The series was released in the following order:
- Nightfall Mysteries: Curse of the Opera: You're a lowly stagehand in an opera troupe, heading to an isolated village to perform an opera for a wealthy client, Count Vladd Vansig. As an unseen murderer begins to pick off the members of the troupe and the fog closes in, the Stagehand must solve the deadly mystery behind the murders cursing the opera.
- Nightfall Mysteries: Asylum Conspiracy: The player controls Christine, a young woman who has received a letter from her grandfather asking to rescue him from the long-defunct Ashburg Asylum. After arriving on the island and meeting a lone, disturbed patient, she's drawn into a mysterious conspiracy involving her family and her grandfather's disappearence.
- Nightfall Mysteries: Black Heart
- Nightfall Mysteries: Haunted by the Past
Nightfall Mysteries is haunted by these tropes:
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Nightfall Mysteries: Curse of the Opera
- Asshole Victim: Hilda, Tiberius, and Count Vladd all participated in the murder of Carolina's family, the former two out of a desire for prestige and the latter to ensure the troupe's loyalty to him. It's rather more debatable with the other victims.
- Automobile Opening: The game begins with the stagehand's vehicle driving to the village before an accident abruptly happens due to the Stagehand falling asleep at the wheel.
- Bastard Angst: Vincent was born out of wedlock and heavily mistreated by his father, Count Vladd; after witnessing the fallout between his parents, Vladd sold him to a band of Romani. This weighs quite heavily upon him and is one of the reasons he became a murderer.
- Best Served Cold: Charles, Carolina, and Vincent decide to get revenge on Opera Etoiles for how they ruined their lives when Carolina and Vincent were children. Bonus points in that Hilda and Tiberius end up freezing to death.
- Big Eater: Deconstructed. Hilda's old room shows loads of food, some rotten or uneaten, along with the scratched message "I CAN'T STOP EATING", painting a rather sad and disturbing picture on the caricature she's based on.
- Cut Phone Lines: The stagehand discovers the village's phone lines have been cut after attempting to use the phone booth to call for help; coupled with the Broken Bridge and long distance to any other town, this essentially strands the troupe in the village.
- Death by Irony: Tiberius and Hilda murdered Carolina's parents by setting their house on fire; they both end up being trapped in freezing cold locations and left to die.
- Developing Doomed Characters: After arriving at the village, the players get to know the characters involved before they get picked off by the killer.
- Destructive Romance: Vincent's father, Count Vladd, and his mother, a servant, had a relationship that led to his birth. However, whatever love they had faded and became destructive to the point Vladd had the servant thrown out and did worse with his son.
- Downer Ending: Carolina, Vincent and Charles get away with their crimes and the stagehand will be unable to reveal the truth about it because Vincent hypnotizes them to forget that it transpired.
- Driven to Suicide: Carolina is last seen by the stagehand throwing herself off a cliff to her death. Turns out, she's actually alive and one of the conspirators to murder.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": All the characters refer to the player as 'Stagehand'.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: Leonardo dies while investigating the church, as the chandelier is abruptly dropped on him by an unseen figure.
- Foreshadowing: Vincent monologues a tale how one can tell that demons are afoot because their blood is 15 degrees colder than humans. It's later revealed that he helped kill Hilda and Tiberius by freezing them to death.
- Gasoline Dousing: Vladd, Tiberius and Hilda killed the original owner and lead singer of the opera (Carolina's parents) by dousing their house with petrol as they slept, then setting the place alight. Carolina only survived due to Charles' intervention.
- Ghost Town: There isn't anyone living in the village the opera company arrives at.
- Hanging Around: Giles' body is found strung up from a dozen cables after the Stagehand returns with the pliers, though it's unclear as to whether this was post-mortem or not.
- Hypno Pendulum: Vincent uses a pocket watch to hypnotize the stagehand into forgetting the events that transpired.
- I Was Quite a Looker: An old picture of Hilda showed she used to be skinny and beautiful. Her room indicates this was likely the result of her (possibly pathological) Big Eater tendencies.
- Kill the Lights: Just when things couldn't get worse, the lights at the inn go out and Carolina is apparently kidnapped.
- Locked in a Freezer: Hilda is locked inside the Ice House and freezes to death before the Stagehand can find a way in. Tiberius similarly bites it by being locked in the butcher shop's freezer until he dies.
