Insect Phobia, meaning he takes sanity loss whenever he encounters bug-type enemies. On the upside, it means he also has a boosted chance to avoid their attacks.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Normal Ending.
• Boss Banter: The final boss speaks to the player characters before and during battle. It's also a part of its gameplay as it can speak directly into any of their minds, incurring possible sanity loss if they fail to resist it.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Characters can talk during battle if you check the "Party" option, allowing them to either advise the player on how best to handle the creature(s) or otherwise having the characters react with fear if the monsters line up with their phobias.
• Chainsaw Good: The Chainsaw is one of the strongest weapons in the game and in the hands of a Strength-based character, they can wreck anything, even the Outer God.
• The City: The player characters live in K City, where the Haunted House takes place in.
• Clown-Car Grave: It is implied that the zombies and lost souls you meet there are victims of the mansion.
• Death of a Child: At least one case. The victim who had the Wristwatch you find was a middle school student who ran in the mansion after being bullied at school. He didn't last long.
• Death Trap: Subverted. There are a few environmental hazards in the game that can drain some sanity or HP, but none of them can instantly kill you.
• Demonic Possession: The Chaos Beast takes on the form of a girl when you first meet it and this could be the reason why. It's implied that Sakura is possessed by the Chaos Beast as a result of her exposure to the events in the laboratory. This is why the monster resembles her and is even wearing clothes that look like hers.
• Door to Before
• Driven to Suicide: This can happen to Godo if you beat the game without rescuing Sakura.
• Early Game Hell: The combination of limited supplies and random encounters can make the game rather difficult from the beginning. And unlike with the former, characters here are not guaranteed to attack first, as their Dexterity and Size attributes determine that. Thankfully, New Game Plus allows players to start the game over while carrying their levels over from previous playthroughs, making the early game much easier.
• Eldritch Abomination: It wouldn't be a Mythos game without them. In-game texts describe some of them as beings of incomprehensible knowledge, capable of encompassing infinite possibilities. Moreover, it's implied that classic Mythos beings like Cthulhu and Hastur were sealed away by an "Old God," yet Outer Gods in general are still a threat to the world if they're ever let out or given a means to access Earth. Guess what the scientists in the lab managed to do? Guess.
• Escape Sequence: The first time you access the Laboratory levels, you will be confronted with the creepy girl who shifts into the Chaos Beast. Both your party members advise you to run, prompting a chase sequence that only ends if you successfully find a place to hide from the boss. You always get the first move to run away, but the longer you take to avoid her, the more damage you take to your sanity, as it takes a hit every single time you encounter her. You will then encounter her at random as you're trying to explore the laboratory. The monster eventually makes its final appearance at the end of the game and is dealt with by the other team as the player team deals with the Outer God.
• Everybody Lives: The best ending if you're able to survive the mansion with everyone alive, including Sakura.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: You have poltergeists which are basically possessed inanimate objects like chairs, knives, and even guns, creepy dolls, plant monsters, and there are environmental hazards that can also damage characters, from acid on doorknobs, to suits of armor falling over.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: You originally start off with four characters, including yourself:
  • Phlegmatic: The protagonist gets to make decisions on who they to travel with, what objectives they will be focusing on, and this responsibility is actually acknowledged in game by the other characters because they realize you're trustworthy and dependable. This also helps in the final battle because if your party members make it to the battle against the Outer God, their trust in you helps you all regain some sanity before you start the encounter.
  • Sanguine: Daiki is this because it was his idea to enter the mansion and he initially tries to make most of the decisions at the start of the game He is also compassionate and is the first to agree to help Godo save his daughter and stop the miasma.
  • Choleric: Yurie, in that she's extroverted and fun like Daiki, but because she has the lowest sanity score of the group, is prone to bouts of insanity. Conversely, she doesn't think twice about taking on Eldritch Abominations with karate.
  • Melancholic: Sachi, being the medic of the group and generally calm and relaxed even in the face of danger (she sees combat even before Daiki does), is this.
• Face Your Fears: It's built into the leveling mechanic. Any time characters meet a threat for the first time, they take sanity loss. This also applies to characters leveled via New Game Plus. But as they progress through the adventure, gain more levels, and see the same enemies several times over, they no longer take automatic sanity loss whenever they appear, and they'll have a higher chance to remain okay even if those enemies pull off moves that would normally attack their sanity.
• Fog of Doom: What the titular miasma is. It exposes people to basically everything supernatural and allows monsters to make contact with Earth. The effects of long-term exposure to humans simply inhaling it are unknown, but the final goal of the game is to stop the source of the miasma or else what's happening in the mansion will affect the world.
• Fragile Speedster: Both Daiki and Yurie qualify. Daiki is the fastest character in the group and is the only one who gets Double Attack, giving him a chance to deal attacks to an enemy twice in a row. Yurie is almost as fast, but is more focused in Strength. However, in a Mythos game, where the worse threats are to your sanity and not necessarily always your health, they are both fragile in that regard. Especially Yurie.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Enforced depending on the gender of the protagonist via Mamoru. Whatever the protagonist is, Mamoru will be the opposite gender, allowing for a gender-equal cast.
