Video Game / Why Am I Dead At Sea

"You are on a boat at sea."

"Also, you are dead."

—From the "About This Game" section on Steam

Published and developed by Peltast Software, Why Am I Dead At Sea is an RPG in which the player attempts to solve their own murder, a loose sequel to the original flash game Why Am I Dead?. As a ghost, the player can possess various characters to investigate, and unique conversations can occur depending on which people you make talk to each other.

Tropes featured in this game:

• All Love Is Unrequited: Alton towards Xu/Sue; he had a crush on her, but she's quickly revealed to just resent him for being a rich aimless college student who took this job for a fun vacation, whereas she's forced to work on the ship just to survive.
• Ate His Gun: Donovan does this in all endings.
• Almost Dead Guy: Donovan reappears for the climax, but does not survive it; the character's limping movements imply it won't be long before they die of their injuries.
• Bittersweet Ending: No matter how the climax plays out, someone dies, and the main character must pass on. While most passengers can get relatively happy endings (Alton decides to pursue his actual dreams, Xu makes plans to head home and face up to her family, Quella and Darryl reserve to stick together to run out their clocks side by side, and Gwen can get a number from Marcurio that presumably will get her the help she needs,) Marcurio's best case scenario is to resolve to be a better person from now on, though his financial prospects are still pretty bad. As well as this, Paulo and the trafficked passengers will likely need a long time to recover from their ordeal, if they ever do.
• Canon Character All Along:
  • "L" from Donovan's e-mails is Lucille, from the first Why Am I Dead.
  • Given the resemblance in appearance and personality, Ferdinand revealing his real name is Ted strongly implies he's the same Ted from the first Why Am I Dead flash game. This is further supported by the fact that in the first game Lucille claimed to have initially come to the hotel in search of a serial killer before investigating the owner, a plot line that carries on to this game.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Ferdinand. He seems to have permanent blinders on to the various flaws of the ship and its crew. Or, more importantly, he doesn't feel anything like guilt or shame.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Almost all the characters, but especially Gwen, who is implied to have been sexually assaulted by her father and is on the run from her family because of this.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Implied between Darryl and the captain, who apparently reminded him of his dead wife, to his dismay.
• Dramatic Irony: Several characters theorize about the safety of the player character, the Captain, but generally believe that she's alive. Since you're playing a ghost, those theories are somewhat awkward for the player. Also, when people wonder what happened to Donovan after he's shot multiple times and thrown overboard.
• Dysfunction Junction: It's immediately apparent from just listening in to everyone's thoughts that the entire cast has problems. Gwen is paranoid and suspicious that someone on the ship is stalking her, Donovan is on a mission to take down someone on the ship and won't trust anyone, Xu is stealing from the crew and passengers for extra money she desperately needs, Marcurio hates his job and dreams of getting his own restaurant, Garv talks about having suffered through a bitter divorce and likes animals more than people, Quella is a writer for whom writing has become a massive chore because of her deadline, Alton struggles with self-esteem issues and not knowing what to do with his life, Darryl is suffering from depression and guilt because of his past, and Ferdinand seems to be completely out of touch with reality. Even the captain of the ship is implied to have a past she wanted to forget, while Paulo is lonely and too shy to socialize.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Played with in regards to Sunshine, the cat. If you possess the cat and talk to Ferdinand, there are options to hiss and scratch at him where Sunshine normally meows and purrs, leading Ferdinand to threaten to drown you—and he turns out to be the Serial Killer. However, Sunshine is perfectly friendly to their owner, who is trafficking humans for slavery.
• Evil Old Folks: Garv, who turns out to be behind the human trafficking ring. He was additionally in cahoots with the serial killer, and planned to make him take the fall for his operation.
• FBI Agent: Donovan, though he's gone rogue.
• Face Death with Dignity: Darryl in the Living Nightmare end.
• Foreshadowing: Talking to Paulo about what's to come has him talk about a cloaked man that splits into two and fights each other, hinting that there are two criminals on the ship, at odds with each other.
  • The headspaces of certain characters hints at certain plot points well before the protagonist uncovers them:
    • Quella's features an hourglass close to running out, representing the fact that she has a terminal condition.
    • Garv's contains many, many faceless people - which hints towards him being involved in human trafficking.
    • Xu/Sue's mentions that the Captain is missing.
    • Donovan's shows a mask and mentions that he'll "kill everyone here" to take someone down foreshadowing that he's looking for a serial killer among the cast and that he threatens to shoot all the potential candidates in the climax.
• He Knows Too Much: Why Donovan is attacked at the end of the third chapter, as well as why the Captain died; not because they were getting close to learning about the serial killer's identity, but because they were close to learning about the smuggling operation.
• Identity Amnesia: One of the player's goals is to learn who they were before their death. They're the female captain, Smilla.
• The Illegal: Xu/Sue, whose student visa expired, forcing her to work on the ship for cheap.
• It's All About Me: Marcurio. His thoughts generally are "mind your own business" and "do your job" and he's the most unhelpful of the cast because he doesn't want to stick his neck out for anyone or rock the boat. It's to the point that he follows several orders that get other people hurt, like Gwen or the people being trafficked on the ship, even when he suspects something illegal is going on with his anonymous benefactor—he cares more about the bribe money and not getting himself hurt than finding out why he's being ordered to do what he does.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Darryl and Gwen both require the protagonist to enter their thoughts and help them confront their pasts in order to be fully possessed.