- Patricide: Given Vincent was in on the revenge plot and had familial connection to Vladd all along, it's safe to say he killed his father.
- The Prima Donna: Hilda is arrogant and demanding in the extreme, considering herself the star of the show and reacting angrily to anything that might threaten that status. Her reaction to Abigal's murder isn't horror or fear, but rather anger that there's no-one to do her makeup for the upcoming opera.
- Revenge: Carolina, Vincent and Charles' motivation for murdering the members of the opera company (and Vladd Vansig) is revenge for the murder of Carolina's parents, the former owners and stars of the troupe.
- Skewed Priorities: Members of the opera company are being picked off one by one, and Hilda is more worried about not being able to get ready for her performance.
- Tap on the Head: After discovering Tiberius' frozen body, the stagehand is knocked out from behind by someone.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Abigail is the first victim, getting in only a few lines before being murdered.
Nightfall Mysteries: Asylum Conspiracy
- Bedlam House: Ashburg Asylum is an old, crumbling asylum run by a Mad Scientist who happily uses the patients as guinea pigs for his own gain.
- Butter Face: Victor has some nasty skin issues under his surgical mask, with sections of his skin peeling away to reveal diseased-looking flesh beneath.
- Continuity Snarl: The game is supposedly a Stealth Prequel to Curse of the Opera, but the flashback in Curse of the Opera shows that Viggo and Christine met as children instead of the adults they are now.
- Dartboard of Hate: The end has a variant where a picture of Opera Etoiles has scribbles over the faces of the people who murdered Chistine's parents.
- Dead Man Writing: The final tape from Detective Thomas' wife has her acknowledge that she's likely going to die soon, now that Victor knows she's onto him.
- Destination Defenestration: Viggo's introduction to Christine after arriving at the asylum involves him crashing through a window, then sprinting franticly away from the asylum to find shelter.
- Dramatic Irony: One of Viggo's tapes has him arriving at the Asylum, expressing excitement at the idea of meeting Victor, his half-brother. By this point in time, of course, both Viggo and the player know that Victor's a Mad Scientist who's been torturing his half-brother as part of his experiments.
- Foreshadowing: A subtle hint of Christine being Carolina is that Christine is named after Christine Daae from Phantom of the Opera.
- He Knows Too Much: Victor murdered Detective Thomas's wife sometime prior to the asylum's shutdown after realising she was putting the pieces.
- Mad Scientist: Victor has been experimenting on Ashburg Asylum's prisoners for years to try and perfect the cure for his "curse."
- Never Grew Up: Alice has a condition that caused her physical growth to stop at the age of eleven, though her mind's that of an adult. This is one of the driving forces of the plot, as she and her older brother want to find a cure while Victor sees only her value as a test subject.
- Older Than They Look: Alice is at least twenty-one years old, but she looks no older than eleven due to a genetic condition that's essentially caused her to stop aging. This is a source of significant angst for her, and one of the main reasons for Victor's interest in her.
- Reluctant Mad Scientist: Alan, who only accepted work with Victor in hopes of finding a cure for his sister's disorder. He's horrified by Victor's torturous experiments on Viggo, and is indicated to have let him out of his cell repeatedly; many of his tapes also express misgivings about beginning to work with Victor to cure his sister.
- The Reveal: Christine and Viggo are Carolina and Vincent from Curse of the Opera, with the entire game serving as a prequel to that game.
- Sequel Hook: Inverted. The ending reveals the game to be a prequel to Curse of the Opera, with the very last tape being a recording of Count Vansig gloating over his apparent victory ahead of the opera coming to perform for him.
- Stealth Prequel: The game is one from Curse of the Opera with Christine and Viggo becoming Carolina and Vincent.
Nightfall Mysteries: Black Heart
- Continuity Nod: The player character is the old stagehand from Curse of the Opera.
- Gem Heart: A red heart becomes the hint system for the game.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The game already assumes you know that Carolina and Vincent's names were actually Christine and Viggo and that Vincent/Viggo is the son of Count Vladd Vansig.
- Royally Screwed Up: The Vansig has apparently been a screwy family due to their macabre interest in demons and dark magic.
- Something about a Rose: Many of the frames used to zoom in on areas/gather items are covered in red roses.
Nightfall Mysteries: Haunted by the Past
