The Executioner is a Visual Novel with RPG Elements, created by the Russian studio Lesser Evil Games. It sought funding on Kickstarter in 2017, but ultimately failed to do so. Nevertheless, it still released on PC through Steam on September 25th, 2019.
It is set in late-medieval Europe, and the player takes on the role of a young son of the Royal Executioner. The story begins with your Father himself facing the block, having "confessed" to treason earlier. Since executions are a family business, the King calls upon you to do the deed, and to take on the family mantle earlier then expected.
Accepting soon renders you the crucial instrument of King's justice, torturing the confessions out of the arrested criminals, and then rendering the prescribed judgements upon them. There are also social elements and narrative encounters for when you are have the time outside of the torture cellar.
Not to be confused with either the Web Game Executioner, the The Evil Within DLC, the long-running series of action novels, or the 1963 film The Executioner by Luis Garcia Berlanga.
Tropes present in this work:
- Asshole Victim: Your father, the previous executioner, is himself executed for treason in the prologue. The following flashback reveals he revelled in torturing confessions of treason out of lesser criminals just so that he could then have their sentence upgraded to a full-on execution. Reading his diary allows you to delve in more records of his crimes.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: One of the cases involves Vivien Dubois, a woman accused of murder, whose sentence (once you "establish" her guilt) is to be broken on the wheel
. - Deliberately Monochrome: In fitting with the work's dark premise and nature, all of the artwork is black-and-white, and color is only present as either bloodstains or colored bars in your menu.
- The Dog Bites Back: One of the earliest things you learn about your Father is that he treated his Assistant, who is an old and sickly man, pretty badly. On the day of his execution, the Assistant can barely contain his glee. He may even straight-up get the job if you refuse to succeed your father (and end the game early). If you continue with the game, he may still get to personally execute your Father if you can't go through with it yourself (in which case he'll botch it due to his infirmity, requiring multiple swings), but he'll be more than happy to just watch him get decapitated by his own son.
- Evil Versus Evil: This is the outcome when the player needs to torture genuine murderers and the like.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Your father is executed for treason in the prologue, an accusation which makes no sense on its surface. The next scene (though skippable) is a torture tutorial, which takes the form of a flashback where your character recalls the time he brought them along for help torturing a scribe, who has already confessed to stealing gold, and was due to have his hand cut off as punishment. Then, though, your father has you first intimidate him into admitting that he had help, and afterwards, he forces you to help torture the scribe until his will is so broken he confesses to plotting treason, and thus gets immediately sentenced to death. It immediately becomes clear the same thing happened to him in the present.
- Like Father, Like Son: Invoked from the start of the game, as you take over the family business of being the royal executioner. In your case, however, it's also tinged by (likely) being the one to execute him as well.
- Off with His Head!: The traditional method of execution, and the way your father meets his end in the prologue. If you do it yourself, you also have to pick up his head and demonstrate it to the crowd, as is the tradition. You can also pass on; the King will understand, and "kindly" allow the infirm Assistant to do the job in multiple swings.
- Patricide: State-sanctioned version, since the player is made to do this by the King to succeed your "treasonous" father. You can also pass on, but this actually seen as the more evil option, since you'll at least be strong enough to kill your father in one swing, which the only available substitute cannot do, resulting in a terribly messy and painful demise.
- RPG Elements: While it is played entirely through illustrated text screens, there are also features like several stats and an inventory.
- Sanity Slippage: Torturing people in a multitude of horrific ways isn't just awful on its own, but it also takes a toll on the main character's mental state throughout the game, so it soon becomes important to seek ways to get it back up outside of work, in order to avoid complete insanity.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You possess a wide array of torture techniques at your disposal, and you have to use at least some of them in order to advance the plot and get the King the "justice" he wants. There is an option to go for mental torture instead of physical, or for less-violent but more time-consuming approaches, like locking the victim without water for a long time, but there'll be times when neither may be enough.
- Villain Protagonist: Your character is a hereditary executioner, whose main, most demanding task is to torture the confession out of the people brought before him. While he may be fully sanctioned by King's law, and has some leeway regarding how much cruelty he can inflict on his victims, and on how he behaves outside of the dungeon, he'll never be more than a lesser evil.
