In New York City, homeless people seem to be vanishing left and right, only to be found immolated. Yet a strange "Y" shaped scar appears on seemingly unrelated people. The police are not giving much attention, so it is up to millionaire Henry White and his friend Cooper to begin to investigate these events. But that's only the start.
Years later, a man named John Yesterday wakes up from a failed suicide attempt with no memory and a Y-Shaped scar on his hand. What exactly did Henry White hire him for, and what is happening to the homeless people? Find out in this adventure game released for PC and phones.
Visit the game's official site
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A prequel/sequel (a sequel with prequel-parts in the form of flashbacks), Yesterday Origins, has since been released. Check it out here.
Note: due to the game's story-heavy nature, even the names of the tropes themselves should be considered spoilers. As such, all spoilers are unmarked. Proceed with caution!
Yesterday provides examples of:
- Alchemy Is Magic: Well, it does grant you Immortality.
- Amnesiac Hero: John, complete with a Dark and Troubled Past, amazing fighting skills and a beautiful sidekick.
- Amnesiacs are Innocent: John Yesterday is fairly sweet-natured and romantic if somewhat morose due to his amnesia... but this trope comes fully into effect when you consider his past lives as the demented Choke and the murderous Satanic cultist Miguel. Possibly a Justified Trope considering even Miguel had problems with the cult sacrificing a child.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The game's cartoony art style noticeably contrasts with the dark story and subject matter.
- Barefoot Sage: Olhak Adirf.
- Being Watched: Henry feels this way at the station.
- Bloodless Carnage: Characters are shot in the head, stabbed, dropped from high places and tortured without any blood splatter, though John's model changes to reflect any bruises he gets.
- Averted in Origins, which contains more blood and gore than the first game.
- Brains and Brawn: Henry is The Smart Guy while Cooper is Dumb Muscle.
- Buried Alive: The fate of either John or Henry, depending on whose ending you choose.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Cooper is the big guy and Henry is the little one.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Henry; see Villain with Good Publicity.
- Bittersweet Ending: In John's and Cooper's endings, John and Pauline are both immortal, but so is Henry. In Henry's ending, Henry wins and enslaves Pauline, but John finally got over his constant amnesia (including the part where he keeps forgetting his advanced martial arts) and is ready to take the fight to Henry.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: There's no signal at the station.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: According to himself, Henry has killed John about 50 times in cruel and sadistic ways. He also mentions that John could do the same.
- Cult
- Driven to Madness: Played for Drama with Boris, who went mad from losing his son.
- Decoy Protagonist: You start playing for Henry White, who seems like a nice guy who wants to help homeless people. At the end of the proloque however it is revealed that Henry is a serial killer who kills and tortures homeless people for fun, while Choke is an immortal who keeps coming back to life as a young man with no memories.
- Dedication: "This game is dedicated to those who live in the street and those who try to improve their situation, like Les Enfants De Don Quichotte in France."
- Depraved Bisexual: Implied for Henry, with emphasis on "depraved".
- Disposable Vagrant: Neither the police nor anyone else cares about the murders because the victims are homeless. The killer specifically notes this fact in his specific ending.
- Evil Redhead: Henry.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Again, Henry.
- Fate Worse than Death
- Guide Dang It!: Zigzagged. While there are moments that may be a little difficult for a player to figure out, if you play with items enough, eventually the game will give you a hint. However, some of these hints when you view them in order may seem out of context. (E.g., the game tells you you need something that uses batteries, when the next hint does not tell you what you need them for.)
- Heel–Face Turn: Cooper may turn on Henry in one of the endings as revenge for shooting him.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Cooper has flashbacks to a Boy Scouts-like organization, where one of the instructors was horrendously verbally abusive, implicitly for years, going back since he was an infant. However, it predictably gives him some psychological scars, which he vents by being a willing accomplice to torture and murder.
- Hint System: A player can ask for a hint if they are stuck.
- Immortality Hurts: John's deaths are only temporary and don't leave marks on his body, but he can still feel pain. Henry takes full advantage of this and tortures him for years.
- Ironic Name: Henry White as white is usually the symbol of goodness.
