Counterclockwise from left to right: Joanna Gillespe, Anna Barton, Donna VanTassel, Patricia Dahl, Ida Bainbridge, Suzanne Francis, Daisy Thorton... and the Director herself, Josephine Violante, looming ominously in the background.
Ms. Director is an indie Horror Comedy puzzle adventure game created by Sketchy Nonsense in RPG Maker VX Ace, and released on itch.io
on October 20th, 2020 and officially on Steam on May 18th, 2021. A free demo is available on itch.
Hollywood, 1937. Patricia Dahl is a desperate actress, having lost her career in the wake of The Hays Code's harsh restrictions on the film industry. Her only hope now is a suspicious audition being held by offputting director Josephine Violante, at night, in a creepy mansion, in the middle of nowhere.... surely nothing will go wrong, right?
As it becomes quickly apparent, she was never intended to leave alive, and her only chance at escape is to help the restless spirits of the Director's previous victims. Luckily, she soon meets up with Ida Bainbridge, a ghostly Hardboiled Detective, and the two decide to work together to escape, bonding in the process.
A sequel is in the works, planned as a point-and-click adventure game, this time in Unity rather than RPGMaker.
Ms. Director contains examples of:
- All in a Row: Once Ida joins the party, she follows behind Patty wherever she goes. The player can't talk to her except by examining objects she will comment on.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: Examining all the sofa cushions during Joanna's investigation sequence earns you a quarter. This does absolutely nothing besides take up space in your inventory.
- Animated Actors: The Developer's Afterparty plays with this concept, with the characters breaking the fourth wall to comment on how well they played their roles.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The cute art style is meant to emulate theatrical cartoons of the 1920s and 30s. This is also a game featuring violent serial killers, cults, humanoid abominations, and gruesome deaths.
- Backtracking: Necessary to solve many puzzles. For example, backtracking to Room 2 to retrieve wine for Anna, backtracking to the Prop Storage to find a board to cross the gap in the Ballroom, or backtracking to the Music Room to find Joanna's cause of death.
- The Big Damn Kiss: If you manage to fulfill certain conditions before the very last ending sequence, Patty kisses Ida after she reveals she defied the Director's orders in order to save Patty's life.
- Big Fancy House: The Violante mansion, where Josephine grew up. Among the various rooms necessary to progress the game, there is also a swimming pool and a conservatory, for no other reason than to show this is a massive rich person's mansion (and as a Shout-Out to Clue). In the intro cutscene, Patty notes that Josephine seems incredible wealthy for an unknown up-and-coming director.
- Bittersweet Ending: Ending 2. Josephine is defeated, but Ida passes on to the next life, leaving Patty alone.
- Blackout Basement: Occurs twice; in the wine cellar, in which Patty must avoid making noise while fixing the fusebox, and in the basement, where Patty must find her way through a dark maze to reach the Director's office.
- Book Ends: The beginning and one of the variants of Ending 1 both involve a monster coming out of a mirror to attack Patty.
- Bookcase Passage: The first "puzzle" in the game involves opening one of these to escape the room Patty wakes up locked inside, although the phone operator ghost outright tells her the answer.
- Cast Full of Gay: Every character is some flavour of lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, or otherwise sapphic, and a few are also trans/nonbinary.
- Closed Circle: The entire game takes place within a locked mansion, with the player needing to find the front door key to escape.
- Creepy Basement: The Wine Cellar and the Basement, both of which are dark, winding mazes hiding monsters and other unnerving secrets.
- Cute Ghost Girl: A whole 11 of them, in fact. Although some might object to being called "cute".
- Developer's Room: Accessible after the credits of the best ending.
- Difficulty Levels: Added in a later update, "Safe Mode" reduces monsters' speed, making chase sequences much easier, and one puzzle is skipped entirely. This can be disabled once the game starts, but in order to reactivate it, the player must find another "Safe Mode" doll.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Josephine murdered Joanna because she was an obnoxious primadonna who was difficult to work with and wouldn't stop ranting about her ex.
- Downer Ending: Endings 1 and 5. In ending 1, Patty's relationship with Ida is shattered, Patty is killed by monsters, and in the variant where Ida's film reel has been watched, Ida comes to take her revenge herself, apparently having been merged with her own corpse to create a conscious zombie. In ending 5, Patty gets caught by monsters as she is about to leave the mansion, is separated from Ida, and lobotomized by Josephine to create a living puppet. In both cases, The Bad Guy Wins.
