Darth Wiki / Sylph

A horror game which uses anxiety as a mechanism, much like insanity in the Amnesia games. You play as fourteen-year-old Cecilia Brannon, a girl with severe anxiety issues, and who is abused by her mother and stepfather.

She has a group of "friends" who enjoy tormenting her, and one night, they invite her out to a haunted house near their town, intending to leave her there. Soon enough, however, they get really drunk and decide instead to play a game. They hunt her through the mansion like a game animal, intending to kill her.

She must evade them while battling her anxiety, which threatens to shut her down and leave her helpless. High anxiety levels render her unable to fight back, make her jittery and more likely to make mistakes, cause her to do stupid things like scream or bolt, and eventually, cause her to shut down entirely and lie in a ball on the floor. If her anxiety maxes out, she will lose consciousness, and game over.

There are a series of bosses, each one in pursuit of Cecilia, and each one a danger to her. In order, they are: the "friends," her mother, her stepfather, the police, and finally the owner of the haunted house. If her anxiety levels are low enough, she can fight back. If not, she can only run, hide, and try to confuse them. Cecilia comes out of the experience one of three ways: She is either dead (game over), alive but the same as ever, or alive and with a new confidence and mastery of her anxiety.

Tropes:

• Characters
  • Cecilia:
    • Abusive Parents: Has them.
    • Ambiguous Disorder: She has severe anxiety, but the specific disorder is never mentioned.
    • Broken Bird
    • Desperately Craves Affection: The whole reason she stays with her awful friend group and her horrible parents is because she's terrified no one else will ever love her.
    • Final Girl: If she survives, ends up being this - everyone else either dies horribly or is otherwise eliminated from her life. Then, of course, she has to confront the house's owner.
    • Flat Character: Starts as this. Can change if you make the right decisions.
    • Guilt Complex: Part of what fuels her anxiety.
    • Misery Builds Character: If you want the Golden Ending, Cecilia's going to have to go through a lot of hell.
    • The Resenter: Secretly this, but she would never stand up for herself... unless something big changes.
    • Shrinking Violet: Was this, until a group of vicious, popular "friends" pretended to take her in. Still painfully shy and insecure
  • Becca
    • Alpha Bitch: Cruel, hot, popular, and very blond. She even plays tennis!
    • Flat Character: Supposed to be this, to serve as a backdrop for Cecilia's story.
  • Ruby
    • Beta Bitch: To Becca's Alpha Bitch.
    • Flat Character: See above.
  • Mark
    • Flat Character
  • Luke
    • Flat Character: Averted. Luke is the only one of the band who genuinely cares for Cecilia. When his drunken friends decide to kill Cecilia, he (drunkenly) tries to defend her, and Cecilia has the choice of risking her life to help him, or letting him be murdered.
    • Honor Before Reason: Even if it was the right thing to do, trying to fight four drunk, Ax-Crazy top athletes by himself instead of calling the police wasn't his brightest idea. To be fair, he was drunk at the time.
  • Noah
    • Blind Obedience: To his popular friends.
    • Flat Character
  • Stepfather:
    • Abusive Parents: Is one to Cecilia.
    • Bratty Teenage Daughter: Views Cecilia as this, and her anxiety as self-pity and selfishness.
    • Flat Character
    • Hair-Trigger Temper: Gets really angry over a lot of things, including stubbing his toe. Naturally, he blames it all of Cecilia.
  • Mother:
    • Abusive Parents: Is one to Cecilia.
    • The Alcoholic
    • Child Hater: Is this, especially towards her own child.
    • Flat Character
    • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Spends almost her entire period chasing down Cecilia cussing her out, despite the fact that she has no idea if Cecilia's listening.
  • Police:
    • The Cynic: One of the police officers sent by Cecilia's stepfather to track her down is this. He assumes that Cecilia is doing drugs and that her stepfather is just trying to "stay out of the doghouse," going so far as to call Cecilia "another one of these shallow druggie brats" and her stepfather a "whipped piece of white trash."
    • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The second police officer uses a lot of mild or censored swears.
    • The Ditz: The third police officer, a rookie following the other two around, is this. He might just get himself killed if Cecilia doesn't do something.
    • Flat Character
  • House's Owner:
• Gameplay
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: The drunken friends are made the easiest boss by their tendency to be easily confused/distracted.
  • Bystander Syndrome: Cecilia can have this is you choose to let Luke be murdered, or to let the police officer fall to his death in the mansion. It doesn't do good things for her mental state, but it will keep her out of danger.
  • G-Rated Mental Illness: Strongly averted. Having to fight your own mind in a dangerous situation can and will kill you.
  • Survival Mantra: One way to lower anxiety is to reassure yourself.
  • Teens Are Monsters: Kicks off the whole plot.
  • Toxic Friend Influence: Also part of the catalyst for the plot.