Gretel and Hansel is a series of Flash games by makopudding on Newgrounds, in which you play as Gretel of "Hansel and Gretel" fame. The game takes place in a particularly nightmarish world, in which characters from other Fairy Tales make appearances. In the first game, Gretel overhears her parents' plans to abandon them in the forest and must find enough stones to mark the path back home; in the second, she is separated from her brother and must find him and then they must find their way back home.
The first game can be found here
, the second here.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Dumbass: In the original tale, Hansel was the smartest sibling of the two. In this game, he's dumb enough to swallow scissors.
- Alien Blood: The fairies that help Hansel and Gretel have green blood.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Playing the face popping minigame in the second game's loading screen gives Gretel several different hats the more point are scored.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: When Gretel falls through the hole in the ground at the start of Part 2. Hansel is standing right behind her, but doesn't notice her falling in—he's too distracted by the pretty, sparkly fairies. Hansel and the fairies show up later to save Gretel when her face is stolen.
- Art-Style Dissonance: Most of the game's assets are painted in watercolor and the game overall looks pretty cute with Gretel almost looking like a plush toy thanks to her Black Bead Eyes. Despite all of this, this game is pretty dark and the characters can die in very gruesome ways.
- Bag of Spilling: Gretel's slingshot breaks by the time of the second game.
- Bears Are Bad News: Gretel can pet a cute bear in the second game. However, doing so will anger the bear, who will kill Gretel.
- Bear Trap: There's a bear trap in the second game. To pick it up, Gretel must first drop a frog on it to close it. She later uses it to kill a bear.
- The Big Bad Wolf: The wolf (presumably from Little Red Riding Hood) makes an appearance in the second game.
- Black Bead Eyes: The characters' eyes consist of black dots.
- The Blank: The second game introduces creepy squiggly things that steal faces from other people. Their victims are turned into Blanks and lose all motivation and drive along with their faces — they can't even move. This even applies to their ghosts.
- Body Horror: The victims of the stickman.
- Booze Flamethrower: How Gretel defeats the stickman. During the food serving, Gretel is provided with a jug of (normal) wine. At the end of the dinner course, she's presented with a lethal cake with a lit candle on it. Eating it or refusing to do so results in death both ways, so Gretel has to drink some wine, and then spew flames at the stickman via the candle.
- Brain Bleach: In-universe with the demonic cookbook: reading from it causes a statue to shriek and hold its hands over its ears.
- Brains and Brawn: Gretel handles the puzzle-solving for the most part, while Hansel can be called upon to handle some physical grunt-work.
- Brats with Slingshots: Gretel owns a slingshot. In the first game, it's her main way to interact with objects.
- Break the Cutie:
- In part 1, Gretel loves a little rabbit outside the house (which she can pick up and kiss)...
- In part 2, Gretel has to gut a very similar rabbit in order get past a very cute bear. On another note, try stroking the cute bear.
- Broken Bridge: The second game has several paths that are blocked until Gretel find whatever she needs to cross it.
- A path is blocked by a tree's roots. Gretel needs to find an axe to cut them.
- A small bridge is blocked by a sitting bear. Gretel needs to find bear trap to get rid of it.
- A swamp is inhabited by a snake that will kill Gretel should she try to go in it. She needs Hansel's help to cross it.
- Gretel and Hansel are blocked by a cliff near the end. She needs to find some statue pieces to add on incomplete statues to make a bridge magically appear.
- Cain and Abel: Gretel can kill her brother. In the first game, the game even awards the player a "Kain" achievement.
- Chromatic Arrangement: The three head shrines are red, blue and green.
- Crapsaccharine World: The whimsical watercolor graphics do much to hide its otherwise grim and horrifying nature.
- Critical Annoyance: The mandragora you need to uproot in order to get one of the three pieces of the last puzzle in the second game.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: You find a key in the first game after solving a somewhat obtuse puzzle that requires killing Hansel and finding at least one other item beforehand. Your reward for using it? An axe to the face.
- Darker and Edgier: It's not that much more so, however, considering the original story involved two small children left to fend for themselves in the woods by their impoverished parents, and ended with them kicking a witch into her own oven.
- A Day in the Limelight: In the second game, Gretel ends up getting her face stolen by a mirror, after which Hansel (with the help of some fairies) has to save her.
- Death of a Child: Oh so very much. Special mention goes to Gretel being force-fed by the stickman, and turning into a tree.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The kids' mother reacts to Gretel unlocking their bedroom door by hacking her to death with an axe.
