Larry: Okay, I'm in the 21st century... many of the people I knew are dead... everything has changed... I don't know this world... But hey, who cares, I've still got my good looks, my unparalleled charisma, and the biggest—
Lefty: (ahem) This is a family establishment!
Larry: ...smile in town.
Lefty: (ahem) This is a family establishment!
Larry: ...smile in town.
Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry is a video game developed by the German developer Crazy Bunch and published by Assemble Entertainment for Steam, GOG.com, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in 2018. It's the ninth installment in the Leisure Suit Larry series.
Larry has been mysteriously transported through time from his heyday in the late 1980s directly into the 2010s and has to learn to change with the times, as well as trying to get 90 points on Timber to attract Faith Less, the new woman of his dreams.
A sequel, titled Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice was released in October 2020.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: While still fairly homely, Larry looks more like a regular human rather than the diminutive gremlin he became in later games in order to make him look more like he did in the earlier games and thus less actively repulsive.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Larry typically has several dialogue options. "It was dark and I'd been drinking!" is always among them, no matter how irrelevant the excuse is to whatever situation he's in. As the plot progresses, his tone while saying it becomes increasingly desperate.
- Alliterative Name: There's a couple in the game. Becky Butter, the vlogger/influencer that Larry first meets in Lefty's. And Diana Dickboyle, a fitness trainer at the gym on the New Lost Wages Strip.
- Angst? What Angst?: In-Universe. Larry points that he has found himself in the far future, everything changed, everybody he knew is dead, he does not know that world... and he's instantly over it. Who cares, as long as he has good looks, his unparalleled charisma, and the biggest smile in town?
- Anticipatory Breath Spray: Larry does this as one of his Idle Animations.
- Apocalyptic Log: One is found on a cassette tape in the underground lab.
- Asian and Nerdy: Nari, cosplayer and intern in Prune who believes that Larry is a cosplayer, and ultimately declares him nerdier than her if he answers correctly some questions on gaming consoles of the 80s.
- The Bechdel Test: Invoked Trope, when you introduce Erin to Lemma and the two start talking to each other. If Larry doesn't interfere, he gets an achievement called "Bechdel Test Passed". In this case, they're more interested in each other than men.
- Bag of Holding: As usual, Larry grabs everything everywhere that is not nailed to the ground, and somehow takes them around. Lampshaded when Lefty asked Larry if he had just placed two beers inside his jacket, and when Dick asks him if he can get a sunset out of his trousers (and yes, he can... a big background scenery of a sunset).
- Benevolent A.I.: Larry's companion on his journey is Pi, the AI assistant in the prototype phone that BJ lost at Lefty's.
- Black Comedy Rape: Sort of, due to a misunderstanding: Nari and Larry wanted to have sex, though since she saw that his favourite sexual position on Timber was the "Screwnicorn" she thought to satisfy him: cue to Nari, in a unicorn costume, charging her "horn" in a Bound and Gagged Larry's butt.
- Bilingual Bonus: The Bland-Name Product parody of Uber is Unter, both being words in German meaning "over" and "under" respectively. Likewise, the app logo for Unter is a U superimposed with a down arrow.
- Bland-Name Product: Quite a few products and modern websites and get parodic equivalents here.
- Blatant Lies: Lefty explains the XXI century to Larry, and points that people do not have sex anymore. People just take a pill to feel an orgasm. Larry has a face of abject horror for some seconds... "Easy, Larry, easy. I'm just kidding. Even in the 21st century, we still have sex. No sex robots yet, though".
- Blind Mistake: The Devil's Pawn has the Dark Room where Larry has a date with either Erin and Lemma (who're starting a threesome) or Richard. However, it's so dark he can only stumble through various unidentified locations before choosing to join either the girls or Richard. When the lights are on, it's revealed that Larry was actually making dirty things to a Gargoyle statue.
