Happily Never After
The Darkest Tales is an indie Dark Fantasy Action Platformer developed by Trinity Team and published by 101XP. It was released on Steam on October 13, 2022 and is available for PC.
In her childhood, little Alicia loved her stories and toys. Now she's all grown up and dream demons have invaded her sleep, threatening to consume her. Strapped for options, her faithful nightlight Lighty recruits Teddy Scissorpaws, Alicia's old grumpy stuffed bear, to venture into her dreams and save her before it's too late.
The Darkest Tales contains examples of:
- 2½D: The game is played from a dollhouse-perspective for its entire run. Teddy is never required to walk toward or away from the player.
- Achievement Mockery: Getting killed in the tutorial earns you the achievement "Good Start".
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Teddy's outfit changes a couple of times over the course of the game. The DLC adds an additional one that is available from the start.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Enemies that were killed in an area stay dead, even if Teddy dies fighting their group.
- Arc Symbol: Mirrors. Teddy enters Alicia's dreams through the big mirror in her room and the save points and fast-travel spots in the game are represented by whole and broken mirrors respectively.
- Arc Villain: Each level has it's own main antagonist. The Hate has Little Red Riding Hood, The Guillible and The Greed have the Giantess and The King, The Selfishness has Sten the Genie and so on and so forth.
- Art Shift: The cut-scenes between levels are presented as pictures from a storybook a narrator is reading from.
- Background Boss: Pinocchio is situated in the background of his boss fight, with Gepetto standing on top of him and directing his attacks. Teddy has to wait for him to fall over onto the platform in the foreground, which will cause Gepetto to tumble off of him and become vulnerable to Teddy's attacks.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: The game takes place in Alicia's dreams, which are a mirror of her declining mental health.
- Bizarrchitecture: The dream version of Alicia's room morphs into her Dreamlands as soon as Teddy makes it onto the bed.
- Bloody Handprint: Bloody footprints and handprints are scattered across pretty much every level as another indicator how messed up Alicia's subconscious has become.
- Boss Vulnerability:
- Peter Pan is completely invulnerable, but his Shadow, luckily, is not.
- Pinocchio can't be harmed due to being a Background Boss, but his master and father Gepetto is fair game as soon as he falls off Pinocchio's back.
- Cooldown: The Dash takes a while to recharge before it can be used again.
- Creepy Doll: The more humanoid bosses are actually various kinds of dolls. And all of them have been twisted into disturbing shadows of their former selves by the nightmare demons.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- The King of the Wolves suffocates on a giant boulder that Little Red Riding Hood jams down his throat.
- Sten drinks too much from the fountain of youth and age regresses until he disappears.
- The Little Mermaid sings so loudly that the platform she stands on collapses into the active saw-blade underneath.
- Cryptic Conversation: The Nightmare Cat will appear whenever Teddy loses consciousness and make a bunch of cryptic remarks that she refuses to elaborate on.
- Desperation Attack: The Berserker-skill increases Teddy's attack damage if his health is down to one.
- Double Jump: Teddy learns this ability after defeating the Golden Goose.
- Evil Is Bigger: The monsters Teddy has to fight are always a great deal taller than him. The Clockwork Wolves, the very first enemies, are already towering over him.
- Evil vs. Evil:
- Little Red Riding Hood has a seething hatred for the Clockwork Wolves, who are mindless beasts eager to devour anyone who gets lost in The Hate. However, the methods she uses to hunt them down make her little better than them, such as setting fire to a village so the wolves will burn within it and using Teddy as bait to lure them away from her.
- Sten wants what the other inhabitants of the Selfishness have, namely their treasure, magic fairy dust and Fountain of Youth, and forces Teddy to kill them for him so he can have the aforementioned things for himself. There's not too much sympathy to be had however: The pirates are violent thugs, the Tooth Fairies are creepy Fair Folk who steal teeth and Peter Pan uses the blood of the children he lured to the island to keep himself forever young.
- Exposition Fairy: Lighty is the one who informs Teddy that Alicia is in danger and what exactly she needs to be saved from, as well as how combat and magic work in the dream world.
- Fountain of Youth: Peter Pan possesses one and uses it to avoid growing up. It runs on childrens' blood. Teddy is appropriately disgusted and horrified when he finds out.
- Good Morning, Crono: The game begins with a bit of narration, then really starts once Lighty opens the toy box and wakes up Teddy.
- Grimmification: As a result of Alicia's worsening mental health, the fairy tales she loved as a child are horrifically warped in her dreams, turning them a lot Bloodier and Gorier than they originally were. Red Riding Hood is a Creepy Child hunting wolves, the Little Mermaid is more of sea witch and Sleeping Beauty's sleep deprivation hasn't exactly left her in the best state.
- Heal Thyself: Lighty can fix Teddy's seams when they come too loose, but will use up mana whenever she does so.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Teddy uses the scissors Alicia was never allowed to play with as a child as swords.
- Improvised Weapon: All of Teddy's weapons are created through his various uses of an old pair of scissors, empowered by Lighty's magic.
- Jungle Japes: The Selfishness takes place on a tropical island's jungle, complete with drums as background music and Flying Monkeys as the main enemy-type.
