Video Game / Yuppie Psycho

KILL THE WITCH

Today is Brian Pasternack's first day on the job at SintraCorp, one of the world's most prestigious and respected MegaCorps. Brian is quite a tad nervous, especially since his status as a Class G means that he's not exactly "wealthy" or "sophisticated" like the others at the company. But that's okay - with some help from his coworkers and a little bit of determination, Brian can easily tackle his first day on the job.

Unfortunately, his first task is to kill a nigh-immortal Witch haunting the company.

Yuppie Psycho is a business-themed survival horror game, released on April 25, 2019 by developer Baroque Decay, who also created The Count Lucanor. The story follows Brian as he makes his way through Sintracorp, which has transformed from a normal office building into an utter nightmare. Dodging mutant monsters, dangerous obstacles, and his incompetent coworkers, Brian must find and kill the Witch to fulfill his contract work all before home time. The gameplay is a top-down adventure game with strong puzzle elements - Brian must outwit his enemies rather than defeat them, and the game often places a lot of focus on using your head to solve puzzles.

On October 29th 2020, the game received a free content update called the "Executive Edition". It adds a whole new story path, with new areas, bosses and endings.

The game is currently available on Nintendo Switch, Steam, and GOG.

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This game contains the following tropes:

• And I Must Scream: Those caught in the witch's curse. Particularly Brian if he loses all five of his senses in the endgame. He gets rescued, but can no longer achieve the Golden Ending.
  • Inferred with Rei after Domori used her magic to switch their bodies and then disappeared in Rei's body. Domori is mute, thus Rei, in her body, was unable to tell anyone what had happened or who she was, before they burned her alive.
• Animal Motifs: Certain key characters are associated with different animals. Hugo is associated with frogs, Corvo with ravens (His name means "raven" in Italian), and Sintra has a subtle snake theme, among others. Brian doesn't have an animal motif, notably. Instead, he's associated with The Devil, donning the Devil costume to get into the 9th floor Gallery, as well as having his reflection change to this if you show Witch Paper to the 5th floor washroom mirrors. This is especially weird since the Devil is also associated with Rei's father, João Sintra, with one head even referring to him as "Daddy" when he appears in front of her.
• Back from the Dead: A rather complicated version with Rei Sintra. Due to Domori's familiar switching Domori and Rei's bodies and then placing Domori in Rei's body in a crystal, Rei's body never died. The Sintra family then killed Rei's consciousness in Domori's body due to Domori's magic going crazy and killed her to protect their company. The family then made an AI based on Rei's memories named Sintra. Brian is able to revive Rei's memories in Sintra and later frees Domori who later gives Rei her body back, fully reviving her.
• Benevolent A.I.: Sintra. She serves as a task giver and offers guidance and information on what Brian needs to do next. Although she's really more of a Soul Jar for Rei, as it turns out.
• Big Bad: The Witch, of course, whose magical influence is turning the company into her personal menagerie. As things progress, however, it becomes clear that it was the Witch's familiar, the Snake, who's really causing the problems in the company, and that the Witch is actually innocent.
• Big Damn Heroes: Mr. Marshall, the head of Sintracorp employees' labor union, saves Brian just as the Witch is about to kill him in the elevator.
• Bittersweet Ending: The "Goodbye" Ending in the DLC is the most obvious example. Brian, while possessed by Mr. Devil, kills the Witch (Domori in Rei's body) despite the Snake pleading for her life. This frees the employees from the curse, many of whom are excited to actually see the outside world again. Brian and Kate are reunited, but Brian has one last moment with Sintra, watching as she walks into the ocean in Sintranet and the network shuts down.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: In the alternate story path, if Brian discovers the hidden room behind the vanity in the Sintras bedroom, he can use Rei's severed head to gain access to the main computer there.
• The Cameo: Swery65 is a shop keeper on floor 4.
• Cat Girl: Domori is this as well as being a witch, which is why she was kept hidden from others.
