Video Game / Home Safety Hotline

Hearing noises? Seeing things? Call Home Safety Hotline!

"Please hold."

Home Safety Hotline is an Indie Analog Horror-inspired telephone operator game developed and published by Night Signal Entertainment that is in development since 2023 and released on January 16, 2024.

The year is 1996. You are a new employee of the Home Safety Hotline - a call center for homeowners trying to find assistance with a variety of household problems. Some of these are simple - pest infestations, frozen pipes, black mold, common hobbs. Others are more exotic and dangerous. HSH Operators are trained to recognize carbon dioxide leaks, spontaneously-appearing feasts, foundational damage, night wisps, and even life-threatening hazards such as house fires, metamorphosis and reanimations.

Try to give good, accurate advice to your callers; more than their property value might depend on it.

Has a Character page currently under construction.

The game can be bought here.

---

Home Safety Hotline contains examples of the following:

• 555: The phone number for the service is 555-Home-Safety.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Some of the fairies are nastier than they are in their original folklore. For example; leprechauns in mythology generally mind their own business and can even be helpful. Leprechauns here are aggressive beasts that steal metal to eat, even from a child’s braces.
• Alien Geometries: Some of the household hazards involve labyrinths appearing in basements or closets.
• All Trolls Are Different: Trolls are 12-foot tall fae that can "deflate" themselves to a smaller form when they need to go into a house to steal clothing. If startled, they can grow back to their normal size, causing property damage if they do so while in the house. They're also implied to be vulnerable to sunlight, as they're nocturnal and can be repelled by UV lights to prevent future break-ins.
• Alternate Universe: A Neighbor's Doorway entity is implied to not only take anyone goes through it to a parallel universe, but it causes the parallel counterpart of the person who entered to go into our universe in their place, resulting in someone confused about why their memories are inconsistent with the happenings in their current universe. Said entities are implied to manifest from a person pondering on alternate life choices they could have taken.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • At random times during your shifts from Monday to Friday, you get complaint calls from Twig Sigmund, Buzz Goober, Fred Pinball, Gub Rubber and Flipper. However, unlike the other callers, their faces have exaggerated proportions with mismatched eyes (one or both of which are cut-and-pasted), overly big nose, and overly wide mouths along with distorted voices. It seems like they either may not be human or are just prank callers. It's later revealed that they're all the same person trying to Prank Call you and they are stopped by Carol (or one of her associates) who transforms the person into a mouse.
  • At the end of the demo, Carol's voice sounds distorted when she says "Our eyes rest upon thee". The ending reveals that Carol is actually some sort of fairy person; she 'promotes' the player into something similar if you complete HSH's "trial".
• Analog Horror: The game takes place in 1996, and the interface looks the part. The operating system you use looks like Windows 95, and all of the available pictures rely on Analog Horror's trademark glitches and limited image quality to conceal — and simultaneously enhance — the scare factor of whatever anomaly they're reporting on.
• Anti-Hero: The fae who run the HSH are apparently quite sincere in their business, even telling humans how to avoid more hostile kinds, and are happy to promote humans who impress them into full fae themselves, with great fanfare. Pissing them off is also liable to get them to turn you into a mouse, and they're also pretty stingy.
• Artistic License – Biology: Mus musculus loquentus is identified as a new species of mouse, but more accurately it's only a new subspecies (to be a new species, it would need to be called Mus loquentus).
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Your promotion to junior manager in the good ending.
• Bee Afraid: One of the potential threats or pests are bees.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Whistling Fungi have a rather amusing concept: they're fungi with holes in their caps that make dissonant whistling noises, and their whistling audio cue is rather whimsical. They're usually a minor nuisance with their whistling and foundational damage, but if they start whistling in unison... the homeowner should evacuate the house immediately and never return, with no explanation as to why. They also provide one of the most horrifying fates should you fail to handle them for an owner — in what is likely the shortest callback response of the game, all the owner can let out is indiscernible and strained groaning along with ominous whistling noises in the background.
  • Stair Slugs are, as the name implies, giant slugs that inhabit stairs inside a home, being gigantic things that generally pose little risk other than scaring the pants off of anyone who stumbles onto them. What is not detailed, however, is what happens if one fails to properly perform the salt ritual that dehydrates them to death, either by trying to apply salt directly on their body or just failing to perform it in the first place. David, if given bad advice, will find the previously passive Stair Slug in his home agitated and approaching his room with vengeance in mind while all he can do is listen to what is presumably his dog yelping in fear or pain over what the Slug is doing to them in the other room.
