Video Game / Mitadake High

Nail Bat. Hold It. Love it. [1]

"You are the killer! ... But don't tell anyone. You've killed one of the faculty members and left her body in the main courtyard, heh. Your role in this game is to kill every other player while surviving yourself; therefore, it isn't a great idea to tell everyone that you're the killer. Use your wits and various tools around the school to help in this goal."

Web-based multiplayer light-role-playing murder-mystery game that runs through the BYOND client. The game is similar to standard drama fare "Knives In The Dark": one player is the Killer (hereafter referred to in male terms) and must attempt to bury the unfortunates trapped with him before dawn. Alternative game modes include Death Note mode, in which one character ('Kira') spawns with a Death Note and another has the Shinigami Eyes, forcing the two to work together in order to kill everyone else; and Nanaya Mode, an out-and-out free-for-all. The reason for it being Mitadake "High" is because the default map takes place in a high school; an external map editor allows hosts to create additional maps to play on.

MH is heavily influenced by Higurashi: When They Cry, Death Note, and Tsukihime, with many shout outs to other anime in the bargain.

An updated version known as Pyrce High was created by Masterbraska in late 2011. The remake featured several new modes such as Zombie mode, Witch mode, Doppelganger mode and several others. At some point, a character maker was added to the game, allowing users to select their hairstyle and name, but this was poorly received as the color mixer meant all the hair colors were neon-bright and players would play as the same character every round. In the end, the game broke up due to internal drama with the staff and the userbase jumped ship to Misuterii High, which had just opened for alpha testing.

Misuterii High was created by Metafrosty at the end of 2013 with the intention of making a game that was more true to the original game. It was well received and updated quickly, making many improvements such as having the game run at a higher framerate so it wasn't as choppy as previous games, and adding pixel movement as opposed to grid based movement. Normal mode was given some upgrades with the randomly spawned Suspect and Accomplice roles to breath some freshness into the basic mode.The game also features a Death Note mode, an Umineko mode, a Shiki mode, a Madoka mode, a Tsukihime mode, and Psycho-Pass mode. Additionally, users can create their own custom modes using "Mystery Script", a language created for such a purpose which also functions with the map maker, allowing for much more intricate custom maps than before.

---

Mitadake High provides examples of:

