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I've always felt alone... my whole life, for as long as I can remember. I don't know if I like it... or if I'm just used to it, but I do know this: being lonely does things to you, and feeling shit and bitter and angry, all the time, just... eats away at you.
Simon, introducing the game

Cry of Fear is a freeware horror game running on the Half-Life engine. Developed by Team Psykskallar, whose lead, Andreas "ruMpel" Rönnberg, created Afraid of Monsters.

The game takes place in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, where something has gone horribly wrong. A depressed teenager named Simon gets hit by a car, and after a nightmare, he finds himself in an alleyway with no idea how he got there — and the only way out is filled with abominations.

It also features a four-player co-op campaign following four policemen stuck in Simon's nightmare, as well as a side-story, in the form of Doctor's Story. In it, Simon's doctor vows to destroy the source of Simon's anguish.

The game first released as a mod on February 22nd, 2012, but a little over half a year later on September 12, 2012, the mod was approved for distribution as a full, separate game on Steam via the Steam Greenlight service. On April 25, 2013, Cry of Fear was released on Steam as a free game, no longer requiring Half-Life. The game can be downloaded right here.


Provides examples of:

  • Air Vent Escape: Deep in the lower subway.
  • All Just a Dream: The ending ultimately reveals the whole game to have been a representation of Simon's poor mental health.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: The hoodies and outfits. They can be found in levels or received for doing certain things, such as getting an Easter Egg or finishing certain endings.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • During the fight against the Doctor, Simon will get attacked by Suiciders entering from the entrance of the attic. Since Simon will get killed if he runs over to the Doctor and the Suiciders drop pistol ammo when killed, this is to ensure that Simon doesn't run out of ammo and make the fight unwinnable.
    • The unlockable gas mask is not lost along with the rest of Simon's inventory after the train crash, due to it technically not going into any of your bag slots.
    • As intentionally stifling as Simon's inventory can be, your ammo reserves will not take up valuable bag slots, no matter how much you've got hoarded on you at any given time.
  • Artistic License – Medicine: Morphine is treated as standard health restorative item in the game, and is intended to be taken whenever Simon's health goes low enough to instantly get him back to fighting shape, while also rapidly restoring his stamina in the process, though taking more than one in a short period of time and overdosing will cause temporary blurred vision and a swaying crosshair. There are many ways in which this is unrealistic. Though considering the entire game in-story is Simon's own writing, this is likely all but intentional.
    • Real morphine takes about twenty minutes to take full effect when injected intravenously as done in-game, and lasts for anywhere between three and seven hours, meaning that one shot of the drug should be able to last Simon at least half of the game at the very least. In fact, it's very inadvisable to take morphine repeatedly like demonstrated in the game, as it's an opioid, and will cause very debilitating addiction if the body becomes familiar enough with it to be dependent on it to function. And above all else, the average lethal dose of morphine is about 200 milligrams, meaning that taking whole syringes of it at once like Simon does can easily be deadly.
    • Some of the possible side effects to taking morphine include decreased respiratory effort, vomiting, nausea and low blood pressure, all of which contradict the invigorating properties it gives in the game and are only even partially reflected in the "overdosed" state. The developers seem to have incorporated this effect from adrenaline instead, which does accelerate the heart's blood circulation.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: The eye on Sawer's back.
  • Author Avatar: Simon's appearance was based on the mod leader Andreas, while in-universe the Simon you play as is an avatar of himself in the book he wrote.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Several pieces of gear Simon can find or unlock tend to be a lot less practical than they seem.
    • The Shotgun, ironically enough. Despite its high stopping power, it practically requires you to be close enough to your enemies to count their nose hairs to do appreciable damage, which puts you in danger of being hit, doubly so by the big enemies you'd actually want to use it against like Tallers and the Sawrunner. Not helping its case is the relative rarity of shells later on compared to the Glock's significantly more abundant ammunition, giving you poor mileage in the event that you do want to use it as a staple firearm.
    • The hidden VP70M pistol found in Chapter 4 is surprisingly powerful owing to its three-round burst mode, allowing it to make putty out of any non-boss monster that gets close enough to Simon. It also has a lot of recoil despite having a stock and being held two-handed, and only fires in three-round bursts, making it very hard to score headshots with, leading to wasteful use of ammo, either by missing the additional hits, or through overkill. To make things even worse, the VP70 uses its own ammo type that's not shared with the Glock, which is practically nonexistent beyond Chapter 4, thus severely limiting its use beyond being a gimmick weapon. The Glock, on the other hand, although weak, uses ammo that's widely available all throughout the game and isn't burnt up nearly as quickly, and even has a very handy optional Tactical Light attachment that removes the need for using the phone as a light source, whereas the VP70 is virtually useless in dark areas because, depending on the version, either you're stuck with the phone in your bag providing next to no light or using it one-handed results in even more obscene recoil.
  • Ax-Crazy: All the enemies. Book Simon, in ending 4 and Co-op.
  • Action Survivor: Simon is a textbook example.
  • Bag of Holding: As long as at least one of the six slots is free Simon can carry a stone tablet and a ladder. Ammunition is stored separately from the rest of the inventory, so you can carry about thirty different magazines for three or four different weapons on top of that.
  • Bag of Spilling: After a train ride gone wrong, you lose not only your current inventory, but your bag entirely as well, limiting you to three item slots for the rest of the game. The unlockable night-vision gas mask stays with you, however, since it's technically not part of your inventory; other unlockable items can likewise be picked back up from a hidden room right after the train crash, though given the now-limited inventory you'll sooner or later have to pick and choose which ones to keep.
  • Beard of Sorrow: Handicapped Simon has visible facial hair.
  • Bedlam House: Mölnberg Mental Hospital outside Stockholm.
  • Big Bad: Book Simon, the character you play as for the majority of the game, as well as the protagonist of Simon’s book. He is the manifestation of Simon’s mental issues and in almost every ending, he leads to Simon committing a Murder-Suicide. Defeating Book Simon leads to the Good ending, though it's more bittersweet as Simon's fight with him leads to a psychotic break where he kills two cops in real life.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Almost everything written in the game world is in Swedish. Posters, products, newspapers. They are all either there to cheer someone up, or they are referring to depression and/or suicides.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The "Good" ending of the game. If Simon killed Carcass and gave the Ruger P345 to the Doctor, Simon conquers the manifestation of his suicidal thoughts, but the intensity of his Battle in the Center of the Mind causes him to shoot two police officers in real life. Dr. Purnell helps him avoid prison, but he'll have to live in a mental hospital for the rest of his life. However, Purnell still looks after him and Sophie also visits him regularly, though she's found a new friend she's implied to be romantically involved with. Simon, however, is happy for her and supportive of her new relationship.
  • Black Comedy: The joke ending. David Leatherhoff turns out to be behind the wheel of the car that hit Simon in the intro... All while still looking blocky and using text with no voice to accompany him, with a slightly flanderized personality ("Sorry man. I'm fucking stoned.").
  • Blade Below the Shoulder: The "Faster" enemy type has the third kind, both forearms and shins replaced with sharp blades.
  • Black Bug Room: The whole game, since it's a fantasy world in Simon's book, but Chapter 8 especially counts.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Most of the monsters with discernible faces have these. Or rather, the empty sockets where their eyes would normally be.
  • Blatant Item Placement: What full Glock magazines and syringes filled with morphine are doing lying on the ground everywhere when both guns and morphine are heavily controlled in Sweden is anyone’s guess.
  • Bland-Name Product: Pasnonic, CBS, The Phone Touse, Shillips, and Nosy. Swedes will recognize their real life counterparts.
    • "Had Shoulders" shampoo can be found within the apartment building. It even uses the same bottle design as real Head & Shoulders shampoo.