- The Dog Bites Back: Had fun stoning Hansel to death in the first game? Try hitting Hansel a couple of times with the stick in the second one, and he will punch Gretel with enough strength to bruise her face. Aptly named "Revenge". Also, try hitting poor Rufus before using the glasses. He'll strangulate you for trying to make him more miserable.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Not that you had a choice.
- Dumb Muscle: Hansel is a total idiot, but he's stronger than his sister, which can make him useful in some parts.
- Easter Egg: You can find a few.
- Eldritch Abomination: The thing in the ice.
- Initially a Humanoid Abomination, apparently. Then it grows extra arms...
- The stickman must count too. A walking, vaguely-humanoid woodman who delights in preparing food that transforms its consumer into a tree... killing them in very painful ways, such as impalement from pointy branches bursting out from the gut and the eyes.
- And the face stealers, creatures seemingly made from vines who steal other people's faces, freezing even their very souls on the mortal plane until their face is returned. Fortunately, there are ways to take care of them...
- Extreme Omnivore: Hansel, in the beginning of the first game you wake him by making him eat a fly, then he'll spit a whole plush from inside his mouth, in the second game he'll try to eat fairies and he can eat a pair of scissor. He also dipose of a face stealer by eating it.
- Eye Scream: If Gretel tries to pet a raven, the raven pecks Gretel's eye out.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: The second game has a white tree with eyes placed in random spots.
- Foreshadowing: If you set it to night time in a rainy part of a forest, using the glasses, you can make out a wicked figure, you can also find graves, which, if you use glasses on, suspiciously have Hansel and Gretel's faces...
- Final Boss Preview: Your last challenge in Part 2 is to get past the Big Bad Wolf. You'll catch a glimpse of it relatively early in the game.
- Flipping the Bird: In the second game, there's a person hiding behind a tree, asking for a handshake. Slapping their hand with a tree branch will make them give Gretel the middle finger.
- Giant Spider: There's a giant spider living under Gretel's house.
- Guide Dang It!: Good luck figuring out the many, many puzzles.
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The stickman offers you a variety of foods when you fall into his dining room, which you may or may not choose to consume. Eating the wrong foods will kill you, while refusing to eat or sticking to the "safe" options will eventually get you killed, anyway. How do you survive? By Taking a Third Option, of course.
- Henpecked Husband: Gretel and Hansel's father is so submissive to his psychopath wife he can't even convince her to not abandon their children to their deaths.
- "Here's Johnny!" Homage; The "Axe" death in the first game starts with Gretel's mother breaking a hole in the room's door with an axe and sticking her head through the hole. To make the reference clear, the game even grants the player an achievement called "Here is mommy!" (sic).
- Hoist by His Own Petard: How the stickman dies; perhaps he shouldn't have held that cake with the lit candles so close to you when you have a wine bottle within reach...
- Idle Animation: If the player stops playing for a while, Gretel starts rocking on her heels, and will eventually fall asleep while standing up.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Early in the second game, Gretel is forced to either eat human flesh or eat vegetal food that makes a tree grow inside her until she dies.
- Interactive Start Up: The loading screen of the second game has a mini-game where the player can click heads to earn points. Having enough points unlocks headgear that Gretel can wear in-game.
- Just Eat Him: Hansel gets rid of the face stealer who got Gretel's face by eating its body.
- Kill It with Fire: Gretel kills the stickman by burning him via Booze Flamethrower.
- The Many Deaths of You: There are multiple different ways for Gretel to die in both games. Hansel, their father and a helpful fairy can also die. This also results in a game over, because the story cannot continue without them. The first game has ten differents deaths, while the second game has fourteen.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: The solution for crossing the swamp doesn't make much sense. If Gretel tries to cross it alone, she's killed by a snake in the middle of the swamp. But if she finds Hansel, they can get past the swamp by having Hansel cross it while Gretel rides on his shoulder. The game doesn't explain why the snake never attacks Hansel.
- Name and Name: The game's title is Gretel and Hansel.
- Monkey Morality Pose: The second game has three head shrines that Gretel needs to activate to progress through the game. To activate them and get the remaining stone pieces to fit into the statues near the ravine, Gretel must do something related to the three senses in front of each head. Doing so will cause the heads to cover their eyes, mouth and ears, just like the Three Wise Monkeys. Once this is done, the head shrines open their compartments, allowing Gretel to take the statue pieces she needs.