- Boob-Based Gag: Anu Singh is certainly on the curvier/thicker side, but nowhere near enough to pull of the stunt she does near the end of the game: after infiltrating BJ's Office and getting the secret data she jumps out a window at the top of a skyscraper and somehow lands safely by using her bra as a parachute.
- Brick Joke: There's a couple.
- During the game's second act, Larry has to rig a "high striker" test-your-strength game, with the puck ending up airborne. At the very end, it comes back down and knocks out Faith.
- In the game's first act, Larry gets help from the two Prune techs working in the store setting up his Timber profile. When they get to "favorite sex position", Larry is stumped and they end up putting "screwnicorn" since it's the current "in thing". Larry eventually finds out what the screwnicorn is...the hard way.
- Broken Pedestal: In-Universe, during the 8-bit Dream, President Trump is greatly disappointed to hear Larry not-saying his usually sexist stuff on women.
- Call-Back:
- When meeting Nari for the first time, Larry's cautiousness and thinking that she may be a transgender woman hint to Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!, namely his encounter with Shablee, though Nari thinks he had a bad experience with a Thai Massage Salon. Ironically, Nari's date also ends with Larry receiving anal sex from his partner, though Nari uses a unicorn's head-shaped sex toy.
- From the same game, you can try to set up a threesome in the darkroom with Lemma (a musician) and Erin, kinda like you did in 6 with Burgundi (another singer) and Cavaricchi. In both cases, the ladies have a talk and ultimately decides to leave Larry out of the threesome, though here you can see a pic of them doing it in the room.
- Chainmail Bikini: You can recover one in the VIP area of Devil's Pawn. You can wrap the prototype PiPhone in it to make it survive the chainsaw test, with Larry making a jab at people complaining for skimpy armors in fiction.
- Character Blog: Larry has a real life Twitter account in which he gives news about this game and speaks in first person in character. It's called Larry's Mansion
. - The Chosen One: The prophecy of Cancum Island predicts the arrival of a white-clad stranger, bathed in light, to whom the alpacas will bow. Larry has to cheat a little to make himself a match for said prophecy.
- Comically Missing the Point: Larry spends the first half of the game oblivious to the fact that Dick is gay and that he's hitting on him. He finally gets wise in the Devil's Pawn nightclub, right where he's having a date with Dick in the Dark Room.
- Covert Pervert: Anu is the most serious and professional woman Larry can meet in the game, and bent on exposing BJ's plot. After she successfully steals the secret data, she's so excited she wants to have wild sex with Larry right there on BJ's desk, but unfortunately they're interrupted.
- Deadpan Snarker: Pi has taken this role from the narrator.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: There are a few ways that Larry can "die", but the game immediately builds a new Larry in a factory and picks up where it left off.
- Dialogue Tree: Larry has multiple responses in conversations to pick from.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Nari prefers to go by her Timber account name instead of her real one (Mi Young Dong).
- Drag Queen: Tuck, a flamboyant drag queen who Larry initially mistakes for a real woman and who keeps letting herself in jail to receive cavity search. She also officiates weddings and can marry Lance and Richard.
- Easily Forgiven: When BJ shows up at Lefto's at the end, he doesn't seem to hold a grudge for Larry ruining his business and leaving him in an exploding villa, and orders a beer.
- Erotic Eating: Lance, despite his fervent denial of his sexuality, doesn't do himself any favours when eating a sauce-covered corn dog.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Larry somehow ends up 30 years into the future and must now adapt to both tech and culture.
- Freud Was Right: The Prune building. Two spheric buildings at the ground, a large cylindric building, and a fountain at the top. Larry was about to point that it looks so similar to something, but Pi interrupted him. The company's logo is even vaginally shaped, to the point that Larry uses a fleshlight as a rubber stamp to imitate it for an internship flier.