• All According to Plan: A good Chess Master tend to do this.
• Alone with the Psycho: Inevitably happens when the players split up for either their own protection or as a way to find items. That nice student that offered to help you find weapons probably means to use them on you...
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Happens often in Zombie Mode when a student hasn't found a cure after having a dangerous confrontation with a zombie. This happens many, many times in Misuterii's Shiki Mode.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Alondite. Sure, it can attack from two spaces, but it doesn't even do as much damage as an axe, burns fatigue like nobody's business, and takes up a lot of inventory room. Newbies who rely on it too much have a tendency to get batted down, robbed, and killed. Not to mention the fact it's pretty heavy to carry making it almost impossible to run while holding it.
  • Also, there is the server setting that has each in-game hour last an actual Real Life hour. You can probably tell that it doesn't ever get used, since it completely removes the time limit tension that this game relies on.
• Axes at School: Knives can be found in students' desks, implying the more common way this trope plays out. Other weapons are found where they should be, at least on the default map - bats (wooden or metal) in the bat bin rooms, metal pipes in the basement, tasers in the teachers' desks etc.
  • Just remember that the Mitadake High default map is based off a Japanese high school, where it is pretty much very common for students to bring knives from home to use during lunch. This is because in Japan, students eat lunch in the classroom (which makes it more not accurate with the default map since it has a cafeteria).
  • Subverted when the mapmaker turns off weapons, leaving the people to wonder how the hell the teacher was murdered, and slowly go mad enough to kill themselves.
• Ax-Crazy: This happens a lot with bad roleplayers, especially in the RK-rounds.
• Badass Adorable: If someone's playing an obvious Kawaiiko and using complete sentences, chances are they're both a very good roleplayer and a very good player. Attack at your own risk.
• Badass Normal: Everyone, except from those with Death Notes, Shinigami Eyes or Mystic Eyes.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Sometimes the witch is a good guy... But then again they may be fooling you.
• Batman Gambit: Chessmasters love to do this at the end.
• Battle of Wits: Between the killer and the students.
• Batter Up!: Baseball bats are available weapons. They come in wooden, metal, and nailed variety.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The killer may be Affably Evil, and the perfectly normal student who only picked a weapon up to defend him/herself may be badass.
• BFG: The 7th Holy Scripture from Tsukihime sometimes spawns in-game. It is not technically a gun, mind you, but it's awesome nonetheless.
• BFS: Alondite, a weapon that can be found, can be one of the more effective melee weapons if you fight intelligently since it can hit from two squares away — though it's weaker than the axe and drains energy insanely quickly, so if you don't kill the opponent within the first few blows, you're in a lot of trouble since you can't run with it. Miss that swing and the victim will run away and probably get help.
• Big Damn Heroes: When you're at the mercy of the killer another student can always be your saving grace.
• A Bloody Mess: Bottles of ketchup can be used to make puddles of fake blood. Some people might dump loads of it onto the floor and make footprints from it just to confuse and freak other players out into thinking it is blood.
• Body Surf: The killer has a lot of fun in Doppleganger Mode by doing this.
• Breakable Weapons: Obvious Rule Patch to the previously mentioned GameBreakers below: the Baseball Bat and Alondite.
• Break the Cutie: Find a cutie. Attempt to kill said cutie, but fail. Cutie is now broken, if they're a decent RPer.
• Cast from Lifespan: In the Death Note Mode, the Shinigami/God Of Death can do this with Kira for the sum of Kira losing half of his/her game time. For example, if the in-game time is 10 (8 hours left), you'll die when there's 4 hours left.
• Catgirl: Strictly speaking, the game contains no sprites like this, but it's easy to RP as one if the server allows you to.
• The Chessmaster: Kira pretty much needs to be one of these in order to win.
• Chessmaster Sidekick: For Kira's side, the game is won or lost by the bearer of the Shinigami Eyes. A competent Eyes can usually meet up with Kira easily, barring the usual bad luck, stupid random attacks, or a Magnificent Bastard among the other students, while an idiot will get themselves killed or keep quiet the whole game. A good Kira can win without meeting the Eyes, but it's not easy.
• Closed Circle: The discovery of the dead teacher triggers security mechanisms locking all exits. It's still possible for a limited number of players to escape by finding one-use security cards, but for the most part, you're locked in with the killer.
• Cosplay: People like adding this to their character.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: If you really need to write something, being covered in blood works just as well as having a Mechanical Pencil in your inventory. Bizarrely, having a weapon that is covered in blood is not sufficient if you are not bloody yourself, nor can you ever carve your message into the paper with said weapon.
• Critical Existence Failure: You're fine as long as you still have a sliver of HP. Lose that sliver and you're instantly dead.
• Crazy Survivalist: It's not uncommon to walk into a random room, or especially the basement, and find a barricade, with one of these people on the inside.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Death by butterflies!
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Neither love nor money will save you if you are accused of being the Killer and the people playing are idiots.
  • Unless, of course, you're just that badass and can kill everyone yourself.
