'Sup?
Can you escape the nightmare of a day?
You are a person. You are in a really weird town. You have to get out of it. And that's pretty much all the information you have.
Daymare Town is a series of point-and-click games developed by Mateusz Skutnik, who is known for Submachine and Covert Front, as a part of Pastel Games. The prominent feature that sets it apart from other point-and-click series is its unique art style. Everything in the games is completely hand-drawn by Skutnik himself. The heavily stylized visuals only add to the bizarre and surreal nature of the games.
The series is known for two things:
- Being incredibly hard.
- Being incredibly weird.
So far, there are four main entries in the series, and three side entries. Skutnik has said that the series will continue indefinitely, since there is no real plot to wrap up or end.
Particularly notable in that while it can be a bit scary or creepy, it takes place (obviously) entirely during the day, in a town with functioning shops and houses.
Tropes in these games include:
- Brick Joke: In the second game, the fisherman you help first yanks in a huge dragon-like creature, then throws it back. By the fourth game, you stumble upon this same dragon in a dry area that's somehow a fishing ground, and loot its dead body for items.
- Call-Back:
- In 4, you can find two men talking about fog. It's likely these two are the ones from 3 arguing over whether what they see is fog or mist.
- You can visit and explore the tower that you previously saw inside a book in 3.
- Crapsack World: Most inhabitants of Daymare Town live in Perpetual Poverty and suffer all kinds of other misery. In the second game an entire district has been quarantined due to infection and when you visit it, you can clearly see the distress in all of the residents' faces. The hospital in third game is locked down with a furniture barricade, apparently going out of business and the rest of the town doesn't seem to be faring any better. The Guard Captain demands ludicrous prices for the gate passes. Apparently the place is so bad that even feral birds opt to fly away, as the Ophtalmologist remarks.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The residents of the town are creepy-looking and sometimes rude, but few of them are actually hostile and some can even be friendly and helpful.
- Driven to Suicide: Played straight with one citizen in the fourth game, who appears perched on the edge of a cliff. Sadly, the player can't talk them out of jumping, and they disappear from the cliff later on.
- Featureless Protagonist: There is absolutely no information about who you, the player, are. Visually, you are only seen from afar and represented as a vague stick figure. Until Daymare Town 3, where you're seen as you (finally?) leave.
- Forbidden Zone: The 2nd game has a district that was "closed due to infection." Naturally, once you get the city keys, you can enter it. You're actually required to.
- Ghost City: Subverted. At first, Daymare Town seems completely abandoned, complete with desolate wind sounding across the deserted landscape. And then you start to draw the residents out of hiding...
- Guide Dang It!: If you're not using a walkthrough, these games are hard. Really hard. Skutnik did this on purpose, and he describes the series as "for advanced point-and-click gamers only." (Or, y'know, ones that use walkthroughs.)
- Hidden Elf Village: Possibly, Daymare Town itself. It's a hidden place that obeys totally different laws of reality than our world. You seem to recognize the weirdness of the place, meaning that you probably come from the "normal" world. Some inhabitants of Daymare Town react with incredible hostility to your presence within their town. Of course, this is assuming you're a human at all.
- Jerkass: Some denizens of Daymare Town won't budge a single hair to try to help you and mostly tell you off, if they say anything at all.The Librarian: "GRRRRRRRrRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!"
The Nurse: "Don't try anything stupid! I will put you down."
The Guard Captain: "Go away." - Kleptomaniac Hero: You're basically required to snatch nearly everything that isn't nailed down to get through the game.
- Lighter and Softer: Daymare Cat, a standalone platformer, is centered on music and has a more whimsical setting compared to the main series.
- Mind Screw: Forget logic, physics, and everything you know about reality. You're entering Daymare Town.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: Several of them. Two particularly bizarre ones are:
- In the first game: How do you free a creature from a set of shackles chained to the wall? You hand them a golden egg, apparently.
- In the second game: You have a fish! What to do with it? Give it to someone as a pet? Cook it and put it in the sandwich that you're already making as part of a puzzle? Nope! Take a knife and cut the fish's body open, revealing...a shiny piece of jewelry.
- Nothing Is Scarier: There's almost no music, and the town is usually quite silent. It is very unnerving.
- Pixel Hunt: All the time. This is the only way to get the coins, and to solve the Secret Puzzle in the first game.
- Portal Picture: In various flavors within 2 and 3.
- P.O.V. Sequel: Daymare Cat ends with the eponymous girl, Cat, meeting the main game's player character. This same meetup with Cat is also an easter egg in Daymare Town 4, in which you can give Cat a vinyl record as an achievement.
- Scare Chord: Plays when you encounter the Librarian in the first game. As well as when the Fog Hermit appears in the fourth game.
- Scenery Porn: The very surreal settings are also beautifully detailed.
- Shout-Out: One of the harder achievements in 3 involves locating and clicking on gnomes around the environment, referencing Skutnik's 10 Gnomes series.
- Stylistic Suck: While in no way ugly, the art style of the game is very ... unique.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: The Guard Captain, despite telling you off, just casually ingests the sleeping pill you're required to give him. Then the gate guards let you pass with wearing his hat, even though you look nothing like the Captain at all.
- Trespassing Hero: Near the start of the fourth game, you can enter a seemingly abandoned house and loot it for items. Then its owner shows up when you step outside and calls you out over this trope.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential / Video Game Caring Potential: In the second game, there are a couple puzzles where you can help or harm people that aren't necessary to beating the game. You can give a man in extreme pain a painkiller - but only if you want to. You can also just leave him to suffer. You can give a bottle of arsenic to a man planning to poison someone - but only if you want to. Likewise, in the third game you can give some candy to a group of children and help out the other patients in the hospital, if you feel like it. You can also choose between murdering the captain of the guard and letting him live.
- Wackyland: The entire series is set in one.