- Gargle Blaster: Lefty's Barbarian's Brew, which makes the people who drink it sick. Given that: 1) Lefty's jury-rigged a still out of a water heater and a washing machine; 2) Lefty mentions that the original recipe had snake oil in it at one point; and 3) the stuff Larry gets to help improve it includes maca root, chainsaw fuel, and a tacky perfume. It's no surprise that Lefty has trouble keeping his bar running.
- Gay Option: One of Larry's first dates is with Richard Ryder, who's gay and head over heels for Larry. The latter is completely unaware until the date in the nightclub, but takes it surprisingly well and can even (try to) join him in the Dark Room rather than Lemma and Erin.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: When the police makes a bust in the Dark Room, you can see a pic of naked Lemma and Erin making out on a couch. In a case of equality, there's also one of Lance and Dick making out... and of Larry caught in a compromising position with a gargoyle.
- Going Native: Parodied, El Lefto in Cancum is actually Lefty in disguise after he had some trouble with the sanitary inspector of New Lost Wages. El Rey mentions that they know he's not a native, but they play along.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Lance Straightman. Larry has to get him to open up about being gay, get him back with his ex-boyfriend, and get them married.
- Heh Heh, You Said "X": Larry does this a lot, of course. Lampshaded in one instance by Pi.Hipster: ...or a really stiff latte.
Pi: Don't say it, Larry.
Larry: Stiff, heh heh.
Pi: And, of course, he says it. - Hidden in Plain Sight: During the course of the game, it's highly implied that BJ's plan involves using the new Pi Phone to control people's lives. When confronted with this argument near the end, Faith points out that they already did that, simply because
thousands of people were willing to put personal information on the social media of their own free will, all they had to do was to collect the data through their smartphones. - Hipster: The two guys who work at the Salon de Lizard are hipster stereotypes. They have massive beards, sell only vegan and gluten free food, and ditch the Shroud of Urine because Queef have become too mainstream.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- In Devil's Pawn, Larry can introduce Erin to Lemma in order to have a threesome with them. However, the chamber's so dark Larry wastes too much time, leading to the two girls having sex with each other without Larry.
- While dating Diana, Larry can persuade her to stop paying too much attention to her watch, and live free. As they're about to have sex, the watch claims she can have sex with Larry, but since she decided to do the opposite of what the watch told her...
- Faith agrees to go on a date with Larry if he can get a score of 90 on Timber. The improbable chain of events caused by Larry's quest ends up being the undoing of Prune.
- Hypocritical Humor: The native man in Pier 69 will take offense and call Larry an insensitive racist if he presumes that his name is made of "synonym of smoking + animal name". Then Larry asks for his name, which is revealed to be "Smoking Bear".
- Idle Animation: Larry makes the "fingers as guns" pose or use his breath spray when he's idling.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: After surviving the mansion explosion, BJ orders, "a beer. Oh, what the hell- three." Him sneaking around New Lost Wages bar hopping is how he ended up losing the new PiPhone prototype in the first place.
- Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Larry initially mistakes Nari as Japanese, but she quickly corrects him (she's Korean).
- Interrupted Intimacy: A running gag through the game, Larry's attempts to get laid are always ruined by fortuitous events. The only time he manages to have intercourse is with Nari, and she ends up doing the "screwnicorn" because she thought he'd appreciate that.
- Karmic Butt-Monkey: Becky Butter. Poor Becky, during the course of the game you have to serve her a drink which makes her sick, steal her used panties, have a pigeon crap in her coffee (which causes her to be sick again) and finally ruin her date with Lance. That being said, the way she behaves makes her an Asshole Victim.
- Kick the Dog: Literally, there's an absolutely adorable pooch in the Gym, from which you have to steal his rubber toy, causing him to look depressed... the next time you enter the gym there's a commemorative picture, implying that he died of sadness!
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Lefty comments on Larry's Adaptational Attractiveness, telling him that he has gotten "less chubby" since the least time he saw him.