• Cheek Copy: Mr. Hugo loves to do this with the copier on the 5th floor.
• Chekhov's Gun: After retrieving the Hexenhammer, mention is made of a special weapon that can kill the Witch and ward her off from whomever has it.
  • Additionally, during the preparations for Hugo's birthday party, there is a brief discussion in which you get the first names of most of your named coworkers that you didn't already know- namely Rostov, Sosa, Chapman and Malone. You get Doshi's first name later, after the Witch attacks the party. In the endgame, when finding and rescuing your friends after the Witch captures them, if you use the plastic knife rather than the Athame, you will need to refer to each of your friends by their first name when they ask you who they are.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Several characters count, like Sosa or Mappy, but the biggest one is Colonel Dumont, a guy who goes around the offices wearing a Napoleonic officer uniform and riding a freaking horse. All other characters acknowledge the man is not all right in the head.
• Cooldown Hug: What Brian gives to Sintra/Rei after bringing her back to life and she starts to glitch uncontrollably from the trauma of her memories.
• Creepy Good:
  • Sosa, despite being a gaunt and strange-looking weirdo, is one of Brian's genuine friends within the company. She's cooperative, helpful, and very much wants to see Brian make it through the day. Her Nice Girl nature is so strong that Brian admits he's a Witch Hunter to her fairly quickly, to which she immediately nominates herself as his assistant (partially because he needs the help, partially because she's interested in the paranormal).
  • The Forest Goblin, a strange man with no eyes and a beard so big it covers his whole body. He looks freaky, but he sells Witch Papers and grants you special contracts that can make the endgame much, much easier.
• Cyberpunk: The game has very light shades of this, as the outside world is implied to be a sort of corporate-run Dystopia. Android technology has advanced incredibly far along in this timeline, and people are marked by their Class, with different classes being given benefits over others. It mixes this with Western supernatural influences and later Eastern ones for a very strange atmosphere.
• Crystal Prison: The actual witch, Domori, is sealed in one of these by her snake familiar.
• Darkest Hour: The aftermath of Hugo's surprise party. The Witch now knows Brian is a Hunter, all of his friends have been taken by the Witch, Hugo is revealed to be in league with the Witch, Sintra is dead, Brian still hasn't found the Dagger (the only weapon that can hurt the Witch), and if you haven't completed the A.M. sidequest before the party, you still have no leads on the Witch's identity. Thankfully, the key Doshi gave Brian to the I.T. department's back room gives him the leads he needs to get his mission back on track.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Hugo got his identity by looting the ID card of a dead employee that had a physical resemblance to him.
• Despair Event Horizon: The aftermath of Hugo's surprise party. With your mission all but failed, loads of people murdered right in front of you, and all of your friends taken by the Witch and presumably dead or enthralled, and Hugo declared the new CEO who will certainly continue to enable the Witch's Curse, Brian gets the opportunity to end his mission and flee to safety. Taking the opportunity nets you one of the Multiple Endings.
• The Determinator: Brian. It's his first day at a job he knew nothing about before coming in, and he makes it quite clear he doesn't want to be there. But as time goes on, he seems to be the main person if not the only one willing or able to try to continue to deal with the Witch. His co-workers are of limited help, and even Sintra stops caring at some point. Then, at the endgame, everything goes wrong and he's given the opportunity to escape. The way to the Golden Ending is for him to keep trying regardless, and an interesting discussion takes place that even questions what drives him.
• Disproportionate Retribution: After Brian manages to steal the Athame and kickstart the alternate route, Hugo steals the Athame back, leaves Brian and Kate unconscious and poisoned in the Witch's room despite Kate not being the one he was angry with, and even breaks Brian's glasses on top of everything else. All because of Brian "sabotaging his plans...and his birthday".
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The necklace/familiar of Sintracorp founder's adoptive daughter was the Witch.
• Driven to Madness: What tends to happen to the employees who stick around too long.