• Genre Mashup: One Steam reviewer describes the game as having a " Japanese weird-science fantasy-horror theme" while the story being mostly "pulpy and shonen-like manga"
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Both minor and extreme examples exist, though all are reversible. Unless everyone is insane, then it's a Game Over.
• Group Picture Ending: Once you get the Golden Ending, in which everyone survives, their is a stinger after the credits showing the cast taking a picture with Sakura for her graduation to junior high.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Because of limited inventory management and the lack of an overhead map, you will have to mentally keep track of where you're going and where you placed things, or otherwise take notes. Also, what items you may be able to get all depends on your party and their skills. Without a guide, simply playing the game blind may result in players missing out on a lot of items or even other endings.
  • Finding Brad Valentine requires getting every ending, reading a book that appears just before the final boss, and backtracking all the way to the pentagram in the Annex. And that's the easy part.
• Haunted House: The setting takes place in a haunted mansion, particularly one that has a western-styled architecture.
• Healing Herb: As per Resident Evil. You can even mix them if you have the right skills. Sachi can do this by default.
• Hearts Are Health: The game features both normal HP in the form of numbers and additional HP via green hearts in a character's display. They act as One Ups, where if a character takes enough damage where one is consumed, they won't be reduced to zero. These can't be recovered with conventional means, however, and specifically requires Medicine Sprays to bring them back.
• I Choose to Stay: A rather dark example. The protagonist can choose to leave while other characters may choose to stay to help Godo. This gives a bad ending, in that they all disappear, the mansion is designated to be torn down, but several construction workers go missing or die accidental deaths in the process.
• Implacable Girl: The Chaos Beast, from the first time you meet it.
• Infinity +1 Sword: This is still a JRPG-inspired game, so this exists in the form of "Annagi", or "One That Cuts the Darkness". It has ATK +11 and can be used to deal damage against ghosts, but can only be accessed late game and even then, only characters with high Mind can wield it. The Brass Knuckles are basically this for Yurie, and there's also the Chainsaw. A katana that players can get after acquiring the True Ending can also be this in the hands of a high Dexterity-based character like Daiki.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: Broken glass or a table in your way? Good luck finding another way around while also having to worry about random encounters.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: The number of items characters can hold depends on their Strength, Constitution, and Size. Mamoru carries a knapsack for additional space and Sachi likewise comes with a Fashion Bag to make up for their low stats in those areas. Dropped items remain where they are and a maximum of 100 items can be left on the ground before the oldest dropped item will disappear. However, it is easy to forget where you place things, so even the game provides a friendly tip on using safe places you frequently visit to use as a drop-off point for items.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: What starts off as a basic haunted mansion story eventually involves secret experiments in a lab, government cover-ups, serial killers, the sixth sense…and Feng Shui. You can learn more about some of these things from notes and items you find around the place.
• Kimodameshi: The whole plot starts because you and your friends intiate a Kimodameshi, or "test of courage" to prove themselves to be courageous to do the right thing. And boy did the haunted house test them.
• Lazy Backup: Subverted: While you never get to play with the other half of the party, and they even sit out for most of the rest of the adventure after you all make it to the Laboratory, they do help advance the plot with their actions. They may hold the other keycard you need to access the final room and they fight against the Chaos Beast as you fight against the Outer God. And they will always survive their encounter, no matter who is in it.
• Lock and Key Puzzle: One of your first objectives are to find the keys to help you escape the Manor, while the latter half of the game has you using the Annex keys the other team found and the Black Key Card to get around the laboratory.
• Master of Unlocking: Daiki starts off with a Sturdy Wire, an item unique to him that lets him unlock up to three doors. The protagonist can also be this if they choose the Lock Picking skill, although wires are rare finds in the game and even then, can only be used once.
• Magic Is Evil: Subverted. Much like Call of Cthulhu RPG, characters can eventually access magic spells through spellbooks they find in the mansion and its grounds. However, it's implied that the magic you do access came at a great cost to… someone who used to work there. In fact, the book you find explaining magic in the game is found at the same site where a serial killer murdered several women, with a bloody magic circle located right in front of its bookshelf. Mechanically, spells cost MP to use, not sanity. But casting magic beyond one's MP capacity will drop that character into a coma they cannot recover from unless they use a magic stone to restore their points. And since those items are extremely rare…
• Mr. Exposition: Godo. Makes sense considering he used to be a researcher who worked in the laboratory there.
• Multiple Endings: There are five endings in the game and each one is dependent on your choices, such as leaving the mansion before solving the mystery, whether you save Sakura or not, and if people are alive.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Godo's reason for being in the mansion. After the experiments wreaked havoc in the laboratory, he was forced to leave his daughter, Sakura, for dead. He came back hoping to find any remaining traces of her and he still feels guilty about abandoning her.
• New Game Plus
• Nightmare Fetishist: While most of the other characters freak out whenever they encounter monsters like the Chaos Beast or the Outer God, Mamoru notes how "fascinating" or "amazing" they are, making them this. They may have even been in the mansion exploring some time before the main cast entered, visiting specifically to share what they learned on social media sites dedicated to everything occult called the "OccuBoards."
