Lucius Wagner was born on June 6, 1966. Despite this, nobody expected him to be anything other than a normal boy. Of course, he's the Player Character in a Video Game, so that was never going to happen. On the day of his 6th birthday, Lucius kills Mary, one of the household maids, by locking her in a freezer.
Of course, Lucius then discovers that he is excessively not-normal: that night, he is contacted by the Devil Himself, Lucifer, in a dream. Lucifer reveals that Lucius is The Antichrist, and orders him to begin gathering power by murdering all the people in the manor. Gameplay is something of a stealth/puzzle mishmash, as you investigate your latest victim and figure out how to use Lucius' various powers (telekinesis, limited mind control, etc), or perhaps just cunning and wits, to Make It Look Like an Accident. And there's always the possibility that Lucius' father, Charles, or some other characters might suddenly become Genre Savvy...
A sequel, Lucius II: The Prophecy was released on February 13 (on a Friday, no less), 2015. Taking place directly after the events of the first game, Lucius now has an entire hospital as well as a small town to wreak havoc on as well as contending with another son of the devil.
A demake of the first episode, simply titled Lucius Demake, was released on August 9, 2016. It was intended as a smaller project before the third episode entered production.
The third game, Lucius III, was released in December 2018. In it, Lucius attempts to fulfill his destiny of bringing for the Apocalypse.
The games feature examples of:
- Actionized Sequel: The Prophecy eschews the original game's focus on named targets and ongoing story development in favor of a Hitman style, where Lucius sneaks through guarded levels and takes out dozens of people to reach a specific goal.
- Aerith and Bob: The Wagner family consists of Charles, Nancy and Tom. There is also Lucius and Fabius. Considering that the two are easily the most evil characters of the game, it's pretty deliberate.
- The Antichrist: Lucius Wagner is the agent of Lucifer, his real father, born into a privileged family, and goes on a murder spree by his command.
- Bag of Spilling: Lucius gets his powers taken away by his father in the sequel in order to level the playing field.
- Beneath Suspicion: Despite being the only person with no alibi, nobody considers Lucius a suspect until near the end of the game.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Whenever Lucius subjects anyone to his Mind Control power, their eyes will turn black.
- Black Magic: As he kills more people, Lucius gains more powers from his father.
- Break the Cutie: Nancy goes downhill fast once the deaths start piling up.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Lucius' father Charles gets incredibly offended by Fabius' indifference to all the murders.Charles: That's cold by any stretch. You're a heartless, bitter old man!
- Character Title: Lucius is the titular Villain Protagonist.
- Charm Person: Lucius has a very limited version of Mind Control, which he mostly uses to make people commit suicide. However, they have to be in a weakened state of mind first before they're vulnerable.
- Christianity is Catholic: Priests are the only clergy in the game. The family have crosses throughout the house but not much else. Fabious even spurns the priests off with anti-Irish slurs although, he is a closet Satanist.
- Couldn't Find a Lighter: When Lucius steals Gene's lighter, he decides it's a brilliant idea to light his cigarettes with the gas stove fire, with the cigarette in mouth. Lucius tampering with the stove sets his face ablaze.
- Creepy Child: Lucius walks with a constant Death Glare and doesn't talk, the latter of which some characters describe as distrutbing.
- Dark Secret: Fabius, Lucius' grandfather, is a Satanist who made the pact with the devil that made Lucius into the Antichrist.
- Deadly Rotary Fan:
- Lucius brainwashes Antonio the gardener to stick his head into the lawnmower.
- Terrence, McGuffin's partner is beheaded by Lucius spinning a hanging ceiling fan to him.
- Devil in Plain Sight: Lucius is the Villain Protagonist and the culprit behind every murder. However he is considered Beneath Suspicion until there's almost nobody left.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Gene's smoking gives Lucius headaches. Solution? Make the oven explode in his face.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Tom begins drinking heavily after Jovita's death. This leads to his own death when Lucius poisons his drink.
- Electrified Bathtub: Susan is killed when Lucius drops a hairdryer into the tub while she's bathing.
- Expy:
- Let's see... Born the sixth day of the sixth month of 1966, he is The Antichrist, he has demonic murder powers... Oh, dear! Lucius is Damien Thorn's successor!
- In the sequel, Issac may share the first name with the villain of Children of the Corn, but he is the near spitting image of Malachi.
- The Motel owner from the third game is one of Norman Bates, dead mother who he thinks is talking to him, murdering a woman in the shower, "Psycho" Strings and all.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Every single one of the victims dies in gruesome graphic ways.
- Foreshadowing:
- Will comments that he had a nightmare where he is set on fire. That's exactly what happens.
- Susan comments that she may be in love with Tom. Later it's revealed that Tom is also Jovita's lover, which gets relevant in future murders.
- Gotta Kill Them All: Lucius gradually kills all of the manor's staff and residents one by one in the order specified by Lucifer.
- Hero Antagonist: In the first game, Charles, the police, and the priests naturally want the family to be safe adn try to uncover Lucius' involvement in the murders.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Fabius made a pact with Satan that led to Lucius becoming the Antichrist. He gets sacrificed on the very altar he set up to help in this, by Lucius himself.
- The Devil himself dies like this, he kills McGuffin and traps Lucius on Earth for even mentioning that Lucius has the option to kill him without any evidence that he would actually do it, provoking him into doing just that.
- Holy Burns Evil: Crosses drain Lucius' magic bar. Of course, he simply has to invert or destroy them to solve that problem.
- Kill It with Fire: Lucius starts a fire that consumes the entire house in the final chapter.
- The Klan: One of the targets in the third game is a black judge who is secretly a satanist, Lucius kills him by summoning spirits of Klansmen to lynch him.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Lucius can wipe people's memories in case he gets caught. You only get six uses of this in a level.