  • False Rose Bushes are goofy mimic plants with a pair of little wooden feet in place of where their stem would be. They make a whimsical chirping and squeaking noise when passive and get around by running on their skinny legs, which would be silly if not for the fact that they’re ambush predators. These things will stand still near a home and wait for any children or pets passing by, and once they know they have an opening they’ll promptly bolt from their spot in pursuit of their prey and eat them alive before escaping the area. One such specimen is a implied to be the culprit behind a missing child alert sent out across multiple counties, where the only eyewitness report could describe it as a person wearing a bush who "abducted" a little boy, which goes to show how fast and relentless they can be with even someone around to witness them catching a kid right in full view of presumably their parent.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • It's hard to tell how benevolent the HSH actually is. On the one hand, quite a few of the calls you handle involve situations that could potentially get entire families killed if they're handled badly, such as Hobb metamorphosis, and operators are punished severely for failure. On the other, there are a few hints that the HSH isn't especially selective about who it hires as operators. It's also made apparent that customers have to pay for any teams or equipment they offer, though it remains ambiguous if they have to pay for the privilege of talking to you. The Fae aren't known for giving anything away for free.
  • Hobbs are household goblins that help keep the places they inhabit clean and organized, expecting to be compensated with food. They do so regardless of whether the owner wants them around or not. Failure to placate them leads to their monstrous transformation.
  • The Fae Feast is a pile of cornmeal, flour, and edible fungus offered from more benevolent fae. It's meant to be a sign of hospitality but is also spontaneously forced upon homeowners. Refusing to eat it will cause whatever gifted it to grow more aggressive, though the consequences of said wrath aren't explained in detail. If Claire isn't told this, her call back will have her panic as she cries out against the voices repeatedly urging her to partake in the feast.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The game is fond of working esoteric-but-concerning allusions to certain threats into lists of otherwise-mundane household dangers. For instance, the game's trailer mentions metamorphosis at the end of a list of completely-normal household issues, well before the player learns about Boggarts.
• The Conspiracy: HSH is implied to be the origin of one, In particular - turning people into the reported "Smart Mice," in fits Disproportionate Retribution, including their own workforce when He Knows Too Much and have to be "fired." Those that do well are turned into more fae as a reward, while those that try to warn other workers and undermine HSH's secrecy are targeted by cats the Company brings in as "workspace pets"...which they are implied to steal from some of their people who call them for help.
• Cold Iron: Late in the game, you unlock a HSH safety video on how to safely hike Thunder Peak, a national park. The guide warns the viewer to bring along a sword - specifically, an iron sword.
• Corpsing: In-Universe. The Prank Caller will sometimes burst out laughing trying to get his call out.
• Creepy Red Herring: The Prank Caller is a recurring character that has a portrait spliced together from different parts, seemingly changes his voice over the phone, and uses odd pseudonyms every time he calls. Combined with the supernatural setting and Analog Horror elements throughout the game, one could assume he's of some sort of plot-importance or antagonistic entity. While somewhat of a problem, he turns out to be nothing more than just a prank caller. Carol eventually deals with him.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Being touched by a vengeful Spriggan manifests a tree sapling inside the victim that will gradually yet surely sprout into a full fledged tree over the course of a day, and judging from what Patrice describes in her shed when calling about her missing son, leaves nothing but a bloodied and cloth tattered mess of a tree in their victims place instead of any identifying remains. Going by Howard's return call, if you fail to advise him on how to avoid Spriggans, the process is also incredibly painful, with him describing feeling something moving inside of him and dying mid-scream as the tree sprouts and tears his head apart.
• Dead Man Walking: Certain creatures and afflictions cannot be cured, mitigated or helped by HSH. Even when there's a care package and advice to give, said advice might not actually get rid of the problem.
  • "Dorcha" intends to locate and "deliver" those which it seeks. People will only realize they are being targeted after-the-fact, with feelings of being watched and immense dread as the indicators. Loved ones are simply "advised to grieve" and seek "peace through acceptance".
  • The fate of those who find and eat a False Beet, a parasitic creature that will latch onto the innards of its victim to leech their nutrients until they're dead. The data entry confirms there's absolutely no way to remove the creature without killing the host. Ash will call in for advice over an incredibly painful stomach bug he's been having that's making him sick, with all symptoms and past history confirming he now has one. Sending him the correct information will do basically nothing but improve your work accuracy score, while sending the incorrect information lets you listen to his panicked realization that he'll be eating for two for the rest of his life — which, judging by his comments on planning to get surgery, won't be much longer.
