It's not gonna get any prettier from here on out.
"If I can't find my shadow, then all is lost. For the rest of my existence I will be forced to live in my own past"
— One of the first notes you see after waking up.
''GARAGE: Bad Dream Adventure", also known as Garage, is an obscure Japanese Point-and-Click Game produced by Kinotrope and created by horror artist Tomomi Yuki Sakuba in 1999, for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. It was an incredibly rare game, having only made around 3,000 copies, and became a sort of holy grail for 4chan 's /vr/ users, alongside similarly surreal Japanese adventure game Chu-Teng. It wasn't until a 2014 when a user of the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums would snatch up a copy off of Yahoo auctions and dump it online when it would be available to the general public.
The game stars a little robot, who is identified as Yan, who wakes up in a cramped room, with no recollection of themselves beyond the need to find their sneakers. They find themselves in a worn down, mechanical world inhabited by similar machines, all confined to the railing that paves the roads. With the goal to find not only their shadow, but their sneakers, Yan sets off to explore the lonely world of Garage, and ends up unraveling it from the core.
Got a fan translation in 2020, then in 2021 would get an official translation as well as an Updated Re Release for mobile phones in 2021 and a Steam release in July 2022.
Garage contains examples of:
- Abandoned Laboratory: Downplayed. The succinctly named ‘Laboratory’ is not entirely abandoned, as a few enthusiast machines use the sewage build up as a place of study, but most of its workers are gone, and like the rest of Garage, is decayed and unused.
- A God Am I: Shen, when he was known as Yan begins to believe himself to be the god of Garage when he finds out a way to destroy shadows.
- Ambiguous Gender: Both Ru and Miya have characteristics of both male and female robots, but neither has a confirmed gender.
- Amicable Exes: Ru and Vis are on otherwise good terms, despite them no longer being together.
- Body Horror:
- The shadows in the lighthouse are slowly falling apart, with some of them contouring into poses which should not be humanly possible.
- While all the robots are potential candidates for this trope, special mentions go out to Juice, whose entire body is deformed. Ironically, her shadow, Psyche, is the most human looking out of them all.
- Brown Note: Certain compositions, when played will cause various events to happen. For example, Vulcaniro's Score opens certain gates and The Noise Score causes machines to lose their sense of identity and break apart upon hearing it.
- Conjoined Twins: One of the patients housed at the hospital,who was a former freak in the New World’s freak show.
- Broken Record: The game soundtrack is entirely composed of short, ambient loops.
- Crapsack World: The world of Garage is old and decrepit, with the wood holding up the city rotting. Society has gone underway a massive drop in morale, and any trace of humanity is burnt up for entertainment.
- Cyber Cyclops: Han, being a machine after all.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Refueling requires opening a female machine's stomach and inserting an “output shaft” in it.
- Dream Apocalypse: Garage is an inner world created by a psychotherapy machine, so this is inevitable when you escape. But further than that, leaving involves opening a floodgate and dooming the town.
- Erotic Eating: If you give Michiyo a gedou (an already phallic looking creature), she will go into squicky detail on how it felt like to eat it.
- Equipment-Based Progression: You can upgrade parts to allow for less fuel consumption, fishing capabilities, etc., many of which are needed to progress through the story.
- Eyes Always Shut: Chiyo's eyes are covered in crust, and thus are always closed.
- Fantastic Drug: Nitro acts as this, being so addictive that some machines are dependent on it to function.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: There are frogs and crabs, and they take the place of fish.
- Fish Eyes: Many NPCs have this trait, such as Hajime and Torlop.
- Fishing Minigame:
- The main source of income comes from this, as the crabs and frogs you catch are used to make White Gas, the main fuel of the game.
- The first one simply requires you to drop bait and cages into specific spots, then come back to them at a later time.
- The second is a more complicated, if a bit more traditional fishing minigame, this time using rods.
- The Freakshow: Was one of the attractions in The New World. Some of the freaks ended up living in the hospital.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Shen’s destruction of the shadows leads to a dramatic decrease in sewage, which is vital for machines.
- The Great Flood: One of the endings requires you to open the floodgates, causing this.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Michiyo’s Shadow is reduced to her upper half.
- Hint System: Of the “Hint on request" variety. You can either consult the menu, which will give a cryptic, one word hint on what to do in general, or you can ask Hajime, who exists solely to dispense hints.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Shen gets his own music box score used against him
- You have to use the Noise Score to open a gate in the end game. If you don’t have enough identity, you die.
- In-Universe Game Clock: Time is always going in-game, and this affects which NPCs are available to talk to at any given time. One notable use of this is the wait for Vulcarnio to fix the music box, as it takes a while.
- Layered World: Gatari suggests Garage to be one, but quickly dismisses it.. Ain agrees but ultimately accepts his fate in Garage.
- Literal Split Personality: If Shen is to believed, then Yan is one.
- Loss of Identity: The game revolves around this concept. If you lose too much of your sense of identity, you begin to lose control of basic functions, and eventually die if not treated quickly.
- Made of Phlebotinum: Almost everything relies on White Gas or Sewage.
- Morally Superior Copy: The player character is this to Shen\Yan.While you do some morally questionable things on occasion, there's never any intent to hurt someone. Shen, on the other hand, is a straight up serial killer.
- Non-Standard Game Over: There's a point where you can take a wrong turn into a dark alley/tunnel full of crushers; poor Yan will dodge two of them, only to get flattened by the third.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Much of the game is simply… empty. Various rooms and massive areas have not a single machine in sight.
- NPC Scheduling: Certain shops will only be open at certain times. Sometimes if the shops are closed, you can find NPCs in their living quarters.
- Power Crystal: The Engraving Stone is covered in crystals, signifying its power.
- Romance Sidequest: White Gas House No. 1 has 3 possible girls that you can choose to get refueled by. If you end up favoring one girl, she will end up catching feelings for you. By the post game, she will move into your house. You are also able to feed her crabs using the silver plate item.
- Sanity Meter: In the form of your identity. It gets slowly drained, so you'll need to go to the Identity Shop and either get on the rotary horse or identity chamber.
- Snuff Film: The Shadow Murder Shows.
- Significant Name Overlap: You share a name with another Yan. You’re actually his clone, split off from his personality.
- Story Breadcrumbs: You are given little to no explanation on the story when you begin, and only through various pieces of dialogue.
- Talking Animal: Wansui, the talking frog. He cusses you out for catching him.
- Talk to Everyone: Most NPCs get updated dialogue about what's currently happening in the game, and in some cases are needed to get vital information about where to go next.
- The Voiceless: Miya.
- Weird Currency: In the form of stamps. You’ll need them to get gas and your identity refueled. Some NPCs, such as Honda, will only accept crabs or frogs as currency.
