"Gotta eat 'em all!"
Pokemon Snakewood is a Game Mod that's, in essence, Pokemon Ruby IN A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!
Your hero (or heroine) wakes up in the ruins of Littleroot Town with a bad case of amnesia. After retrieving a Poke Ball from the wreckage of the lab, you find Professor Birch being attacked by a strange creature that doesn't seem like an ordinary Pokemon... The grateful professor promptly fills you in, and sends you off after your older brother, who's looking for a way to stop the apocalypse.
While obviously Darker and Edgier, Snakewood keeps a very dark sense of humor throughout the story, never quite taking itself too seriously. Its clichés are constantly Lampshaded to the point where it's clearly Better than a Bare Bulb.
This Pokémon Game Mod contains examples of:
- Amnesiac Hero: You start the game knowing nothing about your own past or the zombie apocalypse that's now ravaging the land of Hoenn, leaving Professor Birch to fill you in initially.
- Exploited by the Horsemen, who take the opportunity to plant false flashbacks in your mind to string you along and eventually lure you to your death (unsuccessfully).
- Beef Gate: An early release of the hack had a portal in Petalburg City that transported you all the way to Route 121, where you could catch certain Pokemon well before you should have been able to. The downside is that the trainers were also too powerful to overcome at that point in the game, restricting you to that one area. Later releases have taken out this portal, however.
- Better than a Bare Bulb: The game never takes itself too seriously, and mocks some of the cliches that pop up.
- Big Bad: It's kinda ambiguous at first. At first, Meteor seems to be the villain. Then they make it seem its the Four Horsemen. Then when you first reach Lilycove, the Inquisition's leader, Chloe, seems to take that position. But after you beat the Champion, Senex seems to take over as Big Bad, with his two Dragons finally trying to get their hands dirty.
- Big Damn Heroes: When Misery fights the Inquisition at Lilycove, they are ambushed by Chloe, two Inquisition Footsoldiers, and two Zombies, but just when it seems like the protagonist is gonna lose, two Dragons show up and eat both the Footsoldiers and the Zombies.
- Black Comedy: Aside from the obvious, the game also occasionally takes the time to gruesomely describe the things that have been done to random corpses you can find and loot in the various houses, for no other reason than this.
- Bloodier and Gorier: The original games were rated E for everyone. This mod, on the other hand, contains gory text descriptions of corpses and several bloody sprites, most notably the zombie form of Muk being made of blood.
- Boss Rush: Your faceoff against the Deadly Seven before you enter Lilycove is the biggest one yet. You have to fight the ten of them one at a time without breaks, and each of them have at least 3 Pokemon. Fortunately, two of these "Seven" full heal your party before fighting you.
- Chain of Deals: An extremely convoluted one which ends with you fighting and potentially catching Turmur.
- Cloudcuckoolander: The Deadly Seven. Cutlerine, the hacker of the game, is also this half the time.note
- Co-Dragons: Gleis and Temulence are this to Senex.
- Confusion Fu: It eventually turns out that this is the modus operandi of the Deadly Seven. The Champion of the Pokemon League is also proficient in it.
- Darker and Edgier: The game takes the Pokémon world into Zombie Apocalypse territory, with plenty of blood and nightmarish content.
- Deadpan Snarker: The hero has elements of this, mostly snarking at the plot's expense.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Out of Senex's two generals, Gleis is the one that has a more active role in their boss's plans.
- Dragon Their Feet: It takes half of the game before Temulence even shows up. And when he does show up, he uses Denjuu and doesn't even take you seriously. By the time you fight him in Lilycove, however, he has finished playing around and hiding behind the scenes.
- Evil All Along: Gleis turns out to have been this. Alicia/War also counts.
- Fake Difficulty: You are still penalized for losing the first fight against Wattson, even though it's a Hopeless Boss Fight. You can't even shut off his Pokemons' power source until after this battle.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Starting with zombies, then demons, the four horsemen of apocalypse, pirates, real dragons, mystic monks, denjuu, aliens, etc. All in one place.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: It's hard to actually quantify in a game of this nature, but there nevertheless is one: in the Inquisition headquarters, if you accidentally step on a certain warp panel, you'll encounter something called "the Shaderu" which quite literally comes out of nowhere only to serve as a Hopeless Bossfight Beef Gate to punish you for picking the wrong warp. While the Pokemon is later seen on the Big Bad's team, and you even get the chance to catch one yourself, this instance of it is still entirely inexplicable.