  • Those touched by a Spriggan, a creature of punishment who targets those who seemingly disrespect nature, will have a Sprig Tree rapidly sprout from their bodies and kill them once it reaches a certain size. HSH's listed "solution" is to quarantine the tree and arrange funeral services for the afflicted. Patrice calls without realizing that the tree in her shed is most likely her son. As she intends to take matters into her own hands, it's implied she has become the Spriggan's next target. Howard, if you didn't give him the right advice, calls back to let you know the Spriggan stalking him has touched him before exploding into a tree over the call.
  • Anyone with the Fae Flu, a rare but dangerous Mystical Plague indirectly spread by fae creatures. Its symptoms and bodily changes will affect a human for the rest of their life, with a slim chance of being fatal, and There Is No Cure. Many callers are at risk of catching it if you don't manage to give them proper advice to deal with their household fae problems. Phil calls after his doctor refers him to the hotline, so it's already too late to do anything except tell him what he has.
• Death of a Child:
  • Implied when the player gets a call wrong, when the entity in question is implied to attack the caller who has a family.
  • Played Straight with the False Artifact call, as the child is dying or already starved to death by the time that the mother calls the hotline.
• Determinator: The Prank Caller is persistent to the point where he still manages to Prank Call the hotline on Saturday after he was turned into a mouse by Carol on Friday.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Played with. While being transformed into a mouse might seem like an excessive punishment for being a bad employee, quite a few of the calls are life-or-death situations, and doing badly at your job will get multiple people horribly killed. The prank caller also suffers this fate, but then again he is prank-calling the paranormal equivalent to 911.
• Don't Look At Me: Boggarts do not enjoy being seen, and while these 7-foot tall and very hairy humanoids are excellent at hiding most of the time, actually managing to find one will cause them to aggressively lash out. Gary, if given the wrong advice, will make this mistake and will be cornered and stared down in his bedroom until the thing finally reaches out to brutalize him.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu:
  • Certain entities are best left unbothered and cannot be removed from the premises. Homeowners are instead advised to either follow certain instructions to placate them or vacate their homes immediately. Failure to provide them with the proper instructions can lead to them trying to handle the situation on their own, often to disastrous effect.
  • After spending most of the week messing with you and wasting your time, the mysterious Prank Caller is paid a special visit from Carol and gets transformed into a mouse for his troubles.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: You will miss a lot of content in this horror game if you get all the answers totally correct, as callers will only respond if you give incorrect identifications. To get the most entertaining route therefore requires intentionally failing a few answers (you won't be penalized unless you get too many answers wrong) — that is, if you're okay with some of the callers suffering a gruesome fate.
• Easily Forgiven: If you give Grace the wrong information on what infestation she has, she doesn't hold a grudge and acknowledges that the company was just busy. Similarly, Wanda will call back to tell you her daughter has recommended help from pest control and that she's been advised to stop calling HSH. She then apologizes before hanging up.
• Eaten Alive:
  • The False Artifacts will eat their prey whole, trapping them inside their electronic body for many, many years for slow digestion and a solitary death, although for better or worse it's been said that victims typically die of starvation first. Their size means that they can only prey on small animals and children, and case in point its data entry image depicts a vintage television that's powered on with no power source and child-sized hands pressed against the screen from within.
  • False Rose Bushes will, somehow, swallow their prey whole once they're within reach, seizing them in a flash and bolting from their ambush spot once they've had their meal. Given their size, they pose minimal risk to adults and large animals, but children and pets can easily be swept away by these bushes, never to be seen again.
• Eldritch Location:
  • Cellar Grottos are spontaneous manifestations of an entire damp ecosystem that show up in the basements of homes, with shallow water, foliage, plenty of insect and amphibious wildlife, cave walls and a loud, easily angered creature that dwells within the cave system. While said creature is placated by a generous offering of gold, approaching it in any other context implies a gruesome death for any homeowner who investigates too deeply.
  • The Portal is implied to lead somewhere that's definitely not of this world, and should you let Patty fall for her urge to go inside it unimpeded, the next time she tries to call you over the phone will fail to connect. Why she would feel the need to try and call you again can only be left to the imagination.
    "The person trying to reach you cannot connect to this earthly plane. Please try again later."
  • Closet Labyrinths are huge twisting networks of hallways and tunnels that will spawn in the closets or wardrobes of homes belonging to the wealthy, including abandoned locations. For whatever reason, reports of their appearances have included distant cries coming from within, and getting lost inside of them becomes a likelier threat when one hears the lure of a Labyrinth's "hidden riches". Unlike Portals, they can at least be removed with HSH's Labyrinth Removal Team.
  • A smaller-scale version is the Neighbor's Doorway, a doorframe structure that appears whenever someone begins pondering alternatives to their life choices and paths. Commonly forming in basements and cellars, a careless person walking through them will begin to feel and act as though their memories have been lost or altered. It's heavily implied that it's from the Doorway swapping people from alternate universes.