• Nintendo Hard: Even the normal difficulty can be difficult for first-time players due to the sparse amount of healing resources and random encounters they have to deal with. Eventually, it becomes manageable, especially if the player takes advantage of the New Game Plus feature to leave the mansion early and carry over their levels for a better run. Of course, if you beat the game, there's hard mode and that… well…
• Non-Uniform Uniform: Daiki and Yurie wear there uniforms differently from the Protagonist and Sachi. Daiki has his tie loosened and his collar open, while Yuire's collar is open much further and doesn't have a tie at all. This is probably to show that they are the fighters of the group.
• Oh, Crap!: Several times. Daiki with the giant roach, Yurie with ghosts, and the first time they all see the ghost girl's true form.
• Papa Wolf: Godo is this along with The Atoner because Sakura is only in danger because of him and his work.
• Posthumous Character: Godo's wife, Sumire, the owners of the Apocalyptic Logs, and technically the undead monsters you encounter.
• Plucky Girl: Yurie and Sachi both qualify.
• Pre-existing Encounters: Really only the Outer God and the Mother Plant, the latter of which is optional.
• Puzzle Boss: Subverted. To get to the Mother Plant, you need to create herbicide by solving a basic color-mixing puzzle. The fight against the boss itself is as straightforward as any other combat. You also get an Amulet halfway through the game that lets you do more damage to the enemies in the mansion while taking less damage in return, but it's a passive effect. It doesn't do anything special if you activate it against any of the bosses.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Discussed. Godo, Mamoru, and the kids talk about getting police and the government involved, but since police are not typically proactive, much less when eldritch beings are involved, and the government is involved in a major cover-up and believes the miasma has already been dealt with, it's up to the six of them alone to handle the threat. Godo even regrets asking for their help and even recommends they leave, but if they insist, he relents. Mamoru offers to help the kids because they're still underage and yet, have decided to take on a great responsibility.
• Sanity Meter: Being a Cthulhu Mythos game, it's bound to have one. Characters have sanity meters of varying values, depending on stats such as Intelligence, Mind, and Education. Generally speaking, caster-type characters like Mamoru and Sachi have high sanity while fighter-type characters like Daiki and Yurie have either average or below-average sanity. Godo, being a researcher, is somewhere between the two and has decent sanity. Characters who take too much damage to their sanity will become insane, but thankfully, this isn't permanent, as skills like Mental Recovery or even just giving a character a drink can help restore them to normal.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The player can choose to do this any time after they get the manor keys. The final boss also does this after you deal enough damage to it. Mamoru even states that they didn't defeat the Outer God, it was more like they simply left them, making your victory more of a Victory by Endurance than a straight-up win.
• Silver Bullet: You can occasionally find silver ammunition for guns and crossbows that will let you use those weapons against specters.
• Spirit World: Or the "spiritual realm" as the game calls it.
• Status Effects: Characters will have to worry about things like Bleeding and Poison, in addition to sanity loss.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: The Chaos Beast initially appears as this.
• The Power of Friendship: Plays a fairly significant role before the final battle.
• The Shrink: Mamoru is this, specifically a psychologist. They start off with Mental Recovery from the beginning, allowing them to restore a character from insanity at a cost of five points of their own sanity. They can even do this during battles.
• The Six Stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, and Mind are there, with the addition of unique stats like Size (to affect turn order, item capacity, and what body armor you can wear), and Education (to determine skill points for character creation).
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: It's how characters can cast magic. They all have to be found first before you can use them, and they're not required to even complete the game, though they can be useful. You also have to have high mental stats (Intelligence and Mind) before you can even equip the items.
• True Companions: Relying on your companions' unique skills and keeping them alive is vital to complete the game. If they all make it to the final battle, their sanity will recover before facing the Outer God because they choose to trust in each other. In the True Ending, one of the first things they decide to do is share contact info with Godo, Mamoru, and even Sakura, and in the final photo, the entire cast is there to see Sakura's graduation.
• Turn of the Millennium: The game takes place on August 2002.
• Universal Antidote: In the form of Blue Antidotes or Blue Herbs. Bonus points in that they're specifically described as being effective against otherworldy poisons as well.
• Unwinnable: A distinct possibility that even in-game help books anticipate. Making use of the New Game Plus feature allows players who can't win the final boss due to lack of strength or healing items to go to the beginning with their accrued levels, make it to the end, and try again to have a better shot.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The protagonist can do this with Godo after the latter reveals the truth behind the laboratory and his role with it.
• What the Hell, Player?: The player can choose to go around and open up toilet lids if they want to. In a survival horror game, set in the Mythos no less, that's basically asking for trouble. You may even be punished with sanity loss.
• Why Did It Have To Be Ghosts?: Yurie definitely has this. Like with Daiki and insects, her phobia has the upside of letting her do bonus damage to ghosts. However, she still takes extra sanity damage whenever she sees one.

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