One night back in the '70s, 14 year-old Bull Brandish is on a camping trip with his best friend, Willie. They're staying on Bull's grandpa's property, a part of the forest surrounding the town of Silver Falls. Everything is going well... until Bull finds his grandpa dying, with his arm ripped off by some kind of creature. What begins as a simple camping trip rapidly devolves into a fight for survival and harrowing rescues. Something monstrous is lurking in those dark woods, and it craves human flesh. Can Bull find any adults who will believe and help him? Can he save everyone on his own?
Released on 1/14/21 for the Nintendo 3DS eShop and later an Updated Re-release for the Wii U,Silver Falls: Undertakers is the second entry in the Silver Falls series after 3 Down Stars. In terms of the in-game timeline, however, it's currently the first game. In fitting with the game' setting, it's an homage to the old Top-Down View Action-Adventure games on the Atari 2600, particularly Adventure and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In Game A, Bull has to wander the massive map that makes up his grandpa's property and look for items that will help him rescue other people. Meanwhile, he somehow has to avoid the sinister, tentacled clutches of Undertakers, a horde of Lovecraftian monstrosities. Game B is a Survival Mode in which you can find upgrades for your stats while killing waves of monsters.
The game has examples of the following tropes:
- Action Survivor: Bull is an unarmed teenager. But he can find a throwing ax, a bow and arrow, and a couple of guns. While he might not be able to kill the Undertakers, he can survive long enough to escape.
- Aliens in Cardiff: Silver Falls is a small mountain town, yet is home to aliens, ghosts, and mutated animals. This game focuses on the first.
- Ambiguous Situation: The extent of what Fred knows about the monsters, particularly in the ending. As this is the first game in the timeline, he's pretty young compared to his later appearances. It's unclear how long he's been the sheriff of Silver Falls, or how much experience he's had. The real question is if he genuinely doesn't know about the Undertakers, or if he intentionally dismisses Bull's claims for the sake of maintaining the Masquerade. A couple of his optional lines in Game B hint it's the latter.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Despite their penchant for leaving gory remains everywhere, the Undertakers don't kill you immediately. They just grab and haul you over to one of their nests, and give you plenty of time to escape. Depending on where you end up, the Undertakers can even be considered a form of fast travel, given that they can potentially cut down on the backtracking.
- Awesome McCoolname: Bull Brandish. Doubles as an Alliterative Name as well.
- A Winner Is You: Parodied in the darkest way in the ending.GAME OVER YOU WINNER. YOU LIVE. YOUR FAMILY WILL LIVE. FOR NOW. BUT YOU CAN NEVER BE THE SAME NOW. WHEN YOU SLEEP, YOU WILL SEE THEIR SHAPE AND FEEL THEIR GRASP. THE TIME OF YOUR INNOCENCE IS OVER. STAND WATCH OVER THE DARKNESS IN SILVER FALLS. YOU SURVIVED. BUT AT WHAT SAD COST? HOW MUCH OF YOUR SOUL IS LEFT AFTER TONIGHT? WILL YOU EVER LEARN THE WARMTH OF LOVE AND HAPPINESS? MAYBE NOT.
- Backtracking: All of the necessary items are strewn about at various points on the map, most of which are far from where they need to be used. So unless you get lucky with an Undertaker encounter, you're going to be spending most of your time revisiting the same paths.
- Call-Forward: Johan Baconsmith and Eli Goodwin are seen near the Pancake Mansion, as described in the confidential files Bull was secretly looking through in 3 Down Stars. If you saw that scene, you know what became of those two.
- Coming of Age Story: By the end of the story, Bull has saved multiple people and survived attacks from multiple Undertakers. But no one believes him, with the possible exception of Sheriff Fred Hardluck. He dedicates his life to hunting monsters and protecting Silver Falls. As seen in the other games, this experience takes its toll on him.
- Cool Old Guy: Honard is in his 40s at this point in the timeline, and he lets Bull use his hunting bow as much as he wants. Dodger also mentions that he wants to go visit Honard and try out his throwing knives, implying that he regularly teaches kids.
- Continuity Nod: This game serves as the backstory for Bull. The first time you encounter him in the previous game, he's breaking into the sheriff's office to look up confidential documents about this very event. Everything that was mentioned there, such as the people and locations and Fred's coverup are shown in this game.
- Crapsack World: This beautiful, touristy forest is home to Lovecraftian monsters who attack people, drag them to their nests, and slowly devour them. There are several human remains scattered around the trails as well. More depressingly, none of the adults seem to be aware, and some are outright malicious towards Bull.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The deeper you go into the woods and away from crowded areas, the more likely it is that you'll encounter an Undertaker.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Undertakers are a species of gigantic, squid-like monstrosities with tentacles large and srong enough to easily grab and carry full-grown men to their deaths. Their bodies are larger than a restaurant, and they're capable of running over any terrain, including dense tree cover. But since the game uses Atari 2600 graphics, they look like massive black blobs.