- Magic Mirror: There are two kinds of mirrors in the dreamworld. The broken mirrors act as portals between the different acts of the level and between the levels. The intact ones are save points and allow Teddy to change his equipment and view his skills. Teddy also enters Alicia's dreams through the big mirror in her room.
- Mana: Lighty uses magical energy she calls mana to turn Teddy's weapons into light weapons, as well as heal him. Mana can be recharged either by slaying enemies or by standing in light blue light.
- Mini-Boss:
- The Golden Goose in The Greed.
- White Hook and the Fairy Queen in The Selfishness.
- No Name Given: Although it's clear who the fairy tale enemies are supposed to represent, the majority of their names are never spoken in the game.
- Non-Human Undead: The Zombie-Gingerbreadmen in the Giantess' kitchen.
- Level in the Clouds: The Guillible takes place on the beanstalk from Jack and the Beanstalk, having Teddy and Lighty climb up the titular plant to reach the giants' castle in the clouds.
- Light Is Good: Invoked with Lighty, a night light who despite her haughty personality, only wants what's best for her owner Alicia. Subverted, as it's really her that's responsible for Alicia's mind slowly becoming corrupted, making her a case of Light Is Not Good.
- Living Ship: The dogfish doubles as an underwater laboratory for Gepetto.
- Living Toys: Played straight with Teddy, who is a living stuffed bear, but downplayed with Lighty, who is a living night light, which isn't exactly a toy.
- The Lost Woods: The Hate, the first area Teddy and Lighty have to traverse, is a giant, creepy forest filled with monstrous wolves, bugs and a psychotic Little Red Riding Hood.
- Red Herring: The Witch Cat tries to convince Teddy that Alicia may not be the innocent girl he remembers, arguing that she had her own character flaws and that a truly innocent subconscious wouldn't give birth to the horrors that he fights. It turns out that Alicia is fine, and the real problem stems from Lighty trying to corrupt her mind.
- Rule of Three: Sten demands three wishes from Teddy in exchange for freeing Teddy and Lighty from the lamp he locked them in. The first is the ability to fly, the second is to be rich, the third is to be young forever. Each of the wishes require Teddy to kill someone in order to fulfill it.
- Run or Die:
- The first two times you come across a Clockwork Wolf, Teddy won't have his scissors yet and thus has no means to defend himself. Making your only option to book it. Or, in the case of the second one, stay right where you are and watch the stupid creature fall right into a spike pit and kill itself in it's eagerness to maul Teddy.
- The Giantess, true to her name, is so enormous that Teddy can't possibly fight her, leading to a wild chase to escape her castle.
- Rustproof Blood: The Hate's woods and caves are drenched in the blood of both Clockwork Wolves and innocent villagers that never seems to dry.
- Scenery Porn: The game's environments and background are absolutely beautiful, appearing like something out of a story-book albeit a very twisted one.
- Shout-Out:
- The third world introduces a fast talking genie named Sten, who has a distinct set of erratic arm movements. His name and body language are a clear reference to Stan from the Monkey Island series.
- In the same world, Teddy acquires a new outfit—Guybrush's pirate coat introduced in Monkey Island 2 Lechucks Revenge
- After Teddy is knighted by a statue of a wise king, the statue begins to crumble, saying he was "Not meant for human life, but to be the life essence of future memories."
- Skill Scores and Perks: If he slays enough enemies, Teddy can upgrade his weapons and magic abilities in his skill tree.
- Snow Means Death: Teddy enters the Dreamlands through a snowy mountainside. The first thing he sees is Little Red Riding Hood gorging herself on a Clockwork Wolf's corpse.
- Spring Jump: Gelatinous springs will pop up in every level once and again. Jumping on them will take Teddy to greater heights than his normal jump or double jump abilities.
- The Straight and Arrow Path: One of the weapons Teddy can use is a bow made of needle and thread. It can be used to shoot down flying enemies and collapse certain structures to make a passage.
- Super Drowning Skills: Downplayed. Teddy doesn't sink or die immediately if he falls into water, but after a short time he'll take damage from being in it. The narration in the cut-scene before The Madness implies this is due to Teddy soaking up the water and eventually becoming too heavy to stay afloat. Averted after he douses himself in water fairy dust in The Madness, which enables him to swim without taking damage.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Teddy and Lighty don't particularly like each other, with Teddy being bitter about Lighty replacing him as Alicia's defender and Lighty viewing Teddy as an old grump. They have to put aside their mutual dislike in order to rescue Alicia, though neither misses a chance to snipe at the other or make jabs whenever the opportunity presents itself.
- The Unfought:
- Unfortunately you don't get to fight the King, since he immediately calls upon the Giantess after catching Teddy and Lighty wandering about his castle. Instead both he and his wife fall to their deaths while chasing Teddy.
- Despite being arguably the main antagonist for The Selfishness, Sten doesn't get a boss battle either. He's instead tricked into drinking too much from the fountain of youth by Teddy and is reduced to nothing as a result.
- Video Game Dashing: Teddy gains a dash-ability after defeating Little Red Riding Hood. Red herself uses it during her boss-battle.
- Womb Level: The Madness takes place inside a giant dogfish that swallowed Teddy and Lighty.