- Let the Past Burn: The plot is set in motion by a character performing satanic rituals in the basement of Dante Manor, which results in Lucius' soul becoming the property of the devil and him murdering the inhabitants of the house. During the final level, Lucius burns Dante Manor to the ground, along with the last of his victims, his father Charles.
- Locked in a Freezer: For the murder in the tutorial, Lucius locks Mary in the freezer. The police decide she more likely from a heart failure than from the cold.
- Logical Weakness: Lucius may be The Antichrist and possess dark powers, but he's still a little boy. He would lose every physical confrontation, from adults to another child hitting him with a baseball bat.
- Made of Plasticine: Unlike how it would occur in reality, saws make very clean cuts, and a nailgun can pierce a skull through.
- Madness Mantra: Starting in the Christmas chapter, Nancy begins singing "Sur le pont d’Avignon" (a French folk song) and giggling to herself. During the chapter of her death, she replaces the second line with "Then he DIED, everyone DIED!".
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Lucius tries to make as many of the deaths as possible look like accidents. Where that isn't possible, he makes them look like suicides or pins the blame on someone else.
- Mind over Matter: One of Lucius's powers is Telekinesis. Mostly used to pick up objects, but it can also start up machines and break things.
- Multiple Endings: The third game has two endings: Gabriel takes Lucius to heaven, or taking the knife used to kill Lucifer, Lucius backstabs Gabriel and becomes the new ruler of Hell.
- Narrator: Detective McGuffin reads out his progress before every chapter in the first game.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Unlike other moments where being spotted doing something suspicious results in a Game Over, walking in on your uncle and the maid having sex in a way they can see you, also causes you to fail your mission.
- Nostalgia Level: Dante Manor reappears in Lucius III. Subverted in that the whole manor is burned down, with flashback cutscenes being the only way most locations are even slightly recognizable.
- The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: Near the end of Lucius III, Lucifer catches Lucius seemingly plotting against him. Lucifer responds by grounding him for a week—except this is right after Lucius started Armageddon, so he's essentially stranding him on Earth to perish with the rest of humanity.
- Number of the Beast: Lucious is born on 6/6/66. Also, one of the writings in the classrooms has "6+6+6" as a question.
- Offing the Offspring: Charles eventually tries to kill Lucius, having discovered his true nature, but fails and becomes a suspect for the other murders.
- The Ophelia: Lucius' mother Nancy slowly but surely is driven mad by the "accidents" of the house. By the end she's a gibbering mess.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The combination of Charles' office safe is 6-6-19-66, Lucius' birthday. For some strange reason, he needs a written note to remember it, which is hidden in his drawer anyone has access to.
- Piano Drop: Lucius makes a piano fall on Ivar's head.
- Playing with Fire: Late-game, Lucius gets the ability to shoot fireballs, but as a powerful ability the opportunities to use it are limited.
- Police Are Useless: Detective MacGuffin gets no closer to solving the mysterious murders after about 18 bodies in a row and a few wrong suspects, at least until Lucius II... right before Satan himself comes before him and gets him to swear eternal loyalty to Lucius. Lucius's crimes aside, he also misses a pedophile and a murderer in his own hometown.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Lucius develops the power to possess weak-willed people. Several of Lucius' victims meet their end this way. One of the maids is manipulated into throwing herself of a balcony, the gardener is forced to place his head inside a lawnmower, and the tutor blows his own brains out with a revolver.
- Puzzle Boss: The final chapter lets you pick between a physical and logical confrontation. The latter meaning Lucious has to use his powers to kill people indirectly while being assaulted.
- Sequence Breaking: When the rest of the manor gets unlocked, Lucius can pick up items much earlier than the chapters they become relevant in, in glue's case skipping the majority of a Stealth-Based Mission.
- Shout-Out:
- Dante's Manor takes its name from the protagonist of The Divine Comedy.
- Your rival's name in the sequel? Isaac. This may also be a reference to Children of the Corn, as not only does Issac share the first name to the Big Bad of that movie, but bears a striking resemblance to his right-hand man, Malachi.
- Stealth-Based Mission: Some chapters require Lucius to roam at night without getting spotted.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the third game, it turns out that gruesomely displaying corpses outdoors and running a carousel late at night attracts attention. It's how Lt. Kimble realizes that something is wrong.
- The Shadow Knows: When using the flashlight for the first time, Lucifer's shadow prominently has invisible horns.
- Too Dumb to Live: The first victims, Gene, Ivor and Jed, make it very easy for Lucius to Make It Look Like an Accident by doing something extremely hazardeous with no caution, even Detective MacGuffin remarks they were ticking disasters.
- Torture Cellar: Dante Manor has a sacrificial chamber hidden deep in the cellar.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: At one point, when Nancy asks to help with the laundary, it is possible for Lucius to pick up a piece of women's underwear, run around the house and talk to adults with it. Nobody of them seems to notice.
- Video Game Demake: Lucius Demake
is an official demake of the first episode. Lucius Demake keeps the storyline and most of the puzzles and situations of the first game, and translates them into a pixelated top-down visual, making it look and feel like it was made in the 1980s on a Commodore 64. Impressed by a mock-up made by a fan that reimagined the game as a top-down adventure from the days of the Commodore 64, developer Shiver Games decided to make an entire game out of it and even hired said fan to create all the graphics. - Villain Protagonist: You play as the young Antichrist trying to kill residents of the mansion and getting away with it.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: In the third game, it turns out there's only one weapon on Earth that can kill an angel or a demon, the dagger of destiny also known as that dagger you stabbed your grandfather with in the first game.