• Establishing Series Moment: On day 1, among a bunch of regular pest and treatable disease problems is a call with Hank, who has a simple mole problem in his yard that you can diagnose over the phone. Even if you provide the correct care package, you’ll likely have noticed the rather odd fact about moles provided to you about their relations with 'the ones beneath the soil' and a stern warning about killing moles that sounds less like general advice and more like a grave warning. Should you fail to tell Hank the correct instructions, he’ll angrily call back the next day about your bad advice and rather ominously begin to calm down then hang up after claiming all the moles outside are staring and beckoning him to enter their tunnels as punishment for his "sins", showing you that this job will have consequences much more dire than annoyed clients and simple vermin if you keep messing up.
• Extra-Strength Masquerade: The general public doesn't seem to be aware of the existence of The Fair Folk, despite a publicly accessible hotline that will inform you of the existence of The Fair Folk, which doctors and the police very often refer people to when they think an issue involves the fae.
• The Faceless: Because the entire game is just the interface of your software, we never see the employee's face.
• Face Stealer: Mirror Nymphs steal the likenesses of homeowners and passersby by beckoning them to look into their mirrors, the victims of which become unable to recognize their own faces. Victims can fortunately restore their faces by using an iron tool to break the Mirror Nymph's mirror. One caller who fell victim to a Mirror Nymph has their face heavily blurred.
• Facial Façade: Some varieties of Hobb are stated to bear "false faces" in their entries. The art book clarifies this as the noses and smiles on some of the Hobbs being fake, though the eye-like slits on them are actually eyes. Additionally, their metamorphosed counterparts, the more malicious and deadly Boggarts, also have false faces that can be seen in their entry as well, with only their eyes being real facial features.
• The Fair Folk: The primary threat you're warning people about beyond the mundane. They're also the ones running the company, and if you do well enough, you can transcend your humanity and join them.
• Festering Fungus: Black mold is one of the hazards customers might deal with. In later days, you start to deal with more supernatural fungi:
  • Bed Teeth are fungi that grow in pointed shapes on bedsheets, blankets and comforters. They grow sharper over time and can cause open wounds that can get infected.
  • Unicorn Fungi grow on the heads of animals and cause them to be drawn to the soil. This often makes the animal keep digging up floorboards and plants. They will fortunately go away on their own, although the process can be sped up via cryotherapy or surgical removal.
  • Whistling Fungi are mushrooms with small holes in their caps, which they use to produce a dissonant whistling sound. While relatively harmless apart from causing foundational problems, it's noted that if Whistling Fungi start "whistling" in harmony, the homeowner should evacuate immediately and never return. The reason for this is never stated.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: The desktop video that appears on Wednesday is a recording of a real estate program that gets interrupted by a child kidnapping alert, with the description of the suspect matching that of the False Rose Bush, one of the hazards you gain access to when you start your shift for that day.
• Forced Transformation:
  • If you do badly at your job, the company turns you into a mouse. You get emails from one former employee who suffered the same fate, and one of the videos implies its happening enough that scientists are noticing a sapient subspecies of mice.
  • The prank caller who pesters you with ridiculous calls throughout the first half of the game is eventually tracked down by Carol and transformed into a mouse. They call you back once more near the end of the game, but all you hear is squeaking.
• Foreshadowing:
  • On the demo, your third call of the first day, Gary screams that there's something that's in his bedroom, and that something kills him as the call ends. This foreshadows exactly what kind of creatures you will get entries on during your second day. The creature that killed Gary in the demo is revealed to be a Boggart. Additionally in the final game, Gary is the last caller on Wednesday where he complains about what's been happening in his house since he called a week prior.
  • A lot of the entries have very odd attitudes towards the hazards, like dismissing the mind-destroying memory wisps as harmless or putting the death of animals and children on the same level. A majority of the more fae-like entities also have entries that don't give solutions that would destroy or drive away the offending entity, usually leaning to pacify them or let them be. Almost like whoever's writing it isn't human.
  • The first day deals with mundane pests and hazards, but even here there's a few hints of something strange, like the all-caps demand to never kill a mole (which fits in with fairy rules) and the odd reference to mice as "worthless", because that's what failed employees are turned into.
  • Getting 100% accuracy on Wednesday will give a daily coupon for a Silver Medallion that comes free with an iron chain, purported to give you safety when worn. Silver Has Mystic Powers, and Cold Iron is one of the weaknesses of The Fair Folk.
