Let's have dinner!
Dinner With an Owl is a creepy and yet funny Point-and-Click Game made by the indie developer BoringSuburbanDad for Adventure Jam 2017 on GameJolt. In it you play as a dapper businessman named Mr. Webb, who comes to visit a potential partner named Franz Brown at his mansion. Webb is astonished to find that not only does Mr. Brown have the head of an owl, but he is playing host for a handful of captive guests. Webb must find a way to help them all escape, or be trapped dining with Mr. Brown each night forever.
The game can be downloaded on Game Jolt here
and played in either English or German.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: The owl demon/Mr. Brown is a sophisticated impeccably polite host, who values Sacred Hospitality, but prevents the guests or butler from ever escaping him. April also lets on that he has been dangerously violent in the past when challenged, so the guests wisely don't provoke his wrath by mentioning he's not human.
- CatchPhrase:Mr. Brown: Let's have dinner!
- Chekhov's Gun: The umbrella stand, which you can see and interact with immediately upon entering the house. You can hide your second knife inside it, so that when the cycle repeats again you can use it immediately to kill the owl.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Downplayed, but the game as a whole involves you, the player, being trapped in a single repeating nightmare with a strange entity that isn't ever explained.
- Curse Escape Clause: The only way the owl demon can be defeated is if a new guest kills him straight away upon their arrival before they succumb to his spellbinding.note
- Doomed Defeatist: The other guests have tried so many times to escape Mr. Brown/The Owl they're pretty much despairing and you are their last hope.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: It's unclear if this is a straight example or not, but when you kill the owl too late, the player character becomes the owl and things play out almost exactly the same as before, save for the owl having the name of the last player character. The current player character comments that the house is strangely familiar to him...
- Hope Spot: If you kill Mr. Brown after having already stayed a night or two, and you and the guests will be prepared to high-tail it out of the mansion... only for April to remark it's too late for Webb, and for Declan to wail in grief as Webb turns into the next owl.
- Noodle Incident: It's not really explained why Mr. Brown/The Owl poisoned the tap water, other than perhaps to punish Declan the butler for a previous transgression.
- Ominous Owl: Mr. Brown.
- Our Demons Are Different: The owl demon of unknown origin possesses the house and all its guests. Once invited into his home for but a few hours, they are already helplessly under his spell and cannot escape. Trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. Even if you slay the demon, he will simply take possession of whoever murdered him as if nothing happened.
- Suddenly Voiced: April Merritt speaks her lines aloud at one particular point, during your first conversation with her about Mr. Brown's... strange condition. Sometimes you can also come across Mr. Brown singing the blues song "Back Cat #13", which is overlayed with creator Sebastien Romero singing it.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: At first, it appears no one else but Mr. Webb is concerned with the fact that Mr. Brown has an owl head. You quickly learn, however, that that's the least of their problems.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: Killing Mr. Brown after you've already stayed the night in the house will just result in Mr. Webb turning into the new owl, and so on and so on.
