"Yaaaaaaawn! What a happy morning for me, Parsnip Bunner!"
Parsnip is a short but sweet character-oriented Point-and-Click Adventure Game released in 2018. The player follows the titular character Parsnip Bunner on his quest to acquire ingredients with which to bake a cake for breakfast. As he has no time to visit the shops on this particular day, he must consult his neighbors for help. Along the way, the player may discover that things aren't as idealistic in the neighborhood as they may first appear to be.
The game may be downloaded for free here
. Parsnip was followed up with a paid-for sequel some months later titled The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith, which can be found here, and takes on the style of a Visual Novel while maintaining many of the themes found in the original. (Trixie herself became something of a Breakout Character, going on to appear in several other games.)
Parsnip provides examples of the following tropes:
- The Alcoholic: LeRose is always seen routinely taking a swig from a bottle of wine. When Parsnip enters her home in search of candles, one of the tabs on her laptop asks if 24 bottles of alcohol is sufficient for lunch. The sequel reveals that at least part of the source of this is her job as an art teacher for kindergartners.
- Anyone Can Die: Once Parsnip has completed his cake, the player is given the option to share it with the neighborhood. As the cake is contaminated with paint and dirt, anyone who Parsnip shares a slice with will die.
- Apocalypse How: The worst ending seems to describe an instance of Class 4, in which "The world was overrun, and all life perished".
- Arc Symbol: A stylised drawing of an eye. Otherwise known as the Yellow Sign.
- Body Horror: The yellow signs detail horrifying experiences had by whoever left them, such as the snapping of their sinew and breaking of their bones, and makes mention of them receiving "new legs" and hooves.
- Butch Lesbian: Bell the milkwoman is a slacker who wears a fairly masculine outfit and spends all her time leaning on walls reading a magazine called Milk Jugs "for the articles".
- Campbell Country: Of the actual Ramsey Campbell variety. The entire game takes place in a quintessentially English rural road between a farm and a forest, populated by all of four houses and a tree. But one of the houses contains a cultist of the King in Yellow.
- Cloudcuckoolander:
- Parsnip certainly qualifies, given his especially childish nature.
- The Magnificent Magpie is another example, considering themselves the ruler of "all these lands", as put by Parsnip, as well as speaking exclusively in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.
- Cosmic Horror Reveal: It gradually becomes clear that an Eldritch Abomination — none other than Hastur himself, or at least The King in Yellow — is the Greater-Scope Villain of the setting.
- Drone of Dread: The only kind of soundtrack in the game is a low-pitched droning noise heard when Parsnip stands near the cultist's house.
- Eldritch Abomination: The King in Yellow (frequently considered to be the same entity as Hastur of the Cthulhu Mythos) is all but mentioned by name by both the yellow signs scattered throughout the neighborhood and, at times, The Magnificent Magpie.
- Foreshadowing: The four eyes depicted on one of LeRose's paintings foreshadow the yellow signs, and by extension the significance of the King associated with them.
- Free-Range Children: Squirrel Girl's parents have apparently gone "on holiday" without her, and left her on her own in the house to fend for herself. The sequel implies that actually they were murdered by the cultist in the boarded-up house.
- Full-Name Basis: The cultist always refers to Parsnip as "Parsnip Bunner".
- Furry Confusion: Despite the setting taking place in a World of Funny Animals, the sheep encountered in the game are all non-sentient farm animals from which everyone gets their milk. Except for one in particular.
- Gender-Inclusive Writing: The game's dialogue goes out of its way to avoid referring to The Magnificent Magpie with any gender-specific pronoun during interactions with them. Most likely, they are non-binary, but given Parsnip's personality it's entirely possible he just doesn't know. The artbook PDF further supports this, stating their gender as "Bird".
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Seems to happen to the victim behind the yellow signs.
- Hell Is That Noise: The game is notably devoid of background noise or music unless the player approaches the house at the end of the street, where a persistent droning noise is heard as long as Parsnip remains near it.
- In Touch with His Feminine Side: As a Type 2, Parsnip can easily be mistaken for a girl due to his feminine mannerisms and way of dressing, even carrying a purse over his shoulder.
- Insect Gender-Bender: Parsnip calls the bee "Mister" and the bee doesn't say otherwise.
- Keet: Parsnip is undoubtedly the most energetic and talkative character in the game, and backs it up with a cutesy and feminine exterior.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: After scaring LeRose indoors, Parsnip happily follows behind her to steal candles from her bathroom while she bathes.
- Lethal Chef: At the end of the game, you have the option to share Parsnip's cake with the other villagers. Anyone who takes a slice will die.