• Jump Scare: If you read Ferdinand's thoughts for an extended period of time later on in the game, a profile face of him staring at you can occasionally flash on screen for a fraction of a second and then disappear.
• Knight Templar: In the climax, Donovan is willing to kill innocents to solve the case, as long as one of the innocents he kills ends up being the person he's after. He reasons that ultimately this will save way more people from becoming victims.
• Meaningful Name: The name of the ship is the Douce Amere, which translates to "Bittersweet". There's no perfect resolution to the game, as even the happiest end has some bitterness to it.
• Multiple Endings: There are five possible conclusions:
  • "Living Nightmare": Fail to solve any of the mysteries during the climax.
  • "Retribution": Identify the Serial Killer, but not the human trafficker.
  • "Justice": Identify the human trafficker, but not the Serial Killer.
  • "False Awakening": Prove that there are multiple criminals on board, but fail to identify both.
  • "Douce Amere": Identify both the Serial Killer and the human trafficker.
• Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Donovan, who boards the ship with the sole aim of finding and killing the serial killer who murdered his partner. Once the deed is done, they promptly kill themselves.
• My Greatest Failure: Darryl's failure to prevent his wife's suicide.
• Odd Friendship: One forms between Quella and Darryl. It's all but stated to be because of Darryl's suicidal mindset and Quella's condition.
• Only in It for the Money: Marcurio, who only goes along with Garv's human trafficking schemes for the extra cash. Xu is in a similar situation, taking orders for money because she needs it to get out of what is essentially indentured servitude on the ship.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The player character. They start out weak, unable to enter rooms they never remember seeing before, and unable to possess any human they do not know enough about. However, recovering their identity and learning more about the ship's passengers gives them new abilities, such as reading thoughts and entering minds to help people deal with past trauma.
• The Perfect Crime: One is nearly committed by Garv, the one who really murdered the captain. They managed to run a human-trafficking operation on the ship by bribing the crew to do seemingly innocuous things which made it easier to smuggle people aboard and keep them alive until they reached land, things which the captain and first-mate were either in on or apathetic to. When the new captain becomes suspicious of all the irregularities on the ship, Garv murders her. When the cast starts getting too close to the truth, Garv orchestrates events to reveal that Ferdinand is the Serial Killer in the expectation that all the crimes on the ship will be blamed on him. The plan is only foiled by something they couldn't have possibly predicted: him confessing while being possessed by a ghost.
• Psychic Children: Paulo can talk to ghosts, and has visions of the future. He can also get psychic feelings that are omens of things to come. He hopes that the player can help him avoid something terrible he can feel is going to happen to the passengers.
• Race Against the Clock: A ghost's ability to stay in the mortal plane weakens the further it gets from its body; as the player's was dropped into the ocean, they have to solve their own death before the ship reaches port and their soul passes on. The goal of the second chapter is to delay this by having the first mate change the ship's course, which makes this a non-issue for the rest of the game.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Alton's easily the most fortunate of the ship's crew, if it wasn't for his lack of responsibility and negligence hurting his life.
• Scary Black Man: Marcurio, who is black as evidenced by his sprite and also very terse and intimidating compared to the other male cast members.
• Serial Killer: Ferdinand, who is specifically the Serial Killer Donovan came onto the ship to stop. Being the Cloud Cuckoo Lander that he is, he seemingly feels no guilt for his crimes and may only kill because it's fun.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The ship is secretly being used for human trafficking. Despite the fact that there is a Serial Killer on the ship that tortures and murders his victims and feels no remorse for it, Garv, the one behind the trafficking, turns out to be the main antagonist as he orchestrated the captain's death and was planning to use the serial killer as the fall-guy for his operations.
• Spanner in the Works: The ghostly player character, who nobody but Paulo even knows exists, yet is vital to revealing everyone's secrets.
• Starving Artist: Quella. She's a writer who notes that she doesn't have much money, that being one of the reasons she's using this particular ship as her getaway.
• Street Urchin: Xu/Sue is an odd variation, having no home but the ship, and pilfering from guests on the ship to cover her very low salary.
• Summation Gathering: Invoked. During the climax of the game, Donovan holds the group at gunpoint and is fully prepared to kill anyone who has the even the slightest chance of being the criminal he's after. To get as many people out alive the player character must possess certain characters to use as mouthpieces in order to out the true culprit.
• Taking the Bullet: In the Living Nightmare end, Quella takes a fatal bullet which was meant for Darryl. Unfortunately for her Donovan simply shoots Darryl with his next round.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Xu/Sue views Alton as this, since he's working on the ship for fun while she, Marcurio, and the Captain struggle to make ends meet.
• Unreliable Narrator: Garv's rant about his ex-wife making up stories about him to the courts for custody becomes a lot more suspect after it turns out he's part of a human trafficking ring.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The player character gets no coverage in the credits. Though it's likely justified, as their body is now far, far away from the ship.