  • Block Puzzle: In the Gustav Dahl Park, with statues of animals.
  • Blood Bath: Simon receives a text message calling for help upon first entering the apartments, but as soon as he actually reaches the apartment of the person calling for him, Simon finds them dead in the bathtub, filled with their own blood. Simon is oddly calm at the sight as he takes the key out, though this is because, as the Developer Commentary notes, the person was originally just dead in the bathtub and all the blood was added later. In the ending variations where Simon skips fighting Carcass, he murders Sophie and hides her body within his house in the same manner.
  • Body Horror: The Twitchers from Afraid of Monsters are back and lovely as ever!
    • The Human Flower.
  • Bookends: The game formally begins in Simon's room in his home in Kirkville, albeit in a nightmare sequence, and it's technically his final destination before the final boss fights take place.
  • Boring, but Practical: The Glock 19 handgun is very weak on a per-shot basis compared to the other firearms you may come across. It also has the best handling, boasting high accuracy up to mid-range if you aim down the sights, can be dual-wielded with either the phone for better illumination, the knife for melee defense, or even another handgun if you have one to sparenote . Ammo for the Glock is widely-available regardless of where you are, and Suicider enemies even drop loaded magazines if you manage to dispatch them quickly enough, and as the cherry on top, the optional Tactical Light attachment eliminates the need for using the phone altogether if you can find it.
  • Bonus Dungeon: Heaven, a recreation of the finale of Afraid of Monsters.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Simon's Book is bar none the most powerful weapon that you can unlock in the game, making very short work of everything on your screen, especially in tandem with the Camera, while also not affecting your Accuracy stat no matter how much you miss with it. It's unlocked by beating the game on Nightmare with an S rank, which is practically the hardest challenge Cry of Fear can throw at you anyway, so it won't be able to help you much beyond serving as a cheese weapon when rerunning the story mode for fun.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: In similar fashion to Sven Co-op, donating money to the team at their website gives you a weapon for use in-game, which is a Brügger & Thomet MP9. Before a November 2020 update, people who contributed maps were also given a Heckler & Koch MP5 (after the update, one simply needs to beat the game and join the now-public Steam group originally used to contribute maps). Neither are on the level of completely overpowered, however - they have heavy recoil with no way to set them to semi-auto, and ammo is still limited (the MP9 and its ammo replace about half the spawns for the already-rare VP70, and the MP5, while starting you with an impressive 9 mags plus 1 in the gun itself, cannot get any more anywhere in the game).
  • Brutal Bonus Level: Doctor Mode, which tasks you with going from Saxon Avenue to one of the rooms in the apartments. There are no morphine pickups (thus, any health loss will linger permanently), the way is full of monsters, and little ammo is available for your revolver, forcing you to run past most enemies and carefully count your shots.
  • Camera Perspective Switch: Happens in co-op when reviving another player, and in singleplayer when killed by the Sawer.
  • Captain Ersatz:
    • Sawrunner (not to be mistaken with the boss Sawer) brandishes a chainsaw, howls loudly when attacking, and wears an uncanny mask. He is just like Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it does not make him any less terrifying.
    • The Slower strongly resembles Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise.
  • Carry a Big Stick:
    • A wooden branch is the emergency weapon Simon gets hold of when he enters the forest. It isn't as strong as the nightstick, but it can be swung faster than it.
    • Slowers generally use claw hammers to attack the player while Simon himself needs to find a sledgehammer to break down a weakened brick wall in one of the subway stations. The sledgehammer doubles as melee weapon, which has a slow wind up, but its damage is incredibly powerful, only beaten by David Leatherhoff's fire axe. Book Simon also uses a sledgehammer to attack the player in the good ending.
  • Central Theme: Suicide.
    • Several background elements make note of it, such as newspapers telling of a higher rate of depression, and various messages on walls or notes, both uplifting ones warning against suicide and mean-spirited ones encouraging it.
    • Three out of four normal endings of the game end in Simon committing suicide, and the fourth is him staving off an attempt at it while suffering a nervous breakdown.
    • You first find the shotgun in the hands of a corpse with its head blown off and a splatter of blood along the wall behind it, very clearly having committed suicide via gunshot.
    • The Faster enemies stab themselves in the throat in their death animation.
    • The first boss, the Sawer, saws his own head off upon defeat.
    • The Suicider enemies will shoot themselves in the head if the player gets close.
    • Sophie, or rather, Simon's manifestation of her in his book, jumps off of a roof to their death.
    • The Drowned enemy attacks Simon from a distance by psychically controlling him to put the gun he is holding to his head and pull the trigger.
    • The Hangers found in the forest, as their name suggests, hang themselves when Simon gets close, dealing damage by landing on him.
  • Chaos Architecture: Particularly noted when Simon runs through a horrid, blood-filled maze, chased by hanging monsters with whipping tentacles for heads that kill him instantly if they catch him. As soon as he escapes and closes the door, he takes a moment to catch his breath before getting back up and opening the door again - it's just a regular hallway now.
  • Chainsaw Good: More like Chainsaw BAD. Chainsaws have a lot of use in this game, but only by enemies, not the player - and any of them catching you with it is instant death.
  • Climax Boss: After chasing The Doctor for much of the game, you finally fight him in a pistol duel at the end of the second-to-last area. Being a living human armed with a gun and enough sense to take cover,note  his combat style is distinctly different from the abominations you've been fighting for the entirety of the game. After you beat him, the sun rises and, though you still have a handful of monsters to fight and dark corridors to explore before the ending, the remainder of the game has a distinctly different tone to it.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Simon shows himself to be this a couple times, particularly in how he acquires his first two firearms: the Glock is grabbed from the dangling arm of a corpse in the ceiling of one apartment room with little hesitation, and he likewise eagerly takes the shotgun from a dead guy sitting in a chair with that shotgun in his hands and most of his head splattered over the wall behind him. He even has no problem taking a smoke break right next to that corpse if you have him use the lighter on the nearby pile of cigarettes, which replenishes some health.
  • Content Warnings: Parodying Capcom's content warnings of their earlier survival horror games.
    This game contains violence and gore, and can cause fear, depression, heart-failure and suicide. Users and viewer discretion advised.
  • Cosmic Retcon: The end of the Co-op campaign is this. Thanks to the reality warping abilities of Simon's book, the protagonists of the campaign are sent back in time and manage to prevent the car accident that paralyzed Simon in the first place, averting the entire events of the other campaigns.
  • Couldn't Find a Pen: You can find a few messages scrawled in blood, sometimes on paper notes and other times along a wall.
  • CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: A wholesome way of reviving dead players in Co-op, regardless of whether they were killed by being beaten, stabbed, or chainsawed.
  • Creator Provincialism: The mod is set in Sweden, where the two main developers live.
  • Creepy Basement: Below the apartments.
  • Creepy Child: Some of the enemies, particularly those introduced in the apartments, are of a distinctly smaller stature than Simon or the other enemies.
  • Cue the Sun: The sun rises after the gunfight with Dr. Purnell, which after having traversed both the city of Stockholm, the forest, and the asylum in the dark, might seem like a welcome change, especially as it seems to symbolize Simon overcoming one of the biggest obstacles on his journey home. Unfortunately, it's only a temporary respite, as there are still monsters to fight even in daylight, and the final revelation of the story is at hand.
  • Damage-Sponge Boss: Carcass, and Sawrunner in co-op and the custom campaigns.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Ironsights are activated by Mouse 3, while the right mouse button does a melee attack with the gun. Try to play Killing Floor, or any other shooter (except Left 4 Dead and maybe the original First Encounter Assault Recon, the former of which in particular had the same issue for the same reason) after you've beaten Cry of Fear.
  • Dark World: Simon is already trapped in an abandoned, monster-filled version of Stockholm. And every now and again, he takes a trip into yet another, even worse reality.