- Literal-Minded: Lefty asks for an ingredient which will turn his beer "high octane", so Larry gives him some actual octane (chainsaw fuel).
- The Man Behind the Man: As hinted at earlier but made blatantly clear at the end, Faith is the brains behind Prune, while BJ is the incompetent face of the corporation.
- Match Maker Quest: Lance isn't interested in dating Larry, but he will give him a good Timber rating if Larry can reconcile him with his ex-boyfriend. In fact, several NPCs get together because of Larry, a fact that makes him very proud.
- Mushroom Samba: Towards the end, Larry consumes peyote and has a messed-up vision of what's to come, with absurd elements like a drawn-on window and a Nac Gniretaw (watering can spelled backwards) that absorbs liquid.
- Mythology Gag
- A Where's Dildo? can be spotted on a shelf in the Leisure Suite.
- When the police detains him, they called him "Larry Lovage" by accident, then corrected themselves.
- According to Lefty, people thought that Larry had settled in a remote island somewhere.
- Remember what happened in the original game when you died? Larry was taken to a secret lab below the streets, he was repaired, and a new Larry was released to the world, with an elevator that sent him to the street outside Lefty's bar (where you start the game). The lab is now a ruin, but one of those bodies came back to life and used the elevator... and that's how the game starts.
- Speaking of that scene, if you die there is a similar scene (and in Retraux Flashback style to boot). However, you return to the exact point before death, instead of having to restore or restart.
- Never a Self-Made Woman: Subverted. Faith is the true inventor of Prune, but she hired a male patsy to be the company's figurehead because investors wouldn't listen to a woman.
- Nice Guy: Richard Ryder, the gay man Larry can date. He's very polite and affable, genuinely likes Larry and even when Larry clears the mistake, he still consider him a friend.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Bill Jobs is the boss of Prune, a parody of Apple.
- No One Could Survive That!: At the game's end, BJ somehow ends up surviving the villa's self-destruct. He claims the cage shielded him.
- No-Tell Motel: The one that Lefty had running out of his backroom/upstairs is out of business, but is intact enough for him to still rent it out as an apartment. The pimp in charge got killed at some point and sealed into the far wall, for whatever reason.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Parodied. While wandering in the secret tunnels under the city, Larry runs into an angry Troll, standing in front of an axe and a 20-sided dice. To proceed, he simply takes the axe and chops the Troll in half with one swing.
- Old Maid: Played with regarding Diana, one of Larry's Timber match-ups. She's 35 and an athletic knock-out, but has been so focused being a role model for the gym members that she admits to Larry she hasn't been on a date in years. Part of her storyline is learning to let loose from her strict routine and enjoy her life.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Larry offered a beer to Becky, and Lefty gave him a pair of his "barbarian beers". They both had an urge to go to the bathroom after drinking it, and Becky would always remember Larry as the guy that tried to poison her in all her later appearances. Even in the sequel, with a Time Skip between both, she's still mad at him for it.
- Only Sane Man: Pi, Larry's AI assistant, is often left groaning in disgust or disbelief at Larry's antics.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the Dream sequence with Donald Trump, Larry's usually sexist answers on women are replaced with incredibly gentle and politically correct ones, much to the President's ire and makes Larry realize he's losing himself.
- Political Overcorrectness: Parodied in - though not by - the penultimate joke of the game.Larry: I won't give up until I find her!
El Lefto: She tried to kill you! Several times!
Larry: Man, people sure have gotten sensitive in the 21st century. - Poor Communication Kills: Larry comes from an obscure and forgotten age (the 1980s) when the internet did not even exist, except perhaps in some military bases. Each time he talks with a modern person he hears many words with new meanings (such as "community" or "followers") and understands it all wrong.
- Retraux: Lefty's bar still has the poster of a woman from the original AGI Land of the Lounge Lizards.
- Retraux Flashback: After a phone explodes in Larry's face and knocks him out, Larry briefly finds himself back in the 80's, which has the same graphic style as his original game.
