Courage: The Videogame is an adventure fangame based on Courage the Cowardly Dog. It was released on August 18th, 2021 by NeitherNathan and chicogames. The game can be downloaded here.
The story, at least in-universe, is that Nathan found files for a supposed cancelled PlayStation game based on Courage the Cowardly Dog after buying an old hard drive in a yard sale to run some tests. With the help of chico, they managed to make a functional port of this game on Unreal Engine 4. Despite this, the game is incomplete, with some levels, content and files still missing. Thankfully, the duo managed to find another hard drive with more files related to the game and already promised everyone that an update will come soon.
As for the game itself, the plot (or at least the basic gist of it) is very basic: Courage is tasked by the Spirit of the Harvest Moon to collect three paw icons. While things starts out fairly simple, it soon takes a turn for the worse...
Courage: The Videogame provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The picture of a man and demon that can be found is titled "Robert W," with the last name being blurred out. Brightening the ending screen after the Robert ending however gives you the hidden text "Mr. Wheeler was there to greet me."
- Alone with the Psycho: Something that greatly contributes to the creepiness is how Courage is alone the entire game, to the point the player wishes someone would appear. Robert Wheeler is a character introduced at the very end of one of the routes, and with his creepy appearance and the implication he kills Courage offscreen don't make finally meeting someone else much better.
- Arc Words: The phrase "Old Wind" tends to come up often; there's a Morse code section that translates to "Learn the ways of the old wind," the data logs has a file with the phrase "The O██ W███ was all the way to the right," and the game's filename is "courageOW."
- Broken Bridge: The player is prohibited from going out the front door until they visit the computer room twice. The rest of the doors serve no purpose.
- Disguised Horror Story: The game starts with the show's main theme filling the background. If the player goes to the computer room and then back to the spawn area, they will find that the entire room is filled with a red glow. From there on, the game progressively gets creepier.
- No Ending: Because of the game's incomplete nature, most of the paths ends with a [DATA MISSING] screen, leaving the player with no option but to erase the game's save data to play it again. They're not just for show, though. Increasing their saturation in an image editing program shows some hidden text, possibly related to the game's story.
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: The game's "objective" is to collect the three paw prints. Courage doesn't collect any in any of the three endings. Hell, they never even appear in the game apart from the illustrations that are shown when Courage is first tasked to find them.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Most of the game's tense moments come from the fear of what may happen, not what does.
- Nightmare Face: In one of the game's endings, a bunch of coins appear in the spawn area leading to the computer room. Upon collecting a coin, Muriel appears as a "second player". Once you collect the last coin, Muriel's face darkens and distorts. The game crashes afterwards.
- Our Demons Are Different: One of the endings has you run behind the house in the black void, and interact with a picture of a live action man, with the caption underneath reading "Robert W[blurry unreadable text]". The game crashes, and when it restarts you spawn in the house. Going upstairs and walking down the dark hall has your controls lock and the hallway light up. At the end is a skeletal demonic figure with the face of Robert, and it is slowly gliding towards you. You cannot move, and when it reaches you it cuts to one of the ending screens.
- Story Branching: The game branches into three stories after solving a puzzle seen after going out the front door.
- Tick Tock Terror: One of the game's endings has you spawn in the house, go to the upstairs computer room, then when you leave all the furniture is gone in the downstairs living room, and the grandfather clock is in the middle of the room. Reaching the bottom stair of the stairway causes it to begin chiming. There is nothing you can do at this point except wander around aimlessly, and the game will crash upon the clock chiming for the twelfth time.