  • The Hiker's Guide to Thunder Peak specifically warns the viewer to bring along an iron sword on their trip. Like with the above, Cold Iron is one of the few things capable of harming The Fair Folk.
  • The coupons you receive in your email grow increasingly less subtle about the fae nature of the HSH. The last one you get before the end of the game is for a Glamour stone. Eagle-eyed players may notice that Carol is wearing one herself.
  • Just in case you somehow haven't figured it out by the time you get to the end of the game, all of the answers to the riddles you're posed during the HSH's "trial" are related to nature or explicitly nature-related anomalies.
  • The Home Safety Hotline's corporate logo is a Celtic knot.
• Gaia's Vengeance:
  • One of the later entities you learn about, the Spriggan, is provoked by people who it considers harmful to nature, even if it's something like mowing the grass. If one of such creatures touches a human, they will become infected with a Sprig Tree.
  • Wood Secretions are produced by wood furniture or walls that have been treated poorly. This includes hitting, damaging, or even shouting at wood. It's also deadly to ingest, turning victims into wood.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: Autumn Vines are vines with orange-red leaves which release pheromones that cause a state of bliss and lightheadedness. One caller affected by it keeps mentioning how "things are good", despite her brother telling her about his suspicions towards the vines. If you fail to solve her problem correctly, she'll kill her brother, all while still being in a state of bliss.
• Great Big Book of Everything: You get an encyclopedia of pests and hazards, including a picture, description and sometimes an audio clip depending on the entry.
• Glamour Failure: In her final call to you after the Trial, Carol has glowing and inhuman eyes.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Since you're only looking at a desktop and digital database while listening to customer complaints over the phone, the only things that indicates a person's rather violent fate are the cut-off speech and noises they might make over the phone if they call back.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Just seeing or mentioning a Boggart is enough to get to kill you if one is in your home.
• Horror Hates a Rulebreaker: As is common with The Fair Folk, there are certain rules that are to be followed when dealing with the fae. Giving callers the wrong advice will end poorly for them.
• House Fey: The Hobbs are this, mostly just cleaning the house at night, but not for free. They expect food from the homeowners in return for their work. Unlike many examples, if you disrespect them, they won't leave — they'll metamorphose...
• House Fire: One of the hazards customers might deal with are house fires. The entry helpfully notes that this might be unsafe for inhabitants and should be removed from the house quickly.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: The upper management of the Home Safety Hotline are fae themselves, and many of the household problems they can deal with is to get rid of more bothersome and hostile fae. Downplayed in that the staff of Home Safety Hotline usually don't try to exterminate or hunt such pests, and their solutions for even the more violent ones are ones that involve placating the threat, preventing pests from worsening, or getting away from it.
• Implacable Man: The entity known as Dorcha. Once Dorcha has selected a target for "deliverance" it is impossible to escape this fate, and its entry makes no mention of how to prevent oneself from being selected.
• Inescapable Horror: A lot of horror in the game is derived from the fact many of the supernatural entities that your callers may be afflicted with are impossible to get rid of, and attempting to do so can result in their death or something almost as terrible.
• Instant Illness: Fae Flu takes a surprisingly short time to show symptoms once contracted. If you fail to provide correct information to the owners being harassed by the Lamp, Tea, Wine, or Soap Sprites, they'll contract the Fae Flu and immediately show symptoms the next day.
• Intellectual Animal: On Thursday, the player receives a video about a scientific discovery of Mus musculus loquentus, known as the Smart Mouse due to having human-like intellect. Scientists have managed to decipher their squeaks to reveal hidden messages, like "Help me". This is because these mice are actually humans who were turned into mice, like one former employee who is notably still able to operate a computer and send emails in typo-filled human language, and the prank caller managing to call the hotline even after he was transformed the previous day.
• Interface Screw:
  • Starting on Wednesday, the hazard information database will go offline during some calls due to In-Universe maintenance on the network, requiring the player to rely on their memorization of the database entries to assist callers. This only happens for a few set callers in each day, and the database will come back online when the next call comes in.
  • On Sunday, the player is locked out of the database as part of the trial, with the database window replaced by a screen of a forest that representing the player's progress in their "descent" into nature and joining the fae.
• Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: A lot of the hazards predate on children in various ways. False Artifacts lure children into themselves to starve, False Rose Bushes abduct them and Wood Secretions look and smell like candy to children while turning them to wood if they eat it.
• Just Ignore It: The advised action against a couple of fae and anomalies is to simply let them be or leave and never look back.