- Jerk Jock: Cooper is a refreshing aversion, until you realize what exactly has happened after he rescued Henry White from a cult...
- Mysterious Middle Initial: If you look closely at Henry's ID you can see that his middle name initial is "K". The full name is never revealed.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Henry. He's a sociopath and murder, but he did spend his youth helping the homeless, right? Well, no, he burned and tortured them. But at least he's always been a good friend to Cooper, his Heterosexual Lifepartner with quite some
Ho Yay... until he shoots him with neither hesitation nor remorse. - Leitmotif: Henry has a haunting tune that he whistles frequently.
- Multiple Endings: There's one for Henry, John and Cooper. The player can choose between them during the final confrontation.
- Cooper: Cooper throws Henry into the well as punishment for being betrayed. Cooper and John leave on amicable terms, while John and Pauline start their relationship with "all the time they need". Henry wakes up surrounded by weapons, and eagerly tests his immortality by torturing himself.
- John: John brands Henry to ensure that he can keep track of his rival, and then throws him into the well. John wants Pauline to help him forget all this. Cooper wakes up to the sound of Henry's whistling.
- Henry: Henry persuades John to save him from the well, only to stab him with a heated knife. Henry laments the deaths of his favorite toy and his bodyguard, but now has a new toy (Pauline) to play with. John wakes up, looks at his hand, only to realize that he still remembers this time. At the very least, he remembers HENRY.
- Mistaken for Prank Call: Subverted. Cooper thinks that Henry's pranking him when he calls for help but then Cooper hears Choke talking and realizes that it's not a prank.
- No One Could Survive That!: Choke is shot in the head at the end of the prologue and is thrown into the back of Henry's truck, only to sit upright with a gasp.
- Notice This: Player has an option to see all things that are interactive if they don't want to search for them.
- Oh, Crap!: Henry's expression as he realizes he's out of bullets, just when he's up alone against John.
- Pistol-Whipping: Henry is knocked out by Boris who hits him with a pistol.
- Police Are Useless: The police do not give much attention to the events.
- Really 700 Years Old: Turns out, John is an immortal who was born sometime in the late 1400's.
- Reverse Whodunnit: You're told who the bad guys are in the prologue, the twist is why they do what they do.
- Room Full of Crazy: The very first scene in the game, shows walls painted with red color, possibly blood, multiple satanic symbols, and photos of multiple persons, with notes as "Torture" and "Dead?" Oh, and did we mention the flashes of screaming faces and their respective screams.
- Serial Killer: One who kills homeless people sets the scene for the prologue, leading Henry to go and work to protect them. By the end of the prologue, it's revealed the killer is Henry.
- Shout-Out: Later in the game, when Henry drinks the immortality elixir, he brings the elaborate cup they made John drink. John says "A simple carpenter's cup will do."
- Start of Darkness: Henry snaps after being humiliated in the prologue, leading to the events of the main game.
- However, he and Cooper are heavily implied at the end of the prologue to have been the ones burning homeless people.
- Sdrawkcab Name: Olhak Adirf.
- Smart People Play Chess: How does Henry avoid getting executed by a cult? Argues that because he is smart, they shouldn't kill him. How do they test his intelligence? Why... ask him what moves he should make in Chess. Justified in that Henry was specifically asked if he played chess before.
- They Killed Kenny Again: This is invoked as a gameplay mechanic.
- Unwinnable: Averted - It is impossible to get a game over.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Henry: a generous billionaire, a caring boss loved by his employees, a former charity volunteer... also a sadistic psycho and a serial killer known as the Inquisitor.
- Wait Here: Henry tells Cooper to watch the car. It's a subversion because Cooper simply stays in the car and doesn't go anywhere until he gets a call for help from Henry.
- Wealthy Philanthropist: Henry White, the heir to a wealthy family, spends his free time and money fighting homelessness and swears to dissolve the family business to help charity. This attitude doesn't last past the prologue.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Take the immortality potion without mercury and you're doomed to lose your memory every time you die.
- Workaholic: Boris was one in his backstory.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Henry's tendency towards this is used to try and turn Cooper and Dr. Yesterday against him. Henry shoots them both before it can really happen.
- That said, it does contribute to Henry's running out of ammo.