- Hero of Another Story: Fred is the main character of Galaxy Bound Curse. Oxa Boscova is one of the main characters of Guardians And Metal Exterminators.
- Just a Kid: Aside from his grandpa, no one takes Bull seriously because he's just 14. Fred may have believed him at the end, but deliberately dismissed him to make up a cover story.
- Karma Houdini: Bull gets away with shooting and nearly murdering Bone Grizzley despite there being about half a dozen witnesses. Granted, the guy had it coming, but it's a wonder that this never came up again in later games.
- Kid Hero: Bull is barely a teenager, but he manages to survive an onslaught of monsters and single-handedly save multiple people. And this is after he sees his grandpa ripped open and missing a limb. Nerves of Steel would be an understatement.
- Old Save Bonus: The game uses a unique Code Linker system that lets you create and trade key codes with other Silver Falls games, letting you unlock different characters in Game B.
- Plot Coupon: The game revolves around finding items to help specific people. Someone needs a first aid kit to handle their wounds, another needs a flashlight to see, another needs a crutch so they can walk without using their broken leg, etc. The most prominent example of this is the gun, which is needed to shoot Bone Grizzley and save Oxa Boscova from being sexually assaulted. The rope you get from untying her is what's needed to save Shelly. Since you can only carry one item at a time and have to exchange whatever's in your inventory, you have to remember where you left things.
- Production Foreshadowing:
- Fred is the sheriff of Silver Falls and helps at the end, but he'll become the main character in Galaxy Bound Curse.
- Honard is just the Cool Old Guy who owns the property next to Bull's grandpa's land, and can lend Bull his bow. He'll show up again 20 years later in the timeline as an accomplished hunter and mentor figure for Atticus Longdraw in Ghoul Busters. He'll then become playable 30 years after that in Deathly Delusion Destroyers as a master archer.
- The girl you save from Bone Grizzley in the biker gang's hideout is a young Oxa Boscova, who will show up 10 years later as one of the main characters of Guardians and Metal Exterminators.
- Bone Grizzley not only survives getting shot by Bull, but he shows up 50 years later as one of the monster's victims in Ruby River.
- A child-aged Dodger Rodgers can be found in the far end of the parking lot, talking about how he wants to visit Honard. He'll become the main character of Heavy Shadow and the first ally you recruit in Deathly Delusion Destroyers.
- One of the diary notes you can find mentions the infamous blizzard that happened in the '60s, which is also referenced in Ghoul Busters and Heavy Shadow. Going by the diary in this game, it involves pillars of earth rising out of the ground, and some 10 year-old kid jumping into the sky and using magical weapons to fight monsters.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Played with. Fred Hardluck is a competent sheriff who gets everyone the medical attention they need. But he doesn't show up until Bull has saved everyone on his own. He also doesn't believe Bull's stories about encounter the Undertakers, but he may just be saying that in public to keep it a secret.
- Secret-Keeper: When he thinks he's on the verge of death, Bill Brandish tells his grandson that there's something lurking out there, and that's the reason why he canceled his Midnight Realm TV show. In the ending and Game B, it's implied that Fred is a Secret Secret-Keeper as well.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Silver Falls is a lovely mountain town that has multiple dark secrets. In this game, it's the fact that the forest surrounding the town (or at least, the land owned by Bill Brandish) is infested with Lovecraftian monsters that routinely attack and devour people.
- Shout-Out: The Undertakers' nests/feeding grounds are a visual homage to the infamous wells seen in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. However, these are covered with so much human gore and entrails, Bull initially struggles to get out because the walls are so slippery.
- Show Within a Show:
- Bill Brandish created Midnight Realm, a famous '50s sci-fi show. However, he inexplicably got the show canceled in its final season. You can even find some fan mail where an angry viewer complains about this. Bill explains to Bull that he did this because of the Undertakers.
- You can find several tapes of the Midnight Falcons, a famous rock band mentioned in 3 Down Stars and Deathly Delusion Destroyers.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Undertakers don't care about the ages of their prey. But more disturbingly, there are a surprising amount of adults willing to abuse kids. Eli Goodwin offers Bull a dollar if he'll do something, implying that it's something sexual. But Johan steps in and reminds him that the kid is the grandson of Bill Brandish, and Eli gives up. There's also the biker gang, where about half a dozen grown men threaten to assault Bull if he interferes with Bone Grizzley's kidnapping and rape of Oxa Boscova, with one of them even saying they won't let Bull leave the building.