• Driven to Suicide: Sosa mentions that many people jump off the roof to escape the building, unable to handle the stress of the place in addition to the monsters within. This becomes Hugo's fate in the main story path if you manage to thoroughly humiliate him by not only installing Rei as the CEO of Sintracorp, but also swiping the Athame Dagger from beneath his very nose.
• Dungeon Town: A few floors may have places to make get coffee, candy, microwave food, or soda, but there are still monsters roaming about. The Hive is a good example after completing the HR sequence with a half-price soda machine in Mr. Swery's cubicle all while poison gas is swirling about, as well as the HR girls roaming about after completing HR.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: The Executive Edition introduces three new endings you can only get if you travel through the security side quest and learn some secrets about Hugo. To even get there in the first place, you have to complete Chapman’s sidequest to get him promoted. But by taking this route, you make a deal with the devil, kill Domori while possessed, and let Rei's soul pass on.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Sure, you can leave without completing your job. But the only way to get to a good ending is to keep at it. The Golden Ending takes it a step further, requiring the completion of a side quest to rescue all of Brian's coworkers before actually facing off with the Witch.
• Easy Level Trick: Once the lategame starts, the player is mostly free to complete two separate objectives, as well as one optional one: finding Hugo, rebuilding Sintra, and finding your friends. While rebuilding Sintra is straightforward, and Hugo is found in the top floor executive suite, one can make the optional task of locating your friends much easier by swiping Athame from under Hugo's watch by sneaking into his office and distracting him long enough to take it. Using the Athame instead of the plastic knife makes it so that you don't need to guess who is who when freeing a bound soul, allowing the player to complete the sidequest much quicker and easier.
  • The Forest Goblin offers special contracts if you bring him products that feature barcodes. These contracts will make you immune to poisonous gas and let you breathe underwater, making what would be the two most difficult levels of the game to navigate (one of which being the endgame) much easier.
• Eldritch Location: Sintracorp has been slowly morphed into one of these over the years. While it looks perfectly normal on the outside, on the inside it's been rotted away and corrupted. For starters:
  • Once you use the Witch Paper for anything—and keep in mind these things are everywhere—your soul becomes bound to the company and keeps you inside the building forever. One of the first things Brian does as part of his initiation is use Witch Paper to bind his soul to the building, thus trapping him there until he's legally let go. Which, considering there's no bosses and no CEO, is never. Unless he completes his contract...
  • The first three floors are somewhat normal. The canteen on the first floor is normal, and the second floor residences are okay as well, but poorly-lit, packed with wandering workers, has a a strange initiation ceremony to be promoted, and contains a massive pool of poisonous gas. Floor three is security and I.T, which are both normal.
  • Floors four through six are where it gets weird. Floor four is the Hive, the basic work area for normal employees, but the place has completely deteriorated and is rotting. The lights are off, the workers have become feral husks of their former selves, Human Resources is literally staffed by monsters and there's a roaming monstrous printer called the Dot Matrix that kills anything that moves. Most of the floor is also covered in a toxic gas coming from the pool in the second floor. The fifth floor is a normal office space for higher-up employees and serves as your Hub Level, but contains a coworker who went mad and locked himself in Office D, where he went crazy and killed everyone. Floor six is off-limits.
  • Floor seven through ten are incredibly strange. Floor seven is a library and archive room, replete with massive shelves of books. Floor eight is a garden in-doors, being a park-like area that also contains the bodies of the Sintra family. Floor nine is the "Executive Suite", locked to all lower class employees. This is because it's a downright horrific art gallery of extremely disturbing works of art by real-life surreal-horror artist Suguru Tanaka. It's staffed by two monstrous Receptionists with no faces, and contains the severed head of the first Sintra android. Mr. Spader spends most of his time there, but he's an okay guy. Floor ten is the CEO's office, which has been vacant for years.