  • Deadly Book:
    • Simon's book, in which he's poured all the negative emotions brought about or amplified by his injury. The co-op story and Doctor Mode all but confirm that it's become powerful enough from this that it can even pull other people into Simon's nightmare as well.
    • In a more literal version of this trope, Simon's Book, which you can obtain by beating Nightmare Mode with an S ranking, has infinite ammo and high damage, allowing you to crush any enemy that comes your way.
  • Deadly Doctor: Dr. Purnell. Subverted in that the Purnell we see in normal gameplay isn't the "real" Purnell, who's actively trying to help Simon. Double-subverted in a sense, however, in that his insistence on helping Simon heal without the use of medication lead him to suggest he write the book, which even in the best ending makes things much worse before they get better.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: When Book Simon appears in co-op, all colors of the game world shift to black, grey and white. In order to turn it normal, the players must defeat him.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • A late-game puzzle requires you to assemble a pair of scissors to cut a rope. You don't just have a knife to use for the purpose by this point, but the only enemies present in that map do - thus, if you can position them just right, you can get one of them to cut the rope in their attempts to stab you.
    • When you encounter the Drowned enemy, it forces you to put a firearm to your head and shoot yourself. Obviously, you can equip a melee weapon to avoid the effects (whereupon an unborn baby bursts out of its stomach to slash at you with a knife), but a gun with no ammo also works in evading the effects since guns require ammunition to work.
    • When the Doctor asks Simon to retrieve the P345 in the asylum in exchange for a key, Simon will follow the Doctor's request and search for the gun. If Simon has the P345 in his inventory, Simon will tell the Doctor that he already has the gun.
    • The Final Boss for the bad endings is taken out in a cutscene, though he still has a health bar that depletes as you choke the life out of him once you get to him. Since he's another Simon, your health bar will also deplete as you choke the life out of him, emptying at the same time the boss's does, because the whole thing is symbolic for Simon killing himself.
  • Did Not Get the Girl: None of the endings aside from possibly the Co-op ending include Simon and Sophie as anything more than somewhat-distant friends, regardless of the former's feelings. In the ending triggered by trusting the Doctor but running away from Carcass, Simon murders Sophie to make sure nobody else can take her from him after his suicide.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: Depending on your choices, Doctor Purnell can be this.
  • Driven to Suicide: Several cases. Most prominently, the game itself is Simon attempting to stave it off - nearly all the endings end with his suicide. Who he takes with him in death (or in his psychosis as he fights off the urge to do so) depends on the ending.
  • Don't Go in the Woods: The first section after escaping the city proper is a dark forest, filled with crazy and/or suicidal women and the Sawrunner.
  • Double Unlock: In-game the player can find paper sheets which, after beating the game, reveal what to do to collect every other unlockable.
  • Downer Ending: The ending chosen depends on two major choices Simon can make across the game, whether to stay and fight Carcass or run away, and whether to give the Doctor the P345 or keep it for himself. Of the four endings will play depending on your choices, three of them end in complete tragedy.
    • Spare Carcass/Keep the Gun: Simon kills both Doctor Purnell and Sophie, keeping the latter's body in a bathtub. In his suicide note, he lashes out at the world, only wishing that he could've killed more people, and hopes that "whoever is reading this" will be haunted by his dead body for the rest of their lives.
    • Spare Carcass/Give the Gun: Simon kills Sophie, so he can keep her with him forever in death, but spares Doctor Purnell. His suicide note is somber, thanking Purnell for trying to helping him, but claims sadly that his efforts were for nothing.
    • Kill Carcass/Keep the Gun: Simon kills Doctor Purnell but spares Sophie, wishing that she doesn't see the actions he's committed. His suicide note is also somber, realizing that Purnell's suggestion of the book therapy made him realize how screwed up his life was, and made him decide to kill him out of spite.
  • Down the Drain: Simon travels through three separate sewers across the game: the city sewers after traversing the apartment, the Ronald Street sewers after the first run through the subway, and one last sewer between the forest and getting home to Kirkville. All three are cramped and dark, and the latter requires a fair amount of swimming.
  • Dual Wielding: The player can combine a light source, most melee weapons, and any pistol (except the VP70, at least in some versions) with each other. With certain pistols, Simon can also go Guns Akimbo, although their performance will predictably suffer. Reloading also cannot be done when dual-wielding. On the other hand Simon can also do the Sword and Gun combo, where he has a melee weapon and a pistol in either one of his hands, only a smidge more practical than two guns mainly because if you run out of ammo, you still have the melee weapon to protect you if you don't have the time to put something away and reload.
  • Dull Surprise: Not in the gameplay proper, but in one of Andreas' lines in the developer commentary "sewer3_2", just after the Mace fight makes it sound like Andreas is being forced to give commentary on that section of the game against his will. However, his monotone delivery of it makes it sound more like he's just mildly inconvenienced.
  • Dying Dream: Chapter 8, as it's the chapter where Book Simon fights and kills Real/Sick Simon, representing Simon's depression overtaking him and leading to his suicide and murders of Sophie and/or Dr. Purnell.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending:
    • Unlocking the best ending requires facing and defeating the game's That One Boss despite having an escape route, and trusting the apparent Big Bad and giving him the gun, with which he cuts your health bar down further than if you kept it from him.
    • Doubly so with the ending of the Co-op campaign. The team of cops go back through Simon's book realm, fighting through the demons that lie within, and in doing so manage to actually warp reality and reappear in the past. They manage to stop the car from hitting Simon in the first place. This alters reality to where Simon, due to not being paralyzed, managed to go on to live a happier life, even starting a relationship with Sophie.
  • Easter Egg: The Let's Player PewDiePie was given a version of the mod in which Stephano and Ruben could be found in a hard to reach room in the subway station of chapter 5. Unfortunately, it was patched out and wasn't put back.
    Simon: Stephano? What the fuck, Pewdiepie?
    • It's also possible to unlock David Leatherhoff's Axe.
    • Completing the game and gaining access to Chapter 1's Padlock room will let you get a package you can mail to Simon's home. The package contains pills, which were a plot-point in Afraid of Monsters, and gains you access to the secret 5th ending which includes a level that's a variant of AoM's final level. The room itself also contains a creepy painting that appeared in Afraid Of Monsters, and leaving it after taking the package has a brief jumpscare that reuses one of the screaming voiceclips used in Afraid of Monsters.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Simon's book ultimately becomes a low-key one, as Doctor's Story and co-op show that it's capable of drawing people other than Simon into his nightmares.
  • Emo Teen: Simon, though he's got very good reasons. You can even find scars along his wrists from self-cutting whenever you use a morphine syringe to heal.
  • Emotionless Girl: Sophie seems like this, though she shows a burst of emotion right before jumping off the roof.
  • The Ending Changes Everything: In the endings, it's revealed that you were not playing as the real Simon the entire time. Rather, you were playing as an Author Avatar that he made for his book, which is his attempt to battle his depression and suicidal mindset - and in most endings, he loses that battle, which is represented by you continuing to play as the author avatar as he kills a wheelchair-bound "Sick Simon". Only in the 4th ending do you play as the real Simon, staving off suicide by killing "Book Simon" while he attacks you with every weapon he grabbed across the rest of the game.
  • Enfant Terrible: Most of the children found in the apartment, and they were apparently all victims of the pedophile.
  • Escape from the Crazy Place: Simon is trying to get away from the haunted Stockholm and back home.
  • Eye Scream: The weakness of the first boss is a giant eye on his back, that Simon must either punch, stab and cut with the switchblade, or shoot.
  • Everything Fades: Impressive as the visuals are, it's still GoldSrc.