- Heroic Mime: Averted; the hero has lots of lines.
- Hopeless Boss Fight:
- Wattson's team is supercharged to level 100, at a time when yours is likely in their 30's, the first time you fight him. In addition, stepping on particular panels in the Inquisition's headquarters will trigger a similarly overleveled encounter.
- When trapped in the necropolis by Gleis, you encounter a Battlezombie with a team of overleveled Zombie Pokemon.
- Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Three of them (Pestilence, Famine and War) maintain a presence up until Meteor Falls, where after confronting the player and finally revealing their plan, they're admonished by Death for interfering in the lives of mortals. Unfortunately, Death tries to kill you as well.
- Hybrid Monster: A particularly morbid example; one trainer on Route 121 boasts about how he cut various Pokemon into pieces, then combined them to make A Monster (sic).
- Stitcher, one of the mons primarily used by the Headslingers in Necropolis, also counts, being the heads and necks of Latios and Latias both sewn onto one purple body.
- Joke Character: The Glute evolutionary line consists of 3 Pokemon with abysmal stats and incredibly lackluster movepools. The final stage, Nute, is achieved at level 70 and reportedly actually learns moves, but its Attack and Special Attack are still weaker than a Pichu's.
- Lampshade Hanging: A lot of the player's dialogue consists of hanging lampshades on the various insane things and bizarre in-jokes they encounter on their journey.
- Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Played with; When Gleis is imprisioned at Inquisition's headquarters, he is kept on a small platform over a pool of what looks like lava. Turns out, however, the Inquisition can't afford a lava pool and it's actually boiling orangeade, allowing the player to freely Surf in.
- Lethal Joke Character: Kingmadio is an unassuming little floating orb with googly eyes and a base stat value of 1 in all stats other than Speed. It's also a Dark/Ghost type with Wonder Guard for its ability, meaning it can No-Sell virtually any damaging move (with the exception of Beat Up, which deals typeless damage).
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Nintendo Hard: Instead of starters, you get normal Pokemon (Koffing, Baltoy and Paras), other trainers' Pokemon have very high levels with overpowered movepools and abilities, and the puzzles suffer from Guide Dang It!. - Nonindicative Name: The Deadly Seven actually have ten members.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: After battling Senex, they are revealed to have been faking their insane antics the entire time.
- Olympus Mons:
- The egg you obtain near the beginning of the game can eventually turn into Entei, Raikou, Suicune or Celebi depending on what stone you use on it. with a Moon Stone, it turns into an Unown that outclasses Arceus in stats.
- The hack also features its own custom Olympus Mons, with very obscure ways to obtain them.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Zig-Zagged; Existing Dragon-type Pokemon already come in many non-standard shapes. Then there is the superior species of literal dragons. While they all look like a Charizard without the tail flame, they speak, have a society, run facilities, and train Pokemon, all things humans can do. Not only that, but some may also bring their own kin into battle as if they are Pokemon too.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Zombie Pokemon are extremely prevalent in this hack, initially used by the undead versions of their trainers, though later on the game introduces Battlezombies - big muscular dude zombies and elegant girl with sword zombies, whose zombie Pokemon are notably stronger.
- Palette Swap: The various zombified Pokemon.
- People Puppets: The Horseman of Famine has his own army of warped chefs.
- Punny Name: Zombie mons have names like 'Boilbasaur' and 'Rotmander'. And then we have some of the Witches on the way to Fortree, like the Witch Doctor (who simply heals you), Blair Witch or the Sand Witch (before fighting her, the player comments on her looking tasty).
- Quirky Mini Boss Squad: The deadly seven. Oh, the Deadly Seven.
- Schrödinger's Player Character: You play as the younger sibling of Landon, the player character of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. Whether Landon had a brother or sister is up to you, however. The character you don't select never appears.
- The Shangri-La: The Shakya Monastery, a community of wise sages built over the former Lavaridge Town after it was consumed by volcanic ashes.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The Inquisition's headquarters has three offenders: the boardroom, where a safe path to either end may take a while to find; the warp panels, leading to a Hopeless Boss Fight with a ghost if you stumble through the wrong panel; and the Leap of Faith, which features a similar penalty to the second example if you're unlucky stumbling through the dark.
- Villainous Breakdown: After you beat the Champion, Gleis slowly suffers one. He goes from a calm, Manipulative Bastard that is completely willing to manipulate you and battle you with Pokemon and becomes a crazy sociopath that is ready (and openly stating his desire) to kill you.