• Enfant Terrible: In the Executive Edition alternate route, you wind up in the Sintra residence on floor two, where you're periodically chased by "Little Princess Rei," a kind of murderous ghost-memory of Rei that wants to play Hide and Seek—with stabby consequences if she finds you. Fortunately, she can be temporarily placated with candy.
• Entitled Bastard: Chapman believes that, due to his wealth and birth, he deserves everything. In the Executive Edition, you can give it to him.
• Eye Scream: Sosa at the Birthday Party. And then later Brian if the player chooses to let one of the snakes bite his eyes during the Endgame.
• Face–Heel Turn: One of the endings added in the new story path has Brian become the new Sintracorp CEO.
• First Day from Hell: It's literally Brian's first day and he's subjected to creepy happenings, trauma, and a near death experience before he even learns what his job is supposed to be! His job turns out to be to kill the Witch responsible for the aforementioned events and everything else going wrong in the company.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At the start of the game Hugo goes to their boss' office to get Brian's ID card, and shortly afterwards Brian gets a call telling him to go to Office D to get it. When you go there you get locked inside and nearly killed and when you get back to your own office you find out the card was in your boss' office the entire time, but for some reason Hugo never just came out to give it to you and he was the only person who could have made that call. It's pretty clear right from the start that he does not have your best interests in mind.
  • After getting the Hexenhammer to Sintra, she informs you that any woman can be a witch, since one of their powers is the ability to swap bodies with someone. Which just happens to be what happened with Rei Sintra.
  • During Brian's trip through the Hive, he's forced to head into Human Resources. While there, he outwits a mysterious talking mouth embedded in the wall into giving him a photograph, and a while later remarks that it's like he was talking directly to the Witch. As it turns out, he likely was. The Mouth has the same green forked tongue that the Snake has, as well as the same whispering voice.
  • It seems silly at first, but at the motivational meeting, Col. Dumont tells a story about an encounter with the Witch and then warns you to work hard and to especially not be loitering in the Canteen lest she catch you. Hugo's Birthday Party is in the Canteen, and guess what happens to everyone there.
  • One of Corvo's notes to his companions references a "tadpole" whom has been helping him in attempting to hunt down the Witch. There's only one person running around the building in a frog mask.
  • The Athame is a weapon mentioned to be one of the only things capable of killing the Witch. It is also specifically noted to be capable of warding Witches away from whoever has it. It's also specifically noted that there are no bosses as the Witch will take out anyone next in line to take over as well as anyone who has been in the company long enough. Yet somehow Hugo is set to become the next CEO due to seniority at the company...
  • In the cutscene where AM explains the Witch's backstory you can see Domori's eyes turn from red to the same shade of green as Rei's eyes when Rei disappears, hinting at the fact that it's actually Rei's soul in there.
• Fun with Acronyms: Sintracorp's labor union is called the United Sintracorp Syndicate Revolutionaries, or U.S.S.R.
• Golden Ending: Saving all your work friends from the Witch and getting Rei back as the head of the company results in a positive ending for everyone - except Hugo, who is Driven to Suicide. However, he's been such an utter monster that it's unlikely anyone will mourn his demise.
• Grand Theft Me: It turns out this is what happened to the missing Rei Sintra when Domori used her power to swap their bodies. This resulted in the tragedy of the Sintra family as "Rei" went missing and "Domori" was blamed and eventually killed after things started going wrong.
• Guide Dang It!: It can be difficult to find out puzzle solutions without looking some of them up. For example, in order to gain access to the Sintra family crypt you need sleeping pills, which are only given out from one of your co-workers on the fifth floor, in a room you may not visit much.
  • In Chapman's side quest, you have to take the promotion test for him, but as Chapman tells you, they don't tell you the rules other than that you will be disqualified if you leave the circle for more than 3 seconds. It then leaves you to try to avoid damage from the workers with boxes for heads coming at you one at a time. The actual goal is to touch five of the smiling boxhead workers while avoiding the angry ones.