  • Ironically, various Hobbs will metamorphose if the homeowner ignores the helpful activity and thus become a Boggart, a giant, malicious being that sulks in the shadows of basements causing all manner of detrimental effects such as flooding, power outages and nighttime stalking against the homeowner. Actually seeking one out and succeeding means enraging the thing and dying a violent death, but leaving the house and never speaking of it or acknowledging its presence means the owner can evade the Boggart and live somewhere, otherwise they'll be able to track you down all over again.
  • False Flowers are skinny humanoid flower-mimics that will move into a home and disguise themselves as regular flowers, singing at night and creeping the heck out of the homeowners. In spite of how obviously wrong they may be compared to actual plants, the advised method to deal with them is to simply pretend they don't exist and just keeping watering and tending to them while purposefully ignoring any suspicious signs or noises coming from them. Otherwise, they'll become agitated and spray a blinding and burning poison all over the offender's face.
  • Wood Secretions manifest from mistreated wood and furniture inside a home, with said secretions capable of paralyzing anything that consumes it into petrified, immobile and wooden husks as payback for the torment the furniture suffered. The advised method of dealing with this phenomenon is to simply replace the vengeful wood and take care not to bang on or insult the furniture in your home.
  • Kobolds are entities that will nest inside a home, generally avoiding contact with the homeowner but occasionally trying to bait them into their nest inside a closet by poking its dog-like head out and whimpering to draw compassionate or confused people in. It goes without saying that one should not fall for this, remain calm and simply call the HSH to remove the creature.
  • Pookas are mimic creatures that will infiltrate a home and deliberately target and kill household pets, taking their form and intentionally act as off-putting and scary as possible by performing unnatural movements such like standing upright and stalking their owners at night to just stare at them. Because these things thrive off negative attention, the advised method to rid a house of them is to just ignore their presence and not react to their antics, as they will eventually be forced to move on from the house.
• Irony: The Soap Sprite appears to be a bar of soap and even consumes bacteria, but despite its clean looks and lifestyle, it's actually The Pig-Pen, being covered in several deadly diseases including the Fae Flu that can be spread via touch.
• Kill and Replace: Pookas are known to kill a homeowner's pets, shapeshift into them, and live in their place to watch homeowners eat and sleep.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: If you get certain questions wrong, the callers will message you back to complain even further that your info hasn't helped. In some of these cases, the line will either cut off just as they're screaming in terror or suddenly go silent.
• Killed Offscreen: Aside from how the entire game takes place at your workstation with only the audio of victims of your poor advice being killed to go by, a small number of disgruntled callers will become frustrated over your lack of results and opt to deal with the problem themselves before hanging up, and if the problem was actually fae-related or paranormal, then it's with the implication being they're about to get themselves killed. Patrice, unaware that her son was touched and killed by a Spriggan, will continue on in ignorance and promise to head outside and deal with the 'Satanists' outside in spite of her house being surrounded by glowing eyes in the treeline. Leo, meanwhile, is implied to have unknowingly let his Fracture Hobb turn into a Boggart and ends his angry call by saying he's going to take things into his own hands, with all the trouble that it entails.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Memory Wisps are invisible and intangible creatures which steal away peoples' memories. Some entries mention that the Home Safety Hotline can intentionally send Memory Wisps to a household to help with the grieving process regarding a family member killed by a hostile entity.
• Leprechaun: Leprechauns are very different from the Irish folkloric ones. Instead of having a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, they're Metal Munchers who invade homes to eat the precious metals within, causing damage to jewelry, silverware, and appliances. They're even known to attack humans with braces or other metallic implants.
• Lovecraft Lite: Compared to other analog horrors which tend to fall into Cosmic Horror Story, the game leans more into this. There are numerous magical threats that menace humans and some are seemingly unstoppable, but most can be placated, fended off, or even slain with the proper actions. The existence of the company shows some fairies are even on humanity’s side, albeit with their usual Blue-and-Orange Morality.
• Magical Realism: You work at a company that deals with all manners of pest infestations, ranging from rats and cockroaches to trolls and warlock spirits.
• Man-Eating Plant: The False Rose Bush is a creature that resembles a rose bush, except it has a pair of spindly legs instead of a trunk. It's usually not big enough to prey on adult humans, but children and house pets are at serious risk of being eaten (even though it has no visible mouth or any sort of digestive organs, the wording implies it somehow swallows its prey whole).
• Meaningful Background Event: The desktop background of the computer changes as the week goes on. A figure will start appearing a few days later, then take the next few days slowly getting closer to the view. They are gone the day before The Trial, leaving a large hole in their place. As the Final Day involves 'the soil' being 'fertile' and gets visually paired with pulling the player underground, it's implied to be Carol in her true form opening the path to promotion.