    • Also when you're alone with the witch and the witch does not feel generous.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Technically, any time Ramiel is beaten in combat. Defeating the Witch in battle will cause a similar response both from the other characters and the players.
• Driven to Suicide: Serious roleplayers will do this if their character and situation requests it. Others will do it if they have to go or are bored with the game.
• Easter Egg: Nanatsu Yoru and the 7th Holy Scripture from Tsukihime may randomly spawn.
• Face Stealer: This is the only way the doppelganger can change its form.
• FanWebComics: Mitadake Saga
• Gambit Pileup: If you're playing a game with several intelligent, witty players with well-thought-out plans, expect this to happen a lot. Especially in Death Note mode. Obviously averted in Nanaya Mode.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The taser bug. Tasing someone who's unconscious destroys their inventory; in the case of the holder of the Death Note, this means that there's no more Kira and the game might as well be rebooted.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The most common argument amongst players is where the line between good player and bad roleplayer (or the opposite) should be drawn.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Ramiel. Of course, he doesn't show up in every game.
• Glass Cannon: The Alondite. You have a supreme range advantage and above average power, but you're no tougher than any other student and you'll get tired much more easily.
• A God Am I:
  • Primarily occurs whenever Kira can form a cult in Death Note mode.
  • Also Judgement Mode mostly consist of this.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: You think you know who the killer is? Great, go hunt them down... oh, look, the REAL killer got to them first. That sound is your brain breaking. In-Character, of course.
  • On the other hand, a player may have tons of evidence against someone being the killer, and decide to just outright kill them and explain when they have time. By the time you find this out, the person who found it all is already dead.
    • Can even be worse if the said person who was murdered turned out to not be the killer!
• Grand Theft Me: The special power of the killer in Doppleganger Mode.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Startlingly common among the roleplayers of this game.
• High School: The game is set in one by default, unless you are playing on a custom map which isn't one.
• Hit Points: Measured by a Life Meter, naturally.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: The students can always hunt down the killer, if they are better armed of course.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: You are hunting the Killer. The Killer is hunting you.
• I Know You Know I Know: Experienced players tend to do this with PDA Numbers in Death Note mode: being able to instantly contact your allies is fantastic, but there's the danger that one of them is Kira and could ID you through the school's database (assuming the host hasn't disabled computers due to abuse). If you can grab a PDA off a corpse, you're all set.
• Idiot Ball: A great number of games have been lost simply by Kira or the Killer getting a little too overconfident or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or occasionally, a paranoid idiot just getting lucky and killing the right person.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Sometimes players will try to trap the killer rather than kill him in order to avoid this. A good killer can use this to convince them to kill each other. Occasionally taken literally in Death Note mode - if someone kills Kira, the killer will (usually) pick up the Death Note and assume his role.
• The Last Dance: The killer has everyone against you as well as around you, ready to kill you. What are you going to do?.....GO OUT LIKE A BADASS!
• Lethal Joke Item: Wooden weapons. Even after the update that made them Breakable Weapons. It now takes a lot more technique to use wooden weapons than it used to, but they're still wonderful for punishing heavily-armed newbies.
• I Lied: Lots of this due to the nature of the game.
• Madness Mantra: Verbal and written, sometimes both at once.
• Magical Eyes: One player always spawns with the Shinigami Eyes in Death Note mode, and players have a (bizarrely high) chance of spawning with them in Normal Mode, as well as a chance of spawning with the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. Or both at once. It's happened.
• Magnificent Bastard: Some Kiras take extreme joy in invoking this trope, and a good Kira or Eyes player usually either is or becomes one, especially if Kira is clearly manipulating the Eyes player to do his bidding.
  • Bonus points for writing your own name in the Death Note set for a time past the end of the game (say, 7:00 AM) and then giving it to your Eyes and spending the rest of the round skulking while they kill everyone, since now they can't backstab you and write your own name in.
• Manipulative Bastard: Many killers pull this one.
• Mêlée à Trois: Make a few wild accusations. The players will immediately divide into those who believe you, those who don't believe you, and the real killer.
• Mind Rape: Could happen in any mode, but Misuterii's Umineko Mode almost relies entirely on this.
• The Mole: In a good-sized game, someone besides Eyes will be helping Kira. Unless they're not. But if they're good, you can never tell if they're one or the other. Often, they themselves haven't decided who they're really working for until the crunch comes, and many will prepare for either outcome.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: This can easily occur in Death Note mode if Kira is a sadistic prick or simply cannot worm their way out of the oncoming storm. As Kira, take your Death Note, hide it somewhere the Eyes will find it, fake your own death, and hide. The Eyes will gladly kill off the other players for you, only to find that you've written their name in the back of the book for 5:00 AM. Savvy tropers will note that this is a fair recreation of the actual plot of Death Note.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Back when the game was a more cerebral experience, the announcement of certain players to play certain modes often triggered a mass exodus from the server.