• History Repeats: In one of the Executive Edition endings, Brian becomes the CEO of Sintracorp. After a brief downturn for the company, the stock price begins to skyrocket. After the credits, it's shown that Brian has adopted a girl who appears to be a witch like Domori, and has an ominous snake talisman around her neck ...
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Health is regained by eating/drinking.
• I Choose to Stay: Kate, if she's rescued at the end, decides to keep working at Sintracorp. Brian too, if he chooses to go with her to the rooftop.
• Inside a Computer System: Sintranet is the company's virtual system, which is represented in the same top-down perspective as the rest of the game.
• Interface Screw: If Brian gets bitten by a snake, you'll be forced to choose which body part was bitten, which will apply a permanent negative effect until you get healed. The possible options are:
  • Ears: The audio gets muted.
  • Eyes: Everything becomes pitch black.
  • Hands: Can't interact with anything.
  • Mouth: Can't use healing items.
  • Nose: You drown faster underwater.
• Item Crafting: To an extent, certain ingredients can be combined to make food items that restore much more health.
• It's All About Me: Hugo. He has betrayed, stepped on, and caused the deaths of a multitude of people all so he could work his way up the ladder to take control of the company. Even after the events at the Birthday Party where he outs Brian as a Hunter and subsequently causes everyone else at the party to be transformed or killed and the Witch pretty much takes over the whole of the building, he's happily gloating at the CEO's office and planning for his promotion. When confronted, he shows no remorse and acts as though he is perfectly justified in his actions.
  Hugo: No one can trample on others more rightfully than I can. No one in this company deserves this position more than I do. Nobody, Brian.
• Jerkass: Chapman. Though he does Take A Level In Kindness if Brian saves him.
• Justified Save Point: Given that Witch Paper is portrayed as being magical and soul-binding, saving is done by "copying your soul" onto Witch Paper using a copy machine.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: There are two major routes in the game: one from the base game, and another added in the Executive Edition. Within each route, there are several different endings depending on a choice you make at the very end.
  • In the base game, you choose whether to stay at the company with Kate, or leave forever.
  • In the alternate route, you choose whether to let the company die with Rei, take over as CEO, or let Chapman take over.
• Living Motion Detector: The Dot Matrix. A few people will give warnings ahead of time that trying to run when one of those things is around is a very bad idea.
• Luminescent Blush: Brian get a whole head verison after Kate kisses him on the cheek.
• Mechanical Monster: The Dot Matrix. Everyone is terrified of it, and with good reason.
• Merging Mistake: What the Witch does to Col. Dumont and his horse, Dada.
• Multiple Endings: With the release of the Executive Edition, there are now several endings, based on which route you take and certain choices you make in the endgame.
  • I'm Better Off At Home: Brian refuses to sign the contract. The credits play over an image of the red envelope with the contract inside.
  • Fired: Brian accepts Hugo's dismissal letter. He falls asleep on the train home, and has a vision of Rei's bell accessories.
  • Back Home: The "default" ending of the game. After killing the witch and returning Rei to her body, leave the building. Brian heads home, and sees the sun rise on a new day.
  • Stay With Me: The Golden Ending. Save at least Kate from the witch's bindings, then speak to her in the ending and go up to the roof with her. Brian has coffee with Kate on the roof.
  • Goodbye: The "default" ending of the alternate route from the Executive Edition. Brian kills Domori-in-Rei's-body, freeing the company from the witch's curse, and presumably destroying it in the process. He enters Sintranet one last time, and watches Sintra/Rei's soul walk into the sea as the system shuts down.
  • The Boss Of It All: One of the alternate endings of the Executive Edition. Brian installs Chapman as the new CEO of Sintracorp. Chapman proceeds to completely ruin the company as an ignominious failure.
  • The Secret Of My Success: The other alternate ending of the Executive Edition. Brian becomes the new CEO. He succeeds in turning around Sintracorp's fortunes, making it a massive success like the old days. However, in the end, he's become a jaded old man just like João Sintra, and he's adopted a new child with cat ears and a strange necklace ...