• Metamorphosis Monster: Hobbs are small fae that dwell around various areas of a home. They are generally only a minor nuisance at worst and can even be helpful, but they require some sort of daily ritual to keep them pacified, lest they transform into a Boggart, a hulking humanoid beast that is extremely aggressive and often deadly to the home's occupants.
• Metal Muncher: Leprechauns are known to eat precious metals around the home, including jewelry and silverware. This often results in long-term damage to appliances containing metal, and they're also known to attack humans with braces or other metallic implants.
• Mimic Species:
  • False Artifacts take the form of human-designed objects and create a buzzing sound that only children and animals can hear. Once a child or animal gets near, the False Artifact can encase them within and digest them.
  • False Beets are parasitic organisms that resemble beetroot to trick an unwary host into eating them. Once consumed, the False Beet will permanently integrate itself into the host's stomach and leech off their nutrients.
  • False Flowers are long, slender creatures that resemble common plants and disguise themselves in indoor potted plants among the flowers. They can be recognized by a faint singing sound.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: While Carol at first seems like just another slimy middle manager, as the days go on her messages get increasingly bizarre and poetic before she finally drops the human disguise entirely. Oddly, if you do badly, she goes back to acting human.
• Mole Men: On the final day where the player needs to answer a series of riddles, one of the hooded figures appears to have the nose of a star-nosed mole. It's heavily implied that they are one of the "ones beneath the soil".
• Mood Whiplash: The callers are an eccentric bunch, to say the least, with an early call from Hank, a ridiculously angry and animated man with a mole problem in his yard, comically exploding over the phone call and then gradually slowing down in a hypnotic-like state and saying aloud that he must pay for his sins by entering the tunnel the moles created for him as punishment.
  • Dan is a comically loud, angry and paranoiac desk worker who calls the phone line somehow thinking that Bob from his workplace is breaking into his home to taunt him by sorting his desk out for him. In actuality he has a Desk Hobb, and if he's given the wrong advice he'll admit with all the panicked ham he can muster that the thing is not Bob at all, it fled from him when it's implied he chased it out, and that it's growing massive right in front of him as the newly-formed Boggart kills him mid-scream with harsh audio distortion that abruptly ends the call.
  • Later, if you failed to provide correct answers to both, a return call from an elderly woman named Felicia obviously suffering from sleep deprivation due to a Night Gnome (a somewhat creepy yet passive creature that amuses itself by watching you sleep and nothing else) she's trying to avoid while spitefully calling it a 'little creep' and another return call soon after treating you to the loud and grief-stricken cries of May as she finds out what the False Artifact did to her poor son over the phone.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In the good ending, your promotion to junior local manager involves becoming one with the Fair Folk and being crowned in a woodland ritual.
• Mundanger: Even at the later days where you're dealing with face-stealing nymphs and trolls invading houses for clothes to steal, you still get the odd call about termites and bedbugs.
• Multiple Endings: There are two endings in the game: you become part of nature if you pass the riddles, or are turned into a mouse if you get too many answers wrong (even if you get as far as the riddles and get those wrong as well).
• Nature Is Not Nice: Several of the nature-based fae can become very hostile to humans. The Spriggan, for example, is provoked by acts it considers harmful to nature, such as mowing grass or eating fruits in its territory. Any human it touches gets infected by a Sprig Tree, which will eventually kill and consume the human.
• Neverending Terror: A significant number of the supernatural creatures that can infest peoples' homes cannot be removed easily or at all, and minor disruptions such as failing to perform a specific regular ritual or even just acknowledging their existence can lead to the homeowners' deaths. And in nearly every case it's never specified how to prevent them from entering the home in the first place. So in essence, the homeowners are forced to live with a monster in their house that could kill them at any time, and it could happen to anyone at any time for no reason at all.
• New Game Plus: Completing the game unlocks some extra options for a repeat playthrough, such as the ability to manually force the next call to appear and "unemployment immunity" for discovering consequence calls without triggering a Game Over.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • A large part of the game's horror derives from how stingy it is with information about the threats you're dealing with. For example, while the Home Safety Hotline's database does warn customers to never kill moles for fear of provoking 'the Ones Below', it does not see fit to tell you what the Ones Below are, or what will happen if they're provoked. Failing to provide accurate information will treat you to a Sound-Only Death where it's often unclear what exactly is happening to the caller.
  • We're never told or shown what happens when Whistling Fungi begin "singing" in unison, other than the fact that the occupant must abandon the house immediately. If you fail to provide Carla the right information for her Whistling Fungus infestation, all you'll hear from her callback the next day is indiscernible groaning along with ominous whistling sounds.
• Only Sane Man: Out of all the customers that don't outright complain at you regardless if it's your first call or got the answer wrong, Grace, Wanda, Kyle and Edward aren't mad at you.
