Fearmonium is a 2D Metroidvania developed and published by Redblack Spade with music by Expecte Amour, released for PC on May 20th, 2021.
The game has players assume the role of an unpleasant memory of a clown within the mind of Max, a depressed teenager tormented by an unhappy life at school and at home. Exploring the depths of Max's psyche, the memory aims to destroy each of his fears and take their place to become the central power in Max's mind.
The game is available on Steam here
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This game contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Max's stepfather is regularly emotionally and physically abusive towards Max and his mother. Fortunately, one phone call to the police is all it takes for him to be arrested.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: All of Max's memories, neuroses, and phobias are given a visual form in his mind.
- Auto-Revive: Nightmares, which you can choose to use upon dying to revive with full health. You can only carry one of them at a time, however.
- Bathing Beauty: This is how Lady Depression usually presents herself, occasionally appearing outside her bathtub as a Lady in Red. Her Baby Depression form retains this trait.
- Big Damn Heroes: After defeating the Stepfather boss, Max's stepfather begins beating him while raving about how he'll teach Max to obey him... and then the police arrive, Max having called them before the boss battle and the dispatcher having heard everything.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: Max's bullies, Lucas and his two unnamed lackeys. Lucas is stocky and muscular, one lackey is huge and fat, the other tall and lanky.
- Body of Bodies: The fight against the Bullies is an amalgamation of Lucas and his cronies with Lucas as the body and the cronies as his arms.
- Bring It: After Depression is defeated and vows to return to haunt Max later in his life, Dopamine says her one line in the entire game: "Then we will meet again, wretch."
- The Bully: Lucas and his two toadies, who extort money from Max under threat of violence. They eventually leave him alone once Max starts fighting back.
- Carry a Big Stick: A wooden hammer is your main weapon, and you eventually learn a third hit to your grounded combo, as well as a Ground Pound.
- Circus of Fear: The first area is a dark version of Max's memories of the circus, complete with fire-eaters, magicians, acrobats and rabbit-dropping floating top hats as enemies.
- Creator's Culture Carryover: The game's creator is Russian, and while it's not clear where exactly in the world Max lives, his teddy bear Vauch has a Russian-sounding name, and the school area has signs marked "WC" (which stands for "water closet", a European term for a room with a toilet).
- Doting Grandparent: Max's grandfather was kind to him and told him fantastical stories to take his mind off of his stepfather. Unfortunately, he's passed away by the time the game begins, though he lives on in Max's mind as Fantasy Keeper.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After all the hardship Max has endured, Dopamine emerges victorious over Depression in his mind, he and his mother find an apartment away from Max's stepfather, and Max finally reunites with Alice.
- Emotional Regression: The second area of the game is marked by Max attempting to protect himself from nightmares by regressing into his childhood, with the boss represented by his teddy bear, Vauch.
- Hot Witch: Enemies in the fairy tale/castle area that represents the tales told to Max by his grandfather. They do nothing but divebomb us with their flying brooms.
- I Am Who?: The player character is initially thought to be just another phobia in Max's mind (specifically, Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns). However, as she goes on to defeat detrimental memories and phobias, such as the Bullies and Stepfather, the other characters note that she's not exhibiting typical behavior for a phobia, and begin to question what she really is. Depression only realizes after her defeat that the player character is actually Dopamine.
- Mega Neko: Giant muscular cats standing on two legs are enemies in the urban area. Beware of their punches.
- Middle School Is Miserable: Max does not look forward to going to school, thanks to his teachers and bullies that torment him there.
- Perverse Puppet: Plenty of them in the second half of the first area, culminating in the boss fight against Pediophobia (fear of dolls): a giant puppeteer flinging many of these and their heads against us.
- Plot Coupon: Three gold keys obtained by defeated Max's objective fears are required to face the Stepfather boss.
- Save Point: Lady Depression's bathtubs serves as these, letting you save your game, stock up on healing items, and teleport to any other bathtub you've previously visited her at.
- Shown Their Work: As the game's creator has a master's degree in Psychology, much of the game's explanations of how the mind works is accurate.
- Sock It to Them: A bar of soap in a sock is the preferred weapon of Max's stepfather, due to it not leaving any bruises behind.
- Silent Protagonist: Averted by Max, but played straight for the player character herself, who doesn't speak at all save her response to Baby Depression vowing to return.
- Slide Attack: You eventually learn how to do this, though it's more for squeezing through tight spaces since you just bounce off any enemies you slide into.
- Theme Naming: All characters in Max's mind and passive effects are named for psychological terms.
- The One That Got Away: Alice, Max's Only Friend who moved to another city prior to the events of the game. He reunites with her in the ending.
- Toy Time: The second area we travel through, representing Max's Emotional Regression and made of giant boxes, books and stacks of playing cards. Enemies are paper planes, toy robots, bouncing balls and the like.
- Troubled Teen: Max, though this is justified given all that he's been through.
- Wizard Classic: Fantasy Keeper, the boss of the castle/fairy tale area and a representation of Max's grandpa, who passed away but still lives on as a memory. Defeating him turns him into a summonable ally used to go through patches of dangerous spikes.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A heroic version; after being assisted by Lady Depression for the whole game and defeating Stepfather, the player character turns on her and fights her as the Final Boss.