  • Epilogue Letter: Every ending but one in single player.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There's a few literal signs that make Simon wary of the way to progress forward, such as the "I WANT MY FEET BACK" and "Watch out For the Trees" signs as well as some chapters in the story blatantly point out the core element of what is happening/going to eventually happen, especially with the "It's Not Over Yet" and the three variations of the "My Life Ends Here" chapter.
  • Fade to White: When starting a new game from the main menu. In game, after a mindscrew at the end of the second chapter.
  • Fake Longevity: The segment where Simon has to retrieve two fuses in order to start up the train to escape from Stockholm is deliberately designed so that the player will have to Back Track for an uncomfortably long stretch of the map, all the way from Saxon Avenue back to the apartment complex of Chapter 1 to find the items they need, and then going back the way they came to return to the subway station. If the Developer's Commentary mode is enabled in a second playthrough, ruMpel himself basically spells this out.
  • Fake Ultimate Mook: A good chunk of the bosses are like this. The Sawer and Mace all have easily exploitable weaknesses (in fact, if you're careful when strafing around it the Sawer can be beaten with just your knife), Carcass can be easily beaten by camping behind something and shooting him with a hunting rifle (or, if you don't care to get the good ending, just flat-out leaving), and the final bosses are either a Flunky Boss that occasionally moves stage hazards around or a "Get Back Here!" Boss you just need to pump enough lead into at the relevant points. There's a reason most players remember the fight against Dr. Purnell most fondly.
  • Fetus Terrible: The babies who burst from the wombs of their pregnant mothers and attack the player with knives.
  • Final Boss: This game has two, depending on the endings you've achieved. In Endings 1 to 3, the real Simon serves as the final boss, with the player's triumph over him signifying his suicide in the real world. In Ending 4, the Simon you've been playing as the whole time fills this role instead.
  • Firing One-Handed: While Simon will use his handguns like that when dual-wielding them with a light source or another weapon, the trope is played rather realistically, as the gun's accuracy and recoil will be noticeably worse than if wielded alone, and he can't reload without putting away the other item.
  • Flunky Boss: Simon sitting in the wheelchair in most of the endings. Dr. Purnell at the end of the asylum will also occasionally get help from gun-armed enemies ambushing you from behind, mostly to act as a source of extra ammo for you.
  • Follow the Leader: Obviously, this game is strongly influenced by Silent Hill.
  • Footprints of Muck: Sometimes appearing out of thin air after turning your back on a door that was locked a minute ago.
  • Foreboding Architecture: On your way to find the key to a padlocked door in chapter 1, you pass through a set of alleyways that positively scream "enemies will be here". Sure enough, once you get the code and are on your way back through that same alleyway...
  • Foreshadowing: A LOT of the game has Simon using - or losing - his legs.
    • Particular standouts are the animation if the Sawer kills you (he cuts Simon in half at the waist) and the cutscene at the end of the maze filled with Hangmen (Simon's legs suddenly give out after a flashback to the "real" Simon and he has to crawl just with his arms through the final stretch).
    • A letter talks about the book tormenting Simon before the story talks about it for real - but it's in Latin.
    • Some enemies don't have legs, or don't use them. Others commit suicide either as their death animation, their attempt to attack you, or as a reaction to getting too close to you.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Averted big time for the monsters. If an enemy gets in the way of another's attack, it will take the brunt of the hit and may even die, allowing for some clever plays where skillful footwork can let the player conserve resources by having monsters accidentally kill each other.
  • Gaiden Game: Doctor's Story, where Anti-Villain Dr. Purnell enters Simon's nightmare, equipped only with a night-vision-enabled gas mask and his trusty revolver. It's rather similar to the 4th Survivor in that there's a heavy focus on evading enemies, as supplies and health are extremely limited.
  • Game-Breaking Bug:
    • While not related to the game directly, if you don't get the all of the pages telling how to get all of the unlockables they disappear on subsequent playthroughs and the only way to get them to spawn again is by resetting your unlockables.
    • Certain versions of the mod don't get along well with Steam, particularly causing sound issues such as no sound, music cues not triggering properly, or the death-screen music looping forever after dying and reloading, requiring running the launcher directly from the game's folder.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: A rare antivillainous version: Dr. Purnell in Doctor's Story uses one, and it has night-vision. After completing Doctor's Story, Simon is able use it in a New Game Plus run.
  • Get on the Boat: There is a boat that Simon uses to cross a lake close to the end, mirroring a scene from Silent Hill 2. It's bright out and you can clearly see to the other side of the lake in question, though, so rather than adding tension it's meant to be a Breather Episode between the climactic fight in the insane aslyum and the final stretch to the ending.
  • Ghost City: Stockholm, if you discount the various inhuman abominations now populating it - as far as regular people go, counting Simon there are maybe five people left. By the end of the game, all but Simon are dead: Sophie commits suicide shortly after meeting her, Dr. Purnell is killed in a shootout after harassing and hampering Simon for most of the game, and the other two were killed by Purnell before even appearing on-screen, plus another two dead by other means from whose corpses Simon acquires the Glock and the shotgun. The joke ending adds a sixth, David Leatherhoff, who turns out to be responsible for the whole mess after he tried to drive while high. This is all intentional, considering the Stockholm as seen is just Simon's "setting" for his book.
  • Giant Mook: The Tallers.
  • Give Me Your Inventory Item: In a later part of the game, the Doctor wants a gun from Simon in exchange for a key. He gives you the key, but shoots you in the shoulder, permanently cutting your health bar. By how much depends on whether you give him the gun or not, since said gun is slightly more powerful than the one he already has.
  • Good All Along: Dr. Purnell is actually Simon's mental representation of The Shrink, who is just a normal doctor in real life who wants to help Simon out. Trusting him and giving him the P345 in the asylum despite all of the trouble he puts you through by locking doors behind him is one of the two decisions needed for the best ending.
  • Guide Dang It!: The park puzzle, particularly for the fact that it's based on cardinal directions in an area with no immediately-obvious point of reference.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: The first boss can kill Simon by sawing him in half. Foreshadowing Real Simon's disability.
  • Hammerspace: Despite the small size of his inventory, Simon can still carry around a comically large arsenal, enough morphine syringes to kill a lesser man, a theoretically unlimited amount of ammunition, and a metal step ladder longer than he is tall, all neatly squeezed inside of his messenger bag and pockets, as every item that can be picked up will only take up one slot regardless of how big they actually are. The flip side to this is that he can't carry a lot more of smaller items either, due to the unified inventory sizes.
  • Hellevator: In the beginning the pedophile rendered the apartments elevator unusable for everyone without an access code. The children had to bear it and take the stairs, where he would wait and pull them into his apartment. When Simon finally finds the code and take the elevator, it goes down. Deep in the earth it stops, forcing Simon to take the stairs even deeper.
  • Harder Than Hard: Nightmare difficulty. In addition to enemies dealing more damage and having more health, syringes heal less health, and you are limited to five saves, and you need cassettes, which take up one slot in Simon's inventory, in order to save.
  • Hell Is That Noise: A lot of the enemies have very loud, very disturbing screams. One in particular, the handstanding "Upper", found in the tunnels under the forest is ridiculously so for no particular reason.
  • Humanoid Abomination: The majority of the enemies Simon encounters. Special mention goes to the Sawrunner.
  • I'll Kill You!: Simon shouts this at Doctor Purnell near the end of the game after he shoots Simon in the shoulder.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The pedophile killer implies himself as such, with one of his notes comparing the ease with which he cuts through one of his victims to cutting food.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: What happens to Simon if he walks too close to the organic, growing abomination that sprouted in the middle of Ronald Street. An unused animation for the Faster had them being able to do this to Simon if they killed him, as well.
  • Impromptu Tracheotomy: The aforementioned Faster, the women with their limbs replaced with huge metallic spikes, commit suicide by stabbing themselves in the throat once they've taken enough damage.