- Nightmare Sequence: The second game starts with Gretel having a nightmare where she sees her father and her brother getting killed by trees sprouting on them. Then, she runs away and meet her mother who is about to kill her, only for Gretel to wake up.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Saving Emma's face from the face-stealers and putting it back into her body results in her fatal axe wound reappearing and finishing her off.
- Offing the Offspring: Gretel and Hansel's mother wants to kill them, regardless of whether it's indirectly, by abandoning them in the forest, or directly with an axe.
- Patricide: In the first game, it's possible for Gretel to kill her father. Doing so counts as a game over.
- Perpetual Smiler: Hansel is almost always smiling, even when he dies.
- Pictorial Speech-Bubble: Dialogue consists of speech bubbles with drawings instead of words.
- Protagonist Title: Like in the original tale, the game is named after the two main characters. But their names are swapped, because Gretel has the biggest role here.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Gretel and Hansel's mother has red eyes and is a psychopath who wants to kill her own children.
- Red Herring:
- The key from a puzzle in the first game. Using it just gets you killed.
- The scissors in the second game. It just kills in two different ways.
- Related Differently in the Adaptation: The games' files and an achievement in the first game imply that Gretel and Hansel's mother, is their biological mother rather than their stepmother like in the original tale.
- Scare Chord: Whenever you die. The first glimpse of the wolf is also accompanied by one.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: If Gretel stands too close to a broken beehive, she gets killed by the swarm.
- Schmuck Bait: After the first game has Gretel cuddling an adorable rabbit and making it look like most cute animals are safe, the second game gives the option for her to pet an adorable bear sitting by the river; doing so will anger the bear who then kill Gretel.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The thing in the ice. Thawing it out completely will cause it to kill you.
- Schmuck Banquet: Early in the second game, Gretel is captured by a literal stick man who acts as a waiter and serves her food. He always gives her the choice between plant-based food or human limbs (or a rotten fish in one case). As the other captured children tell Gretel, eating the plant food is dangerous because every time Gretel takes a bite out of it, a tree inside her and some branches grow a bit more until she's impaled from the inside. In other words, she needs to force herself to eat rotten flesh to live until she can can find a way to kill the stick man.
- Sequence Breaking: With some trial and error, it's possible to reach Hansel in the second game without chopping the wood. Arguably, this also prevents a Plot Hole.
- Shout-Out:
- The "Axe" death starts with the mother breaking through the door with an axe and sticking her head through the hole. The achievement for getting this death is also called "Here is Mommy!".
- If Gretel tries to cross the swamp alone, she gets bitten and dragged into the water by a snake. As Gretel is sinking to her death, she gives a thumbs up like the T-800 at the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
- Slasher Smile: In the first game, Gretel dons a creepy smile if she kills Hansel.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The tome you obtain in the stickman's "kitchen", which is accompanied by satanic-sounding whispers and incantations. His "cookbooks" must be something like it, given his "food"...
- Too Dumb to Live: Hansel, justified with the fact that he's mentally challenged. There are too many examples to show, but some very prominent ones are that he can swallow a pair of scissors, stand tip-toe on a cliff edge and not react to seeing his sister die horribly.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior:
- Gretel appears to be a normal child in the first game, but the player can make her kill her brother, and she gives a Slasher Smile if she does so.
- The first game establishes that Gretel likes petting cute animals. In the second game, however, she kills numerous animals and the first one is a rabbit, just like the one she can cuddle with in the first game. Even if Gretel is forced to kill these animals to advance, what makes it creepier is that she doesn't show any emotions as she kills them.
- Video Game Caring Potential: In episode 2, you have the choice of saving the people that were captured by the tree.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- In the first game, It's possible to kill Hansel by shooting at him with the slingshot enough time. There is no In-Universe reason to do this, as this results in a game over. Later in the game, it's possible to shoot at the father as he's pulling a carriage, resulting in him tripping and getting crushed by the carriage's wheels.
- In the second game, there's a screen where Hansel is looking down a cliff. Hitting him with the tree branch will make him fall to his death, resulting in a game over, just like in the first game.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: The Non-Standard Game Over for killing Hansel.
- In the sequel, hitting him with a stick results in him punching you.
- What the Hell, Player?:
- In part 1, shooting continually at Hansel. Considering the very painful and heartrending ways Gretel can die in, the same could be said about players wanting to find all the ways to die. (It's just very painful to watch.)
- On a humorous note, knocking off the heads of the robot creators in the Easter Egg room.
- Wicked Stepmother: Averted. Contrary to the original tale, it's implied that the mother is Gretel and Hansel's biological mother rather than their stepmother.