- Enforced Method Acting: In-universe, when confronted in the endgame Josephine claims this is what she has been doing, needing the illusion of real danger to get real terror out of Patty.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: One of the final action sequences just before the main climax; Patty drops a chandelier on the monster pursuing her.
- Game Over: There is no shortage of ways to die to the various monsters in the mansion. Fortunately there are also plenty of save spots.
- Golden Ending: Ending 4, which can only be achieved by winning Ida's trust and helping all the ghosts, and is unambiguously the happiest.
- Gory Discretion Shot: For the most part, deaths and game overs are a simple cut-to-black.
- Haunted House: Patty is trapped in Josephine's mansion full of ghosts and zombies, both created from the Director's previous victims.
- Hint System: The ghost who resides in a portrait on the top floor will dispense hints as needed. She also serves as a shortcut between the top and bottom floors.
- Horror Comedy: Despite the premise of an actress trying to escape a Haunted House and avoid becoming the star of a Snuff Film, the game is rather lighthearted in tone with plenty of comical character interactions between Patricia and the spirits. It only gets dark and serious when the titular murderous Director or her monstrous creations enter the picture.
- Joke Item: If the player checks all the sofa cushions during Joanna's investigation sequence, they find a quarter. This is absolutely useless and serves no purpose other than as a "you checked all the cushions" reward.
- Kill the Lights: Watching the reel labelled with Ida's name shows her, still alive, searching Anna's room before getting locked inside as the lights shut off. Ida stops the reel from playing any further.
- Last-Second Ending Choice: While the three mediocre/good/best endings depend on player choices throughout the game, the two bad endings are always available from two bad choices during the final sequence.
- Multiple Endings: Five in total, each with their own name and ending card. There are a few variations depending on what the player did, but they are not considered separate enough to get their own titles.
- Neglected Sidequest Consequence: You can still reach the end while ignoring the optional ghosts, but Doris and Madeline must he helped in order to achieve the best ending. If you neglect their sidestories until Ida and Suzy get kidnapped, you're too late.
- Notice This: Important items are often colored some shade of red against the grayscale environment.
- Off with His Head!: In the final puzzle area of the game, there is a guillotine in a closet with a key on the other side. Choosing to place your head through the head-hole ends about as well as you'd expect.
- Ominous Music Box Tune: The music box in Josephine's Room plays The Hearse Song.
- Ominous Save Prompt: At certain times, the phones will greet you with either uncomfortable silence, or a very worrying statement from the operator on the other side. Eventually, the Director herself can be heard arguing with the operator, and later takes her place in order to taunt you - though she'll still save your game afterwards.
- One-Hit Kill: There are no health bars in this game. Get caught by a monster, and you die instantly.
- Ouija Board: One lies conspicuously on the table of the former maid's room; the player must use it to contact her ghost.
- Period Piece: Set in 1937, the game stays true to many aspects of the era, including homophobia and the impact of the Hays Code on Hollywood and the queer actresses working there.
- Point of No Return: The game politely informs you when you're about to enter the room after which you cannot make any progress towards the best ending.
- Relationship Values: While it is not as important to the ending as some other choices, the game keeps track of how often you examine objects with Ida in your party, and you need a certain amount of interactions with her to achieve the best ending.
- Reel Torture: Poor Anna's ghost is confined to the Screening Room, where there is nothing else to do but watch Josephine's terrible, terrible films.
- Run or Die: When faced with a monster, your only choices are "run" or "hide". If you get caught, it's game over.
- Save Point: The ghost of the phone operator serves as this whenever you call her to update her on your activities; she "saves" your "file" by literally taking notes about what you have done so far, "in case they are useful later".
- Secret Character: Nora, the musician, can only be found hiding in the music room at the very end of the game, after Ida and Suzy have gone missing. She explains that Josephine doesn't know she exists and has been hiding in the walls throughout the entire game.
- Snuff Film: Revealed as the Director's true business model.
- Story Difficulty Setting: The "Safe Mode" was implemented partially so that players seeking different endings would have an easier time replaying multiple times.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Ida the tomboy and Patty the girly girl.
- Trap Is the Only Option: The puzzle in Room 2. The only way to advance to the bottom floor is to pull the book labelled "Trapfinding for the Unobservant" and fall through a trapdoor.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: The worst ending is earned by betraying Ida's trust by accepting a bribe from Josephine at the last moment. It is possible to do this even after kissing Ida, showing that you trust her after she defied Josephine.
- Weather Report Opening: True to its Noir inspirations, the opening narration comments that clouds are threatening to rain.