  • Others give themselves screennames that sound menacing, such as Yandere.
  • When the update that allowed players to choose their own names and sprites was published, others would give their characters names that were Shout Outs to dangerous characters in other media (such as the last name Yagami.
• Never Split the Party: You go it alone, and the killer will find you. Of course, if your "teammate" is the killer, you're screwed anyway.
• Ninja Looting: If you can justify it, an art form and a masterstroke RP. If not, you will be yelled at, insulted, and despised. Either way, a valid game tactic. Particularly if, as the Eyes, you loot a KO'd Kira.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • People who get the role of Kira have a tendency to rush to the office, check the student records, and write every name into the Note, defeating the purpose of having several dozen extra names. Now the host has the option to disable computers completely.
  • The security tapes seemed like a good idea when the game was starting out, but now that everyone and their mother knows how to rush the tapes in twenty seconds flat, a toggle was put in to disable them. Only after this toggle was put in did it become well-known that the tapes often lie.
  • Due in part to This Very Wiki listing them as Game Breakers, it became the default combat strategy for a while to get a bokken or a wooden bat as quickly as possible. Now they break and become useless after a number of hits.
• One-Man Army: Most of the time, the killer must try to manipulate the other players into killing each other. But not always. There have been examples of some clever masters of the combat system defeating as many as six enemies. At the same time. In extreme cases, two of these may meet and keep on fighting for the whole round.
• The Plan: Pretty much required for Kira or the Killer, sometimes turns into a Gambit Roulette.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Every round starts with the discovery of a dead teacher, triggering security mechanisms locking everyone inside until authorities arrive.
• Poor Communication Kills: Boy does it ever.
• Powder Keg Crowd: Inevitable. If you know which way the crowd will go when it goes off, you will win. If not, you will die.
• Refuge in Audacity: Nobody will kill you if you explicitly tell them you are Kira.
• Shout-Out:
  • There are posters up all over the walls promoting Tsukihime, Melty Blood, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Orange-kun's fully upgraded form and the like.
  • The blatantly-titled Death Note game mode.
  • The help file has commentary from Neco-Arc.
  • Some of the arsenal in the game include a billhooked cleaver, a steel baseball bat, a taser, the Death Note itself, Alondite, and the 7th Holy Scripture.
  • There's also an item called a Mystia Coin, that lets you see in the dark.
  • Sometimes, Ramiel randomly attacks the school (unless the host spawns him/them).
  • The page image, which displays before the game starts, is a Higurashi: When They Cry shout-out. Most of the character sprites are Higurashi characters, as well.
  • You can always play a Shout-Out of your own. This became much easier in Pyrce after the update allows you to choose your own name and sprite.
  • In Misuterii, there is something called Rending Scissor Blade that one can make with the right materials.
• Spanner in the Works: Almost everyone who has been Kira or the Killer has constructed a brilliant plan only to have one person completely ruin it, often without realization.
• Spiritual Successor: to Space Station 13.
  • Has its own in Pyrce High, which is even based on its code.
• Sprint Meter: Which is drained by using (or being hit by wooden) weapons and running. When the meter runs to 0% or below, your character faints for a short while.
• The Starscream: Many Eyes players turn on Kira at the first opportunity and steal the Note for themselves.
• Sunglasses at Night: While you are inside a building with lights the entire game, the lights can be switched off.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Yes, you are. Bad RPers and good RPers RPing as idiots. It's not unheard of for people to call the trope by name both in- and out of character.

• There Can Be Only One: "Warning: Nanaya test sequences about to begin. Any staff still present in the building should vacate immediately. For test subjects in the building, your purpose is simple; if you wish to become the new 'Nanaya', or simply wish to live, kill everyone but yourself. That is all."
• Unwitting Pawn: You have no idea. Especially likely to happen when there's a personal relationship between the two players.
• Video Game Caring Potential: The killer has a tendency to choose one student (of their preferred gender) and spare them. This doesn't always happen, mind you, but more often than you'd think.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Again, with real people, far more common than the trope above.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Some killers will say that their (dead) victim attacked them first when another student asks about their bloody clothes.
  • Some have gone so far as to accuse someone who never touched them in the first place. Of course, this is easier to do after dousing yourself and a suitable area in ketchup first, as long as you go undetected.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: When Kira gets killed, it's extremely common to see another player take up the Note and become the next Kira. Sometimes invoked when Kira's player has things to do in the real world.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Zombie Mode, apart from the rounds when nobody is turned before the original zombie is dead.

---