  • Immune to Bullets: Mace, as per his status as a Puzzle Boss. Bullets don't harm him for some reason, so you have to take advantage of a nearby device to electrify the water he's standing in (and convenient areas of dry ground to keep from electrifying yourself, too).
  • Infinite Flashlight: Every portable electric light source. Justified in that they all seem to employ LEDs. Simon's phone does run out of power as part of a plot event when you first enter the subway, but after a section forcing you to crawl around vent shafts with flares that are slightly less portable or permanent, you find a spare battery that lasts until you lose your phone (and everything else) in the train crash.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: The FAMAS and Simon's Book, both of which are unlocked by beating Nightmare mode. The FAMAS has infinite reserve ammunition and Simon's Book deals a massive amount of damage at range (and also literally doesn't require ammunition), but both of them require the player to beat Nightmare mode to unlock, and with an S rank at that for the latter, at which point you will have cleared the game inside and out already, making their gameplay usefulness dubious beyond being Bragging Rights Reward.
  • "Instant Death" Radius: Getting too close to either the Human Flower or Sawcrazy will result in instant death. The Human Flowers are specifically scripted so that getting within touching distance of them triggers a kill scene, while Sawcrazy swings his dual chainsaws non-stop, unlike the Sawrunner who will at least take a short pause before he will start one-shotting you.
  • Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: To an obnoxious degree. The forest has the most glaring examples, such as an empty wooden box that is somehow too heavy to just push over, requiring you to search around that part of the forest for two halves of a pair of scissors to cut a rope and drop a TV on that box to break it.
  • Invisible Wall: Almost everywhere. Together with the inventory system, the game could be described as a first person Resident Evil.
  • I Should Write a Book About This: Played for Horror. The entire game is a book written by Simon, as a therapeutic exercise by his therapist. Instead of helping him cope, the book only exacerbates his problems and either leads to a Murder-Suicide of him and Sophie and/or Dr. Purnell or killing two cops performing a welfare check on him in an act of psychosis.
  • Jump Scare: Expect massive amounts of them, with special mention to the screaming head that appears at the end of the first nightmare.
  • Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Doctor's Story and a specific area in co-op introduce a second variation of the Faster with a steel cage around their head, making them immune to headshots.
  • Laughing Mad: The note that foreshadows the plot tells of Simon doing this.
  • Lawman Baton: While Simon himself isn't a cop, he can get the nightstick to replace his switchblade. Played straight in the co-op mode however as all of the playable characters are police officers and have nightsticks as a part of their arsenal. All of them can also dual-wield it with the light sources, switchblade or the pistols.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: The Doctor's Story. Simon's psychologist is trying to help him to get better through therapy using a variety of means, ultimately getting him to write the book in which Simon concentrates all his personal demons. Seeing this has backfired in a huge way, he takes the nontraditional approach of donning a gas-mask (with built-in night vision at that), grabbing a revolver, and slogging his way through Simon's diseased mind in an attempt to destroy the source of the problem personally.
  • Limited Loadout: You have a limit of six inventory slots in general, in which anything you normally find (save for ammo, which is stashed separately) can be placed - you can take as many guns as you want, but that leaves less room for things like a light source, morphine syringes to heal yourself, or keys and other important items. After the train out of Stockholm derails, Simon loses all of his items and his bag, and with it three of his six inventory slots.
  • Lock and Key Puzzle: All over the place. By far the longest-winded one involves fuses - you have to take a fuse from a college to open an electrically-locked door, later grab that fuse and find another one to open another locked door, then find an alternate path to get past that door so you can take both fuses back to open a third door with them.
  • Locked Door: As above. A lot of these are thanks to the work of the Doctor.
  • Magical Camera: A camera can be unlocked as a weapon after completing the game in 2 hours and 30 minutes. The camera by itself doesn't deal any damage, but it has the effect of freezing any enemy in place that gets "shot" by the camera. This effect does not work on bossesnote , won't affect enemies that are in their spawn animation and, due to a bug, killing a Suicider frozen by the camera will also kill Simon as well.
  • Malevolent Architecture: Normally, the worst you get are roads blocked off by piled-up cars and the like. But every now and again you cross over to... somewhere different, and then it's a whole different ballgame.
  • Malevolent Masked Man: Quite a lot of enemies appear to be wearing crudely-made masks, with special mention going to the Sawrunner, who wears four bloody theater masks strapped to his head and concealing his face. Dr. Purnell also appears to be one, as far as his "Book" version is concerned.
  • Marathon Level: The unlockable Doctor's Story is one, featuring a relatively short level but completely devoid of tape recorders, meaning that it must be beaten in one sitting. Worse still is the absolute Zerg Rush level of enemy placement in the map, complete with an appearance from Sawrunner, while entirely lacking in healing items, meaning that dying (which is not hard) will wipe all progress and forcing you to start all over again.
  • The Maze: And there's a chainsaw-wielding psychopath in it. Have fun! One maze during a Nightmare Sequence late in the game features omnipresent, invincible hanging monsters that kill you instantly if they catch you.
  • Mental Story: One of the big twists of the game is that everything going on is in Simon's head, as the result of him focusing his negative emotions into a book his doctor asked him to write. Every character Simon directly meets who isn't already dead or a monster of some variety is a flanderized sort of mental projection of the real person: Sophie claims Simon was the only guy at school who was nice to her, admits she doesn't have any strong feelings for him without any sort of attempt to talk him down gently, before vaguely hinting at depression and then jumping off a roof for little reason, while the Doctor is actively antagonistic and harmful, blocking Simon's path multiple times, murdering the only other regular humans still in the city, and at one point shooting Simon in the shoulder for no reason. There's even two Simons, the still-mobile one you play as and a wheelchair-bound one, who fight each other at the very end since they jointly represent the real Simon's suicidal tendencies — the twist being that the Simon you play as for most of the game represents the side of him that wants to die, so in three of the four normal endings (namely, all the ones where Simon kills himself) you continue playing as the mobile Simon and taking on the wheelchair-bound one as the Final Boss, while the fourth ending (the one where Simon resists killing himself) suddenly puts you in the wheelchair-bound Simon's shoes as the still-mobile one assaults him with all the weapons you picked up across the rest of the game.
  • Mental Monster: Most of the enemies have themes of depression, suicide and mental issues. This all reflects on the protagonist Simon who during the course of the story is writing a book about his issues and so the Simon you play as sees them as malformed monsters.
  • Menu Time Lockout: Averted with the inventory screen. The game isn't paused when you access Simon's inventory, in order to add more tension to situations where you must quickly retrieve or drop something from your bag while monsters are closing in on you.
  • Mind Screw: All over the place. From the various Nightmare Sequences to the same apartment building decaying more and more as you explore and backtrack through it (including an apartment where the gravity is seemingly flipped only for the furniture), to a door opening to a completely different hallway right after it was closed and re-opened at the end of Chapter 4. The entire game plays out like a playable descent into madness because it’s a story being being written by a man in the midst of one.
  • Misidentified Weapons:
    • The TMP, which is actually an MP9. The weapon name isn't fake, it's just technically wrong - the TMP was the basis for the MP9 in reality, so other than manufacturer and some minor differences, they really are essentially the same weapon. One of the devs said once that they incorrectly labeled it while modelling the weapon, and decided not to fix it because "some gun-nerd got pissed off about it". After a patch, the gun itself is now properly called the MP9, but ammo pickups are still mislabeled.
    • Another semi-issue is with the assault rifle. The inventory screen refers to it as the Stag Arms AR-15, which is a real civilian rifle, but the notifications for picking it or its ammo up off the ground call it the M16, the designation for US military versions. Again, the name isn't fake, it's just inconsistent. Not helping matters is that the in-game model is a mix between Stag Arms' version (no bayonet lug and the markings include Stag Arms' logo, a "Model Stag-5.56" identifier, and the semi-auto setting on the selector labeled as "FIRE" with no marking for the burst setting) and the military M16A2 (the fixed carry handle and the fact that it can fire in bursts).
