Don't Chat with Strangers is an indie horror game developed by Bartosz Bojarowski. In the middle of the night, you receive a message from a mysterious girl online named Lucy. Your choices in your conversation with her may or may not lead to your demise.
This page will have spoiler tags for all possible deaths, as the many ways the protagonist can die are the main portion of gameplay.
The game is available for purchase on Steam here.
Don't Chat With Strangers contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: The protagonist killed Lucy by hitting her with his car.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: Early on, attempting to get into the car will result in it backing over you and killing you.
- Be as Unhelpful as Possible: Lucy is very cryptic about her goal in talking to the protagonist, and what she expects of him. This is because he murdered her, and she wants him to fail at putting her to rest so that she can take revenge.
- Brown Note: Dialing 911 results in the protagonist being electrocuted while some odd, human-like noises and loud static come from the phone.
- Car Fu: At one point, a car can appear above your head in the house, supported by vines, until they release it and drop it on top of you, crushing you.
- Cats Are Mean: A deadly black cat comes out of the screen and crawls into your bed.
- Controllable Helplessness: When you are hanging from the noose in the room, you can interact with other items, but clicking them does nothing.
- Creepy Crosses: At one point, a large cross slowly descends into the room without warning and simply sits there. The protagonist ends up crucified on it. This happens if you turn the cross next to the bed upside down. In addition, if at any point Lucy asks you for your favorite color and you answer "Red", she will mention red being the color of hell, and your cross will turn itself upside down, causing the cross to come down and crucify you. "Swearing" by saying "Jeez" as in Jesus Christ or claiming you don't like the Christian God will have the same result.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The game is composed of several of these.
- Dead All Along: Lucy - you killed her with your car.
- Dead Person Conversation: The whole game is this; Lucy was killed by the protagonist shortly before the start of the game.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Due to the Trial-and-Error Gameplay approach the game takes, dying is not only a minor inconvenience at worst, but is actually necessary in order to figure out how to progress. This is subverted if you die during any of the more involved tasks, like finishing Mech VS Fruits, or burying Lucy at the correct location.
- Drives Like Crazy: The protagonist seems to be a terrible driver - this is why he hit Lucy.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: When Lucy challenges you to "Buttons", you want to beat her, which is easy, but not obtain the highest score possible. Getting too high a score results in her calling you a "tryhard" and leaving the chat (so you die), while losing convinces her you suck at the game and she leaves with "later, loser".
- Ethereal White Dress: Lucy's ghost, which comes up behind you while you play Mech VS Fruits, is clad in one. Depending on how well you are doing, she will either hug you or kill you.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Interacting with almost anything in the room can lead to your death.
- Glamour Failure: When Lucy's ghost comes up behind the protagonist during his playthrough of Mech VS Fruits, if she is going to kill the player, she very briefly switches to her wraith form instead of the more human (but still ghostly) form she generally is seen in.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Figuring out how to actually complete the game can be difficult, as there are very few clues as to what you have to do, and the few hints the game gives to you are very vague and can be easy to confuse. In addition to this, your window for the pivotal actions, such as turning on the radio after Lucy tells you to "tune in", is very short.
- The most frustrating part is at the final moments, when the player has to find Lucy's body and give it a proper burial while her ghost is distracted playing Pachelbel's Canon for you. First, there's a very short time to do it. Second, her body is randomly placed into one of the three locations on the map, which may waste precious time. Third, while you dig her a grave, you cannot button mash, since it'll make the piano play end abruptly, locking you into a long-winded death-scene.
- Hair-Trigger Explosive: The radio is one.
- Hates Being Alone: Lucy gets very angry if you disappear on her.
- Have a Nice Death: Seeing all of the deaths is one of the most fun parts of the game.
- High-Voltage Death: Happens if you call the wrong number when trying to call Lucy.
- Just Keep Driving: Played straight, Type II. The protagonist seems to have hit Lucy directly on and to have simply continued on, without even stopping the car.
- Kaizo Trap: Once the player finds Lucy's body at the correct location, the dramatic music playing can lead to the player believing that the game is essentially over, so it's not unreasonable for the player to be enmeshed in the atmosphere and thus take their time in digging Lucy's grave. This is a mistake, however, because if the protagonist doesn't bury Lucy in time, she revives and rips his head off, leading to another game over. Conversely, if the player tries to mash just to get it over with, the piano playing will end abruptly, causing an instant game over. The player has to dig at the exact rate to bury her before the song ends, but not so fast that the game considers it mashing, in order to complete the final task successfully.
- Killer Robot: The toy robot you have on the shelf can become one.
- Made of Plasticine: Some of the deaths give that impression, especially the radio one. May or may not be a side effect of being haunted by a wraith.
- Off with His Head!: If you take too long burying the woman you killed, she yanks your head off.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Especially in the explosion and car deaths. Also, if you take too long to bury Lucy, she yanks your head off and your blood fills her open grave.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: If Lucy asks if you want to hear her play piano and you agree, she plays "Pachelbel's Canon in D". While she's playing is your only time to safely bury her body. You die if you're still digging when the song stops.
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Spiritual Successor: Holds a lot of similarities with Hello? Hell...o?, though it is Internet-based instead of phone-based. - Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The only way to finish this game legitimately is to keep dying until you learn the intentionally-poorly-explained patterns.
- A Winner Is You: You get a congratulatory message when you beat the game.
- Woman Scorned: "Ignoring" Lucy in any regard, whether this amounts to entering a new tab while chatting with her or failing to call her immediately after your computer restarts leads to you being hung from the ceiling, with a bloody message on the wall reading, "YOU LEFT ME".
- Villain Protagonist: Or at least Criminally Negligent Protagonist. Your character apparently mowed Lucy down and didn't even stop to check on her.