- Shout-Out: By the buttload.
- The title is a reference to D4 (Dark Dreams Don't Die).
- Timber profiles include DDVA, Daphne, Sara Soft, Miles Moanless, Dufus, The Vagiana Sisters, a Stormtrooper, a cross between Larry and Harry Potter, Graham Cracker, Lana Morrison, and a cross between a fly and Jeff Goldblum.
- One of the objects Larry must collect is limited edition Szechuan Sauce.
- The vending machine that dispenses said sauce only takes gold doubloons. The doubloon in question will look extremely familiar to anyone who played Monkey Island 3.
- Another object desired by the nerds is an action figure of the slave princess with a removable gold bikini from "Sleaze Wars".
- One of the paintings at Hell's Pawn is a very phallic-looking Xenomorph.
- The wrecking ball in Erin's room is painted to look like a Chain Chomp. If you click on it Larry remarks "The only place that would be useful would be in a cart race." (Pi comments "Don't sue us.")
- If you try to take the Hornycorn mask/head, Bea tells you that it's the only one left. Its name then changes to "The Last Hornycorn".
- The music from Pokémon plays during the cutscene where Nari's about to do a Screwnicorn on Larry.
- The gargoyle bartender at Hell's Pawn whispers "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" when given a voucher.
- A monitor at the Prune office is showing Mr. DNA from Jurassic Park.
- Sexbot: Larry can ask Lefty if they have sex robots in the 21st century. Later in the game, he can also attempt to make one himself, with...mixed results.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The entire game is spent trying to win Faith over. At the very end, after seeing that Larry saved her life despite of everything she's done to him before she finally falls in love with him... and at that very moment, the high-stryker puck from the fairgrounds falls from the sky on her head, knocking her out and making her fall on the boat, which then falls on the ocean, starts working by itself and rides away in the sunset, leaving Larry alone.
- Snarky Non Human Side Kick: Pi, the AI in Larry's phone.
- Spanner in the Works: Larry's attempts to get laid with Faith ends up sabotaging Prune, and eventually causes them to bankrupt.
- Stock Scream: The Wilhelm Scream can be heard coming from the police station.
- Tagline: "Hey ladies, I'm back in business!"
- Take That!:
- In the Retraux Flashback, Larry meets Donald Trump, who credits him with teaching him everything he knows when it comes to dealing with women, expects him to teach extremely sexist stuff to his son and is outraged when Larry starts spouting sensitive and considerate advice on how to treat women.
- On Cancum, the Latin-American looking natives were so annoyed by foreigners moving to their island they built a wall around them and make them pay. Real subtle...
- Technicolor Toxin: The toxic waste on the ship is lime green.
- Toilet Humor: Lefty's bathroom stall sports a "Call of Doo Doo" poster (a picture of a poo with guns on it).
- Toxic Waste Can Do Anything: Larry dips a BJ mannequin into some toxic waste to try and create a living sex doll. It works, sort of.
- Truer to the Text: Larry's design is based on his more normal design in the original first three games, rather than the shorter, exaggerated design introduced in the VGA remake of the first game and used in the fifth game onward.
- Unflattering ID Photo: Larry's initial Timber photo is...very unflattering, to say the least. Part of his hook-up with Dick is getting a new one. Which ends up looking exactly the same, until Dick decides to use a filter on it.
- Unfortunate Names: Bill Jobs' name is usually shortened to "BJ", which of course Larry thinks is funny.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Downplayed, Larry takes a while to realize that Tuck is a man in drag, not a lady. Before he has to give him a body cavity check. Invoked and averted with Nari, who's really a girl, even though Larry initially suspects otherwise.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: Larry finds himself musing he must have had a hell of a night when he wakes up in a strange room without any clue how he got there.
- You Wake Up in a Room: The game begins with Larry waking up in an underground lab of some sort with no idea how he got there.