• Offing the Offspring: The Sintra family killed Domori after Rei disappeared due to her magic going crazy not knowing their daughters swapped bodies thus they actually killed Rei.
• The Pen Is Mightier: Pencils are the only way of permanently dealing with the regenerating land mines.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Once the events of the birthday party take place. It will be impossible to backtrack and obtain items or videos that were missed. The elevator is unusable. The 4th, 7th, and 8th floors are blocked off from the emergency staircase (the two latter are still accessible using a Door to Before if you previously unlocked them, not so much for the former). Almost all coworkers are dead or missing. The stores manned by Inay and Mappy will be gone, though it is still possible to use the food dispensers and machines in the canteen. Chapman's side quest of getting him promoted will no longer be available, meaning you won't get the cigarette carton (and thus the reckless contract) if you miss it. And if you don't have at least 3 boxes to reach the vent in Brian's office, you will be unable to rescue Sosa. The party event will happen automatically when you get on the elevator after checking the Sintra family tomb, so make sure to do everything before then.
  • If you've taken the alternate story path and the party gets cancelled, you'll only be able to go to floor 2, and you'll be unable to return once you get there. This will happen right after you steal the Athame dagger from Office F in the 5th floor.
• Personal Horror: Brian. He just has an all-round very bad first day.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The Witch and technically Domori.
• Pet the Dog: After Hugo becomes CEO, visiting him results in him firing Brian, as even though they are different, he agrees that normal people shouldn't be used as Hunters, allowing Brian to leave Sintracorp.
• Point of No Return: Once you put Sintra back together and have her lead you to the witch.
• Poor Communication Kills: What sets off the entire mess of events at Sintracorp.
  • Also literally with the Marketing Team. You have to get them back to their designated area, but you have to give each one a specific slogan to convince them to follow you. Choosing the wrong one will cause them to attack you.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Slight subversion, as while she's not truly evil, Domori's eyes are red and are shown to remain as such even when she's in Rei's body.
  • In addition, while it's difficult to tell due to the red filter, the body swap is hinted at as Domori's eyes are shown to change to green in AM's flashback. First in the picture after Rei disappears, they're shown turning green. Then in the next images when it shows "Domori" being hysterical (actually due to the body swap rather than "Rei" going missing) and later being killed.
• Red Herring: One of the initial clues about the Witch's identity is that she must be female and several different people hint that she may be one of Brian's coworkers. There is even a photo Brian has to get that is claimed to be of Her. The true evil is actually Domori's snake familiar who previously appeared as a necklace around Domori's neck. Other than the picture and A.M.'s flashback, there is no indicator of her and nothing that suggests this could be the case before the big reveal.
• Save Token: Copiers are the save points, but they won't work unless you have Witch Paper. In addition, some copiers won't work at all until you install a new ink cartridge first. Since both Witch Paper and ink cartridges are limited in the game and are noted to have other uses, you need to use both sparingly.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A couple of the game's endings.
  • At the start of the game, you can refuse to sign the contract and simply walk away without even accepting the job.
  • Once you meet Hugo as the new Sintracorp CEO, he will fire you and give you a dismissal letter, which allows you to leave the building.
• Schmuck Bait: The Mouth in Human Resources will try to trick Brian into getting closer to it. Yeah, don't do that.
• Ship Tease: Some with Brian and Kate. Due to Brian helping her with her work, she promises to get coffee with him and after dealing with the Dot Matrix, Brian does his best to convince Kate to leave the company with him until Colonel Dumont interrupts. Kate keeps looking around for Brian when setting up Hugo's surprise birthday party and during said party she kisses him on the cheek which give Brian a whole head Luminescent Blush.
• Shout-Out:
  • The name of the game, as confirmed by Word of God, is a reference to both American Psycho and Mob Psycho 100.
    • As pointed out on the official Discord server, the plot is inspired by Gremlins 2: The New Batch, in that the story involves the protagonist's first day at a big corporation and an attack by monsters (the Gremlins in the film, the Witch and Her Children in the game).