    • The same goes for the Glock 19, which is actually a Glock 17 (though with Glock 19 markings on the in-game model). They're both based on the same design, though the 17 has a longer barrel and a larger frame which can only accept magazines with a capacity of 17 rounds or more, compared to the Glock 19's standard 15-round mags (which wouldn't even fit in a real 17, since they're too short). This interestingly mirrors a similar issue with the first handgun in the previous Afraid of Monsters, which was modeled after a full-size SIG P226, but named after and given the smaller magazine capacity of the compact P228.
  • Mood Whiplash: Nothing ruins the game's serious and grim atmosphere better than a bright pink Hello Kitty hoodie, although you'll have to have beaten the game and unlocked it to even wear it, so unless you're deliberately going out of your way to put it on, it's not going to affect your experience much if you don't pay attention to it.
  • Monster Clown: Sawrunner.
  • More Dakka: Zig-Zagged Trope. Outside of rewards for beating the game (the FAMAS and, as of the 2020 patch, the MP5) or donating to the mod team (the MP9), almost every weapon in the game is either manually-operated or semi-automatic only, and even the ones that aren't like the VP70 and M16 only fire in bursts rather than full-auto. On the other hand, save for the M16, all of the weapons that do fire in any sort of automatic fashion have no option for more controlled semi-auto, which makes them tough to use outside of close ranges and/or overkill against weaker enemies.
  • Multiple Endings: Eight in total. The four main endings for the normal game, the ending of Doctor Mode, the Co-op endings, and the joke ending.
    • The ending you get for the main game depends on what you do during certain events. Most end with Simon killing himself, with who he takes with him depending on your choices - if you skip Carcass by jumping into the window, Simon kills Sophie in the ending so nobody can take her away from him, and if you refuse to give the Doctor the gun in the asylum, Simon kills Doctor Purnell in the ending for his supposed failures in helping Simon. Both overlap, with Simon being somewhat remorseful that things couldn't be made better if he kills only one of the two, while being much more angry and wishing that he could've taken more people with him if he kills both; only if you do neither does Simon resist killing himself - and in that case, he ends up killing two cops who were coming to check up on him and happened to catch him in the midst of a psychotic episode, which still lands him in the asylum under Dr. Purnell's care for the rest of his life.
    • The joke ending is unlocked by finding the "Weird Package" after beating the game once and dropping it into a mailbox, which overrides any of the normal ending decisions. When you reach Simon's house, rather than the book, Simon finds the package again, and opens it to reveal a bottle of the same pills from Afraid of Monsters. He takes them and immediately goes through a new variation of that mod's normal ending — only for that light at the end of the tunnel to turn out to be the headlights of an oncoming car. It's revealed that the car that hit Simon in the intro was driven by none other than David Leatherhoff, who is still blocky, still talks in text, and stoned off his gourd. Simon is very understandably upset.
    • The endings for the other side-modes have their respective protagonists trying to fix Simon's issues, Doctor's Mode ending with Purnell finding the book and burning it to end its hold over Simon, while the co-op endings have the police officers either stop the car crash that would have crippled Simon in the first place or enter his house and stop him from having another psychotic episode.
  • Musical Spoiler: When calm music starts playing, you can relax. However, if this is suddenly playing, start running.
  • The Musketeer: It is possible to hold a pistol and a melee weapon at the same time, but most players avoid it due to lack of a reliable light source at hand or the ability to reload the gun once it runs out. It's more convenient to equip melee and firearm separately.
  • Mythology Gag: Several to the previous Afraid of Monsters:
    • On a few separate occasions, Simon wonders to himself whether he's just hallucinating the monsters he's been fighting.
    • Your collected unlockables are all stashed in a room very early in the game, which on one wall includes a painting from the mansion in Afraid of Monsters. Simon will note "that's one creepy fucking painting" when you look at it.
    • Grabbing one of the unlockable hoodies or one of the secret pages plays the same sound effect from finding one of the code-letter papers in Afraid of Monsters.
    • Much like the "gm_general" of Afraid of Monsters, one of the unlockables is a bullpup assault rifle (a FAMAS this time) with Bottomless Magazines; the game even reuses the same infinity-symbol HUD icon from AoM to represent the infinite ammo.
    • If you pick up the Weird Package after beating the game once, exiting the room you found it in will trigger a quick jumpscare - the same one that popped up whenever picking the path that leads to the bad endings to Afraid of Monsters.
    • The college where Simon finds the first fuse needed to enter the subway is reminiscent of the hospital at the start of Afraid of Monsters; the front half consists of Simon traversing a well-lit but completely abandoned public space, then he's forced to cut the power to progress, leading to the back half where he runs up and down the now-darkened area, unlocking doors in sequence while under constant ambush by fast-moving enemies. The main difference is that compared to the old and nearly-silent Twitchers, the Faceless here are constantly screaming.
    • Discounting jokes and side-modes, there are four regular endings, three bad and one good, just as in the Director's Cut of Afraid of Monsters.
  • Nightmare Face: The last Jump Scare in the prologue. It comes up again during an event when trying to acquire a second fuse to follow the Doctor further into the subway.
  • Nightmare Sequence: The entire game turns out to be one.
  • Nintendo Hard:
    • The game can be an ordeal to get through even on normal. Simon has very limited ammo for his weapons and melee is way too risky to use regularly. Enemies can be difficult to deal with without wasting ammo or health, Simon cannot reload his pistol while using the flashlight (which is extremely problematic given how dark the game is), and the game’s limited inventory forces you to leave behind precious supplies in order to make room for key items.
    • Getting an S rating in Nightmare mode. You not only have to beat the game in under 2 and a half hours with 90% accuracy but you can only save a maximum of 4 times and only use 2 syringes throughout the entire game. The Camera and gas mask are practically must-haves for completing it.
  • No Name Given: The police officers in Co-op.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Simon does this to his wheelchair-bound self in all the bad endings.
  • Notice This: Every item that can be picked up glows red when the player is near.
  • Nothing Is Scarier:
    • Once again the prologue, early parts of the forest, and the long dark hallway beneath the roped off apartment. Quite tense walking through there with your phone out as you hear the voices discussing the condition of a therapy patient. Always waiting for something to start chasing you, but nothing scary actually happens. At least until you open the door at the end.
    • Also of note is a completely dark area in Chapter 2. Soon after entering, you hear a door slam. This is soon followed by the roar of a chainsaw, repeated several times and getting closer each time. Towards the end of the area, a more subdued version of the Sawrunner's theme starts to play. Unsettling (especially if you already know about the Sawrunner), but nothing attacks you in this area.
    • One of the areas the Sawrunner actually chases you through ends with you hitting a switch to lower a barrier, preventing him from getting to you. Sometime later you have to pass back through this area, which includes raising that barrier again. Almost immediately after you do, you hear his signature roaring and the sound of his chainsaw off in the distance, leaving you on edge as you pass through the now-empty corridors to try a different path through them.
  • Off with His Head!: The Doctor is seen decapitating a man with a saw. Earlier, a killing is seen recorded on a tape in which the murderer used a pair of gardening shears to behead his victim, and the Sawer boss removes his own head with his chainsaw upon being defeated.
