Lunch Lady is a Multiplayer Survival Horror Video Game by Manic Mice.
Final Exams are coming up, and you and your friends are NOT in a studying mood. What are a bunch of slacker teens to do, then? Why sneak into the school and steal the answer sheets, of course.
However, you're not alone. The lunch lady is in the building too, and she seems to have some unpleasant intentions in mind for you. Better find those answer sheets fast, and get out of there now.
The game was released on April 15th, 2021.
Lunch Lady contains examples of:
- Abandoned Playground: The Nightmare High map is the first (and only) map to feature an outdoors area, which can only be described as an abandoned basketball court, but is otherwise referred to as a playground in the game.
- Acrofatic: Despite being very fat, the Lunch Lady will get increasingly faster the more sheets you collect.
- Playing the game on Insane difficulty sees Lunch Lady start off at running speed. By the time you've found all ten sheets, her speed can rival that of an Olympic sprinter.
- Alliterative Title
- Always Night: The game takes place in one night.
- Antagonist Title: The game is named after the Lunch Lady out to get you.
- Artificial Brilliance:
- As of the 1.4.0a patch, the Lunch Lady can hear you if you're running around, or opening and closing doors, and she will head to your last known location.
- The player's flashlight, while useless before, is now useful when it comes to diminishing your visibility from the Lunch Lady, making it harder for her to see you from a distance.
- Artificial Stupidity: Some of the doors in the schools are made of glass. So long as these doors are closed, the Lunch Lady cannot see you from the other side of the glass. The same applies for the windows too.
- Audible Sharpness: When the Lunch Lady gets ready to throw a cleaver at you, you're alerted to it by a "shing" noise.
- Behind the Black: One of the multiplayer aspects will let you join someone else's public game. When you load in, you are always greeted with a black screen featuring a Title Card, the difficulty level, and the objective. If you are unfortunate enough to load in while the Lunch Lady is in the vicinity of the spawn point, you can (and will) be killed before you can even start playing. The Jump Scare will even interrupt the aforementioned title card.
- Boss Game: There's only one antagonist in this game, and she is present across all of the schools you visit.
- Developer's Foresight: On some of the maps, it's possible to position yourself in a spot where the Lunch Lady cannot physically get to you. If you're in one of these spots when she sees you, she will throw projectiles at you before moving on. If you keep drawing her aggro, and after several minutes of her throwing her cleavers at you, the Lunch Lady will then deliver an instant kill attack. It even comes with a unique scream.
- Diabolus ex Nihilo: No explanation is given for why the Lunch Lady is at school during the night or why she wants to kill you.
- Easy Exp: The game has a level system, and can unlock new characters for every number of levels unlocked. The fastest way to earn experience points is to complete a round using a random map, instead of manually choosing which map you want to play.
- Eldritch Abomination: The kitchen area of every map features an unidentified mass that seems to grow from the ground. While it serves no purpose in the game beyond aesthetics, it certainly isn't nice to stand next to when it keeps making weird noises.
- Fat Bastard: The Lunch Lady is very fat, and has unpleasant intent in mind for you.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: With each notebook you collect, the ominous single chime of a bell can be heard ringing out.
- Frying Pan of Doom: The Lunch Lady wields one, and will proceed to bonk you over the head with it if she catches up to you.
- Gonk: The Lunch Lady is anything but attractive, being an obese woman with exaggerated facial features, yucky teeth, and an overall Brawn Hilda look.
- Gratuitous Japanese: If you look at the books on the Hibashi High School map, they all have Japanese covers, unlike the other maps where all of the covers are in English.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Whenever the Lunch Lady is close by, the sound of a beating heart can be heard. The sound gets louder the closer she is.
- Hell Is That Noise: The Nightmare High map incorporates very creepy sound effects to add to the atmosphere.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: There is absolutely no way to defend yourself against the Lunch Lady. Your only chance of survival is to run and hide.
- Icy Blue Eyes: The Lunch Lady has large blue eyes and is the antagonist.
- Infinite Flashlight: Your flashlights never seem to need new batteries.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: The maps for Cruxville Junior High and Higgins Swimming Hall have balconies which, realistically, the players would be able to climb over and jump from (and for the latter map, was an accidental feature until it was fixed in a later patch).
- Jump Scare: If the Lunch Lady catches you.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: A lot of doors in the school are locked, and you need to find keys to open them.
- Mighty Roar: The Lunch Lady will offer one if you collect enough sheets, or if you're fairly inactive for too long.
- Nothing Is Scarier: There is very little audio in the game, which adds to the creepy atmosphere. You can hear the wind howling outside when you're close to the edge of the building, the hum of flickering lights when you're standing beneath them, and the disgruntled grumblings of the Lunch Lady as she's patrolling the halls.
- One-Hit Kill: All it takes is for the Lunch Lady to hit you with her frying pan or cleaver, or being burnt by hot steam, to incapacitate you. If you or your teammate(s) aren't carrying a medkit, it's an instant game over.
- Phosphor-Essence: The Lunch Lady has a sickly orange glow at all times.
- This has since been changed to red.
- P.O.V. Cam: The game is played from the perspectives of the teenagers.
- "Psycho" Strings: Usually accompanies the Jump Scare when the Lunch Lady kills you, though it's hard to hear over her Mighty Roar.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: The outside area of Nightmare High has a hellish red skybox. Since it's possible for the player to go outside on this map, you can observe this fully rather than trying to look out of the windows.
- Steam Vent Obstacle: The Hard and Insane difficulty modes will include bursts of hot steam leaking from the yellow pipes throughout the different schools. Being hit by them will incapacitate you instantly, however the Lunch Lady is uneffected by them. The only way to stop them is to use the steam valves found in the various storerooms.
- Take Cover!: With the inclusion of the crouching feature, players can now hide behind desks and tables to better shield themselves from the Lunch Lady. Just as long as they're in the dark, of course.
- The Grim Reaper: If you look out of the open doors at the spawn point of the Nightmare High map, you can see the unmistakable figure of the Grim Reaper stood at the school gates, watching you.
- The Unblinking: The Lunch Lady's eyes are permanently widened.
- Unwinnable: Mostly with the multiplayer version.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Anyone who's hosting a multiplayer game with other players, if you've been knocked down and don't have a medkit, your game will be unwinnable if all of the other players exit. Doubly so if you're playing a private game so that no other players can join and save you later on.
- Unwinnable by Design: If players left the match after being knocked down, before they could be revived, it would cause an instant game over if someone else playing got knocked down, regardless of whether anyone was carrying a medkit; if you were still standing when the game over screen appeared under these conditions, the Lunch Lady could still get you if she saw you from Behind the Black. This has since been patched out as of August 2022.
- White and Red and Eerie All Over: The Lunch Lady wears a white dress that's splattered with what is presumed to be blood. She even wears matching boots.
- A Winner Is You: The only thing you get for an ending is a message that says "You escaped!" and how much time had elapsed when you played the game.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Lunch Lady would rather see you dead than escape with all of the answer sheets.