  • There's a grave that references The Count Lucanor.
  • To enter the gallery in floor 9, you must present yourself as a man of wealth and taste.
  • One of the marketing employees you have to herd in floor 4 quotes "Hawaii, Bombay, it's a paradise", which is taken from "Hawaii-Bombay" by Spanish band Mecano.
  • In floor 4, you can encounter Swery from Deadly Premonition, appearing as a Race Lift version of Swery65 (Hispanic rather than Japanese). Swery also mentions a number theory by Forrest Kaysen, one of the characters in the game.
• Shrine to the Fallen: There are three altars to A.M. in the building. Donating 5 credits lights the altar and having all three lit before checking Rei Sintra's grave will allow A.M. to appear and give more information on the Sintra family that wouldn't be revealed otherwise.
• Signature Sound Effect: The Witch's whispering. This almost always heralds her appearance, and becomes increasingly frequent towards the end of the game.
  Brriiiiiaaannnnn...
  • The horrible croaking sound of your workmates' bound souls, which is incredibly loud and is meant to help you find them.
  • There's a very specific noise Hugo makes whenever he appears wearing the Frog mask, which indicates when he's fixing to do something horrible to try to sabotage you. Or in the endgame, when he's left the Athame on the table, so you can distract him long enough to grab it.
• Spooky Painting: The gallery on the 9th floor. One of the paintings even damages you when you inspect it.
• The Stinger: Each of the main endings include a short sequence after the credits roll. Interestingly, which scene you get after the main route endings depend on whether you got the Athame, not on the actual ending.
  • There's an even deeper Easter Egg version of this. After getting at least one of the endings, a new saved game will appear, apparently dated from 1972. If you load it, you'll start off in darkness, hearing creepy noises. If you head up and to the left, you'll see a brief scene that seems to show what happened to the souls of Xiu Yang, João Sintra, and Rei Sintra. If you go to the right, you'll be attacked by one of the baby carriages from the Sintra house and unceremoniously dumped back to the main menu.
• Super Spit: The ladies in HR spit some kind of acidic green liquid at you.
• Survival Horror: The game is one of these, and is decidedly more old-school about it. The game borrows heavily from Resident Evil in both layout and design, even taking the Save Token mechanic straight from that game. Despite this, the game modernizes some aspects to ease up on backtracking: there are no item boxes (because Brian carries everything in his suitcase), and checkpoints are fairly plentiful. There's also no weaponry, though there are items that can temporarily distract certain bosses.
• Ten-Second Flashlight: The flashlight consumes batteries to work. Later on, a lantern can be obtained that offers wider range of light but eats up batteries twice as fast.
• Unfazed Everyman: Kate. Like Brian, Kate is also starting her first day. But while Brian is quite understandably panicking at all the strangeness in Sintracorp, Kate is fully aware of how abnormal things are but has found ways to manage and keep working. Despite the circumstances, even after she's rescued in the Golden Ending, she still chooses to continue working there and doesn't seem at all traumatized from the experience.
• Wham Episode: Hugo's Birthday, where he reveals Brian's existence as a Witch Hunter, immediately drawing her to Brian in an attempt to kill him. She also takes your work friends hostage here, bandaging their souls up and requiring you to hunt them down to save them.
  • In the alternate story path, Hugo suddenly cancelling the party.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: In the Executive Edition, it's made clear that both Rei and Domori suffered from their father's focus on the company.
• Workplace Horror: Brian's first day at the office quickly turns to him braving monsters, coworkers, and puzzles in order to kill the immortal witch lurking in the building.
• You Have Researched Breathing: You cannot hide under tables or inside cupboards until Kate tells you how to do so in the Hive.
• Young and in Charge: If you decide to finish Brian's job, it'll end with a revived Rei Sintra as the CEO of Sintracorp despite being only 11 years old.
• Your Head Asplode: This is what the Dot Matrix does to its victims.

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