- Manchild: As noted above, Parsnip's behavior and understanding of things around him are particularly childish. However, despite his short stature and "soft" style of dress, Squirrel Girl refers to him as "old man", coupled with the fact that he's apparently old enough to own a house. He relentlessly pesters his neighbors without an understanding of boundaries, avoids the internet entirely out of a fear of cyberbullying, and handles knives in a, shall we say, playful manner, among many other things. LeRose outright refuses to lend him candles because she doesn't trust him with anything involving fire, and why he needs the candles in the first place is also the result of his behavior.Parsnip, observing a painting of a bottle of wine: "Wow! A bottle of juice! It's like looking at a photograph!"
- May I Borrow a Cup of Sugar?: The main objective of the game is to help Parsnip borrow a variety of ingredients from his neighbors, which is used to characterize each of the neighborhood's inhabitants and set up a plot thread behind the scenes.
- Mood Whiplash: After the text of each yellow sign finishes scrolling, the game abruptly returns to Parsnip behaving as his usual self. He doesn't even initially react after reading the first one.
- Noodle Incident:
- Parsnip apparently cannot be trusted with knives after "the incident". What this is is never expanded upon, though one may consider Parsnip offhandedly remarking that "friends could get hurt" when referring to a knife as a hint.
- Parsnip's first attempt at roller-skating ended with seven people plus himself getting hospitalized.
- Overly Long Name: As seen by the deed of ownership on his house, the protagonist's full name is apparently Parsnip Muffin Coco Cornflakes Pancake Sandy Plum Toffee Banoffee Marzipan Charlie Bunt Bunter Chestnut Mooncake Bunner.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Downplayed with Parsnip, who isn't a villain but has a few deeply unsettling qualities mixed in which his childish innocence. Showing the knife to people causes him to brandish it while yelling "Swish! Stab!", making most character nervous. He sees nothing wrong with inviting himself into someone's house while they're in the shower. And then there's the painting he makes of himself and LeRose, which is apparently so disturbing that the game itself pixellates it out, with the reactions of anyone you show it to being varying states of horror - except for the mutant cultist in the last house. Showing it to the underage Squirrel Girl provokes the response "I'm calling the police", while showing it to LeRose herself causes her to feel a need to "cleanse myself of this sin". In general, the Squirrel Girl and LeRose consistently find Parsnip freaky at best, frightening at worst.
- Ship Tease: Parsnip's painting, which is pixelated, said to depict both LeRose and he, and is considered perturbing enough to LeRose that she feels a need to bathe after seeing it.
- The Slacker: Bell the milkwoman is a rare female example, often coming up with excuses to avoid doing work and read her magazine in peace. Her Establishing Character Moment has Bell asking Parsnip to shoo a sheep off the road, despite being fully capable of doing it herself.
- Smoking Is Cool: Averted. While interacting with LeRose, who carries a cigarette in one paw, Parsnip may outright remark that "smoking isn't cool".
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When looking at the deed in Parsnip's house, he'll proudly say it is proof that he didn't steal the house. After a small pause he asserts again that he did not steal it.
- Sweet Tooth:
- If Squirrel Girl isn't seen playing video games, she's seen shovelling chocolates into her mouth by the handful. In either case, she's got more chocolates and a lollipop stuck to her tail. Squirrel Girl remarks that with her parents away, all that's left in the house to eat are chocolates and frozen chips (fries), but she is unaware of how to work the oven.
- Parsnip himself seems to only eat cake.
- Thieving Magpie: The Magnificent Magpie hoards many shiny objects in their nest and tree, including a knife.
- Transformation Horror: Interacting with the Yellow Signs allows glimpses of the memories of the half-sheep cultist being painfully reshaped into their current form by the will of the King in Yellow. It's not entirely clear whether the memories depict a sheep being granted sentience and twisted into an upright, humanoid form, or some sentient humanoid animal being twisted into a sheep.
- Uncertain Doom: In all but the worst ending, Parsnip's fate after eating the cake that kills any other character he shares it with is totally unknown. The events of the sequel imply that Parsnip happily survives eating his own cake, possibly as a result of Acquired Poison Immunity from his history of spilling paint into his own cooking.
- Unknown Character: The King in Yellow.
- Uplifted Animal: The shifty neighbor living in the boarded-up house is actually one of the many domesticated sheep Parsnip encounters, who has been granted sentience by The King in Yellow, and plans to do the same to their unenlightened brethren via ritual sacrifice in order to amass a horde and start the Apocalypse.
- Wine Is Classy: Appropriately for her image as a sophisticated, avant-garde artist, LeRose is never seen drinking anything other than wine.
- Verbal Tic: The Magnificent Magpie occasionally intersperses their dialogue with two loud squawks that cause their speech bubble to shake.
- Wall of Text: LeRose gives one when attempting to explain her art to Parsnip, flowing past the bubble and all the way to the ground. He doesn't understand a word of it, but she probably didn't intend him to.
- Would Hurt a Child: While Parsnip's behavior is quite eccentric, he seems (mostly) harmless. The resident at the end of the street, however, has no qualms with kidnapping a child to use as a sacrifice.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Magnificent Magpie speaks exclusively in this as part of their royal persona.
