Grey is a Psychological Horror game created as a mod to Valve Software's popular Half-Life 2 video game by Deppresick Team. Grey acts as a total conversion mod to a certain extent, as much of the game's content is new rather than being lifted straight out of Half-Life 2, aside from some sound effects and certain enemy behaviors.
Grey follows the titular protagonist after he wakes up from a strange hallucination he has in the bathroom of a bar he frequents, and his struggle with various supernatural forces he encounters while trying to make his way back home. Along the way he has to use various melee weapons and firearms to defeat the strange monsters that come after him.
Grey's biggest inspirations include Silent Hill, Jacob's Ladder, and Condemned: Criminal Origins, and due to the game's nature as a horror mod for a Half-Life game, it can even been seen as a companion title to other popular horror mods such as Cry of Fear and Afraid of Monsters.
Received a Creator-Driven Successor game in the form of Remorse: The List; it was announced October 29th 2015, was greenlit on Steam Greenlight, and spent 7 years languishing in Development Hell before finally releasing on the Steam storefront on April 22nd 2022.
Unrelated to the manga of the same name.
Tropes associated with Grey:
- Abandoned Area: In a couple different varieties, including:
- Abandoned Hospital: The final level of the game takes place in one.
- Abandoned Playground: One can be found early into the game around the apartment buildings.
- Ghost City: After snapping out of his hallucination at the start of the game, Grey finds that not only is the bar empty, but so is the city.
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: The many barricades grey comes across are all wooden, making them easy to smash with a lead pipe.
- Alien Geometries: The "hallucinations" often display this.
- Always Night: The entire game takes place over the course of a single night.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The drill the player gets early on. It acts like a sort of short-range minigun, but considering how fast enemies attack you're better off using it as an Emergency Weapon.
- Bad Black Barf: One of the enemies encountered uses this as its main attack.
- Barrier-Busting Blow: Happens during the "asylum" hallucination from an enemy that can't be harmed.
- Beast with a Human Face: One of the enemies encountered is a strange dog-like monster with a disturbing humanoid face.
- Body Horror: Many of the enemies encountered look very deformed, including the ones that look nearly human.
- Cobweb Jungle: Sort of, some sections of the game will place a cobweb-like black substance in places like vents.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Later in the game, one of Grey's messages states that the merging between the Dark World and real world at various points doesn't bother him anymore.
- Creepy Basement: The basement of Grey's house leads into a nightmarish asylum, somehow.
- The basement of the Abandoned Hospital, which is actually the game's last level.
- Creepy Child: The game's only real "boss" fight is against three of these that look about the same.
- Creepy Doll: One of the enemy types, a deformed doll that attacks much like the headcrab from Half-Life 2.
- Grey can also find various creepy dolls as a collectible item throughout the levels, all of which apparently belonged to a girl named "Anita."
- Dark World: What the strange "hallucination" worlds might be.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Normal Mode Mockery: Several scares, enemies, and an entire ending are kept from the player until they beat Hard mode.
- Eyeless Face: Some of the humanoid enemy models lack eyes.
- Freudian Excuse: Grey's dad killed his sister and nearly killed his mother in a blind fit of insanity after his sister Anita died due to unknown circumstances, and Grey had to be put in an orphanage after his mom died ten years later.
- Jump Scare: Used on the very opening logo screen for Deppresick Team. Also used occasionally in the game proper, but not to a heavy extent.
- Nightmare Face: Again, many enemy types have a nightmarish face.
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Nintendo Hard: The game's hard mode, which rivals Cry of Fear's Nightmare mode in difficulty. Not only does it change the maps and how the player progresses through them, but several late-game enemies appear way earlier in the game, health and ammunition are much scarcer, and there are several enemies that could kill the player at low-health. And that's all before the player even gets to the mechanics shop.- The game itself fits this, too. Enemies take anywhere from 6-12 shots from a handgun (the entire clip) in order to kill and, despite the game telling you on its page that it's better to run from most fights, there's no sprint option.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Assuming the events of the game really took place in-universe, Grey's mom became a full-on Reality Warper after she died.
- Psychological Horror: In the same vein as a few of the game's inspirations (in particular the Dark World aspect feels similar to Silent Hill and Condemned: Criminal Origins).
- Scare Chord: Used on some of the jump scares.
- Scoring Points: At the end of the game (after the 1.1 update) you are given a score based on how well you did. Unlike Cry of Fear, however, there's no point to getting a high score (at least on Normal mode).
- Shout-Out: At one point it's possible to find a room full of wooden barrels with graffiti on the wall reading "BARRELS!!!" This is a reference to PewDiePie, a popular Lets Player known for often shouting at barrels whenever they show up in a video game.
- Surreal Horror: One of the main features of this game, especially whenever Grey starts hallucinating.