  • One Bullet Clips: Zig-zagged. When you reload most weapons, Simon simply drops the magazine rather than putting it away, and as such you lose any bullets still left in the magazine. The shotgun is realistically topped off one shell at a time, and can be interrupted between shells. The need for a round in the chamber is also acknowledged, but only in the typical post-Call of Duty video-game manner: an empty reload takes a little bit of extra time as Simon has to rack the slide of a pistol, pump the shotgun, etc. before he can fire again, but reloading early doesn't let him keep a round from the previous magazine. The revolver and hunting rifle follow a mixture of both the shotgun and other mag-fed weapons' rules; the revolver loses all loaded bullets on triggering a reload because Simon dumps every bullet without retaining the unfired ones, while the hunting rifle will only lose the round currently chambered as the bolt is pulled open, and both are then reloaded one round at a time, allowing the player to cancel it partway through.
  • Our Monsters Are Weird: Including giant masses of human flesh with tentacles that can throw cars around and impale Simon for an instant death; women who float as if held up by strings, psychically controlling Simon to try to force him to commit suicide, and attack in close range via an unborn fetus bursting from their stomach to attack with a knife; twitching men who attack with hammers, some of which are strung up on walls by more tentacles for little reason, and one or two more who have three heads and multiple eyes; and police with misshapen heads who shoot on sight, but commit suicide when Simon gets too close.
  • Point of No Return: For the first half of the game or so, everything takes place within one big city. You can return to any areas of it that you want to at any time, until you finally get a subway train working and leave. After it derails, you're then stuck in the surrounding forest for the last part of the game.
  • Police Are Useless: Played straight in the main game. Simon tries to contact them after the first monster encounter but can't get through, and if you use the phone in regular gameplay to try and call an emergency number like 911 or 112, all that Simon gets is distorted screaming; the only other times the police are so much as hinted at are finding the corpse of one and a couple ruined police cars, some of which are close to where you first encounter Suiciders, which implies that they are the police (and thus too busy shooting you or committing suicide to help you). In the bad endings, the cops arrive too late to stop Simon's murder-suicide, and in the best ending, they get gunned down while checking on him. Averted in the co-op campaign and survival mode, in which police are the player characters, and depending on the ending, they either manage to stop Simon from suffering a psychotic episode or even being hit by a car in the first place.
  • Post-End Game Content: To collect and use all unlockables, you must beat the game at least once.
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: This is how the Drownednote  kills you if you get too close to it with a loaded gun equipped.
  • Psychological Horror: The game is focused on exploring the madness of Simon through the environment (which twists and changes whenever Simon has a psychotic fit), enemies (each of which is a manifestation of Simon's mental issues) and flashbacks with his doctor.
  • Puzzle Boss: Mace. He's immune to your weapons and one-shots you with his. There is water pooled on the floor, so one must activate all the electric switches in the room, then scramble onto the part of the floor raised above the water, to shock him until he dies.
  • Red Herring: Relatively early on in the game, Simon asks Doctor Purnell why he is wearing a gas mask, to which Purnell responds with, "Do you think I want to turn into one of them?" implying that some sort of outbreak has occurred. There is no outbreak, nor is any kind of infection involved. It's all a book written by Simon to try and battle his inner demons, and the Doctor is being unhelpful for no other reason than that's how Simon is interpreting the real Purnell's attempts to help him overcome his trauma without medication.
  • Retraux: David Leatherhoff, when he shows up, still talks in text laid over the center of the screen and looks exactly as he did in Afraid of Monsters, he even makes the original low-quality Half-Life footstep sounds while walking. The last chapter for the joke ending also takes the form of a new version of the Afraid of Monsters bad endings, complete with the original Half-Life mod stylings and textures, and the "Memories" campaign in the official release also has a chapter that's a pretty close recreation of the opening hospital.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Played with. Dr. Purnell uses one in Doctor's Story (and Simon in the main story, if he didn't give the Purnell the P345), and it's plenty powerful and accurate, but it fires and reloads slowly and has very little ammo. The accuracy also hinders it, ironically, because it means you have to be really precise to ensure you actually hit. Purnell himself asks for you to retrieve a new weapon to replace it in the asylum, the P345, which is better than the revolver in every way - better damage, more ammo per magazine, and can be reloaded more quickly.
  • Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: While the weapons are normally modeled correctly for right-handed use, combining one with a light source or melee weapon causes Simon to hold them in his left hand, with the model obliging by mirroring itself into a left-handed gun.
  • Roar Before Beating: Sawrunner loves doing it. One of your only defenses against him is that he takes a moment to actually swing his chainsaw at you, and is immobilized while doing so. This is in contrast to the Sawcrazy, who never stops swinging his chainsaws, so is instant death to even get near.
  • Room Full of Crazy: In the pedophile's apartment, there is a room with photos of his various victims (including notes of his scrawled over them about how long they lasted or what they tasted like) all over the walls.
  • Rule of Symbolism: There are metaphors all over the game but the two major choices that decide what ending you get are the most significant.
    • The fight with Carcass represents Simon's resentment towards himself, a monstrous sack of meat bound to a chair. This comes after Sophie's rejection of him. Defeating Carcass symbolizes Simon moving on from his bitterness, and possibly rekindling his friendship with her. However, choosing to spare Carcass and flee means leaving that resentment to fester, to the point he obsessively kills Sophie to have her to himself in death.
    • Trusting the Doctor with the gun is a representation of Simon's relationship with Purnell. Up to this point, Simon has remained stubborn and unwilling to open up to Purnell's attempts to help him, so his doctor suggests writing the book to help him get his dark thoughts and anxieties out of his head. Trusting him with the gun means Simon trusts that Purnell knows what he's doing, but it takes a bigger chunk of his health, showing that while it'll get worse in the short-term, things will improve in the long-term. Meanwhile, not trusting him with the gun means Simon completely stonewalls his attempts to help him, and less health is docked when the Doctor shoots him, symbolizing that Simon didn't get his hopes up, but his frustrations ultimately leads to him killing Purnell in a fit of rage.
  • Run or Die: Sawrunner is the dangerous madman Simon must flee from during a chase sequence, and one swipe of his chainsaw kills you instantly. Killing Sawrunner is possible, but it requires wasting all of your ammo and cherry tapping with melee whacks. It is not worth running around without ammunition, and he'll just come back again for the next chase sequence.
  • Save-Game Limits: In a possible reference to Silent Hill and the early Resident Evil games, the player can only save with tape recorders found scattered around the environment. On Nightmare difficulty, the player must find cassette tapes to be able to save. Specifically, there are only five cassette tapes in the whole game that the player can save with. Which is convenient if you're trying to unlock everything in the game, including Simon's Book, since you have to save 5 or less times if you want an S rank.
  • Scenery Gorn: See beautiful Stockholm sights as they're warped and twisted by some unknown power. Special mention to the alley that's collapsed to make way for the Human Flower.
  • Screaming Woman: The hanging women in the forest. They double as both an environmental hazard and a Jump Scare.
  • Secret Level: Heaven, a Shout-Out to Afraid of Monsters.
  • Self-Harm: Simon has several gashes on his left wrist, which he had apparently cut prior to the game's start. They are visible when he injects himself with morphine. One hallucination sequence also features various figures suspended in cages, continuously cutting themselves with knives.
  • Serial Killer: A pedophile who murdered kids, whose trail Simon follows through the apartments for a while early on.
  • Shout-Out: The VP70 is one to Resident Evil 2, a game that one of the devs has said to be a major source of inspiration for Cry of Fear. The gun even has the same exact attachments as Leon's handgun when upgraded in that game.
  • Sinister Subway: A good chunk of the mid-game has Simon navigating the subways.
  • Sitting on the Roof: Simon and Sophie do it when they meet.
  • Skippable Boss: Carcass. But if you do, Simon kills Sophie in the ending.
  • Slasher Smile: The Final Boss version of Simon found in Ending 4 always has one of these.
  • Sprint Meter: Simon can only run for a few seconds before running out of stamina, though it will regenerate. The stamina bar is also used for holding his breath underwater, steadying the hunting rifle while aiming, and most importantly dodging. Simon can speed up his stamina recovery by crouching, and allowing it to completely exhaust will drastically slow Simon down and spend several extra seconds before it slowly replenishes, which in the middle of a fight will often be fatal.
  • Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: The Drowned and later the Crazy Runner.
  • Suicide Attack: The Babies with their exploding heads will run up to Simon and explode, trying to stab him with a spike sprouting from their neck-stump.
  • Surreal Horror: There's copious amounts of Body Horror from the enemies that attack Simon and block his path, to the chaotic architecture that twists and warps in ways not physically possible, and the nightmare sequences combine the above into something very disturbing and horrific. And that's without taking into consideration that this world is actually the mental projection of a severely disturbed and paraplegic adult.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
    • Getting hit by a chainsaw or a giant morning star doesn’t inflict heavy, but survivable, damage, it just flat out kills you regardless of health.
    • A Drowned’s Psychic-Assisted Suicide will fail if the gun you’re holding isn’t loaded.
    • Running at the Doctor in the middle of the gun fight against him will earn you a bullet to the brain and a trip back to the last tape recorder.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: If a boss is coming up, with the exception of Mace (who is a Puzzle Boss), you will know because the game will have more ammo than usual and maybe a morphine syringe or two scattered around right beforehand.
  • Solve the Soup Cans: The game has several puzzles that don’t make sense to be there, such as the park statue puzzle. Probably the most egregious is with the train ambush in Chapter 5, where bringing a severed foot to its case somehow causes the train to crash.
  • Teleporting Keycard Squad: Surprisingly rare given that it started as a Half-Life mod, but it still happens. Harbor College, for instance, which is nice, brightly-lit, and devoid of enemies... until you grab the fuse you need to get through the subway, then it's pitch-black and filled to the brim with Faceless.
  • There Are No Therapists: Averted with Doctor Purnell, though his insistence that Simon recovers without the use of medication may not be helping things.
  • Too Awesome to Use: Basically any firearm other than the Glock, due to the rarity of their respective ammo types and the beefiness of powerful enemies. Put that together with the fact that Simon discards the remaining ammo in the magazine when reloading every gun sans the Shotgun and Hunting Rifle makes it much more of a hassle to use them if your resource management is poor. The community-exclusive MP5 breathes this trope with its ten magazines total (one already loaded) that cannot be replenished in any way short of picking it up again from a secret room.
  • Torture Cellar: The basement of the apartments, where a murderer (possibly the aforementioned pedophile) killed his victims.
  • Tragic Monster:
    • Book Simon in ending 4 is implied, through his clothing and equipment, to be the same Simon that was the Player Character for the entire game. The real Simon is required to kill him.
    • All normal endings except the "good" one: Simon, in his wrath, kills Sophie and/or his doctor before offing himself.
  • Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: The game deliberate eschews several Acceptable Breaks from Reality common to games (especially other shooters) to make Simon much more vulnerable than other FPS protagonists, befitting its more Survival Horror focus.
    • Simon cannot reload his gun while dual-wielding it with something else (which includes your flashlight, a borderline necessity due to how poorly lit most of the game is) and Simon discards all of the remaining bullets when reloading magazine-based weapons, both of which put you at risk of exhausting a magazine mid-battle.
    • Simon’s stamina depletes extremely quickly and recharges slowly while his capabilities in platforming sections are very clunky. In his favor, however, the levels are generally designed more around mirroring real-world areas and not purely gameplay arenas, so there isn't a whole lot of jumping he needs to do, especially not in quick succession where his low stamina becomes especially apparent.
    • Enemies are fast and attack unpredictably, so melee is extremely risky most of the time and isn’t a viable option over firearms in most situations until you get your hands on sufficiently-powerful ones that can generally put down a threat in one swing.
    • Simon only has 6 slots of inventory (3 after losing your bag and all of your items after the train crash), key items take up space as well, and there are no item boxes to store items. As the game goes on you will frequently be faced with tough choices when you inevitably have to drop items (more specifically weapons and healing items) to make room for key items.
    • The game doesn’t pause when you’re in your inventory so using key items in a room with enemies either requires clearing the room first or being fast.
    • Simon is not Made of Iron. Most enemies and bosses that use heavy weaponry (such as Sawer and the Sawrunner’s chainsaw) will instantly kill you.
    • There are no items that permanently increase Simon’s stats in any way. The only time Simon’s stats change are when the Doctor shoots you in the shoulder near the end of the game, which, logically, permanently costs you maximum health.
    • Simon is a troubled teenager, not a soldier. As such, he's awful at handling the recoil of his guns (with fully automatic guns being practically uncontrollable), and reloads comparatively slowly. The same goes for the co-op cops, as they would have only received rudimentary firearms training, and even then likely only with handguns.
  • Unique Enemy: The Three-Headed Slower, the Krypandenej variant of the Crawler, and the Upper are only encountered once in the game's campaign.
    • A handcrab from Afraid of Monsters appears as an easter egg. It behaves exactly as it does in its home game (being a reskin of the headcrab from Half-Life). It has since been patched out.
  • Universal Ammunition: Averted, in contrast to the earlier Afraid of Monsters. Ammo pickups are identified specifically by the gun they go to, so even guns that do fire the same bullets in reality (e.g. the Glock using the same 9mm bullets as the VP70 or the donators-only MP9) can't swap ammo because of incompatible magazines. Even guns that could play this straight, because they're loaded one round at a time with loose ammo, avoid this by the game simply not having more than one gun in their caliber - there's only one 12-gauge shotgun, only one .303 hunting rifle, and only one .357 Magnum revolver.
  • Unlockable Content: Several items such as Purnell's Gasmask, David's Axe, the camera from the intro and outfits, are all available to collect and use after at least one playthrough.
  • Unreliable Narrator: The near-entirety of the game centers around and takes place within Simon's book as a personification of himself, making you wonder what inspired the events inside or otherwise aside from the obvious causes, like his insanity and being able to walk in it. Whatever caused them is never explained, instead left open to interpretation by those who play. This is probably intentional.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: The enemies attack Simon with hammers, knives, scissors, chainsaws, a mace, and axes, all of which cannot be gained during gameplay. Of all of them, only the axe is available during a second playthrough. That said, enemies equipped with guns (Suiciders and Doctor Purnell) will drop them on death for Simon to get ammo from.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The first boss, Sawer. His attacks are all one-hit kills, so it's a good idea to practice your dodging skills.
  • Waking Up Elsewhere: Simon gets hit by a car, and then wakes up in an alley. As it turns out, the car accident was very real, but the alley was just part of Simon's "story". It seems that Simon thought this particular "introduction" was a good one for the book.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Assuming the players successfully beat the Co-op campaign, it's never explained what became of the Swedish police officers after stopping the would-be driver who were originally responsible for Simon's crippling, since they were sent into the past to stop the accident from happening, but it's not shown whether they managed to return to the present day or not.
  • White Mask of Doom: Some of the more insane enemies wear paper masks, resembling those once worn by Plague Doctors in real life during the bubonic plague. The somewhat less insane Doctor encountered wears a gasmask, which is more gray.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Simon in the worst ending.
  • Wound That Will Not Heal: Simon takes a permanent ding to his health due to a plot-specific injury, specifically when he's shot by Purnell in the asylum. This is represented as an opaque red section that lowers the cap on his health bar. By the time the final act rolls around, he will have taken enough damage for his max health to be reduced by a third or sixth, depending on whether or not you give the gun to the Doctor, making it much easier for monsters to kill him.
  • Your Head A-Splode: The Babies and Suiciders both give themselves this result, from respectively trying to attack you (due to a spike shooting out of their neck to damage you) and getting too close to you (whereupon they live up to their name by shooting themselves in the head), or getting headshotted by Simon.

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