  • Grace remains calm and if you get her pest infestation wrong, she just informs you and figures that you were just busy answering other calls.
  • Wanda informs you that her daughter both told her not to call you anymore and called pest control, and Wanda apologizes before hanging up.
  • Edward is freaked out because he figured out the 'pranksters' breaking into his house was actually a troll.
  • Kyle calls back when his dog, named Goblin, eventually returns. Unfortunately, he has no idea about what to do about the ensuing issues he'll face without your advice on unicorn fungi^*Fortunately, surgical removal actually is one of the recommended steps for dealing with unicorn fungi.
    Kyle: "Well, I got good news and bad news. Bad news is, the info you sent wasn't any help at all, so uh... Thanks for that. Good news is I found Goblin! She freakin' came crawling out of that hole with a big bump on her head or something so I'm taking her to the vet now. But uh, yeah. Thanks for trying I guess."
• Our Elves Are Different: Hobbs are small creatures that live inside homes and keep things clean, often focusing on a given area (desks, toilets, walls). They're harmless unless they get angry and become Boggarts.
• Our Fairies Are Different: Sprites are small fairies that are attracted to various everyday things, like lights or tea. They're also carriers of the Fae Flu, which means they really shouldn't be taken lightly despite their size.
• Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds are strange creatures with dog-like faces that not only take refuge in people's houses but are extremely territorial. If spotted, they'll try to lure its lurkers in and are implied to deal with trespassers lethally.
• Parasitic Horror:
  • The False Beet takes root in your stomach to siphon your nutrients if you eat it. Worse yet, there is no known treatment that won't end with the death of the victim, and while the handbook doesn't mention it, the customer who calls about it implies its also excruciatingly painful.
  • Unicorn Fungi are growths that appear as horn-like shapes on the head of animals, and will force said animals to perpetually dig around the place according to its needs.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: On Friday, Carol tracks down the prank caller who's been harassing you for the previous days and turns him into a mouse. While prank calls aren't necessarily evil, the caller is still wasting the time and resources of what is essentially emergency services for fae-related hazards, potentially putting lives in danger.
• Police Are Useless: Several callers with far more serious issues note that they have tried talking to the Police to investigate, only for them to give them the number for the Hotline instead without doing any investigation whatsoever. Even when a child is snatched up by a False Rose Bush the most that happens is an automated message is sent out and no mention of the police doing anything is made evident. It's implied HSH is working with them on some level so they can deal with the more supernatural reports, in turn, they seem to conveniently ignore the likely missing persons reports and "Smart Mice."
• Prank Call: A guy with various names (Twig Sigmund, Buzz Goober, Fred Pinball, Gub Rubber and Flipper) will call on most of the days as a prank to voice a ludicrous complaint, using a very distorted face composed of copied/pasted noses and eyes alongside an overly wide mouth. He's turned into a mouse by Carol when she personally invades his house to stop his attempt on Friday, and while he does return on Saturday, all he can say is squeaking noises.
• Red Herring: Certain entries have overlapping "symptoms" and problems, so it can be easy to confuse one possible issue with another. This can also mean mistaking supernatural scenarios for mundane ones, and vice-versa.
  • One person calls you to complain about itchy kids waking up and having nightmares. You'd have good reason to believe given that nightmares are explicitly mentioned in the call that it may be the dream-eating spider monstrosities that are the Dream Weavers, whose entry you just unlocked earlier, especially since one would expect more fantastical and terrifying pests to be more common later on in the game. Other context though, like the itchiness and the resistance to pesticides, hints toward the actual problem being the more mundane nuisance of bed bugs.
  • There are a few entries that ultimately aren't one of the solutions to a home problem or the final day's riddles, but they do serve to confuse an inattentive player. These include Gophers, Toilet Hobbs, Trash Gnomes, False Rose Bushes, Kobolds, the above-mentioned Dream Weavers, and the Warlock Remnant.
• Riddle Me This: At the end of the game, you must solve a series of riddles on the threats to determine if you can join the fae behind the organization.
• Salt Solution: The entry on the Stair Slug says that you can get rid of one by applying a layer of salt on the stairway. But you should never directly throw it on the slug. Exactly why this is the case is not elaborated on at all, but if you give David the wrong advice, apparently the consequences aren't pretty.
• Satanic Panic: Patrice, one of the callers, complains about "Satanists" in her shed and blames her son joining a Dungeons & Dragons group for it. In reality, Patrice's son was afflicted with a Sprig Tree, and the Spriggan who did so will start targeting Patrice if you send her the wrong information.
• Self-Contained Demo: The original demo is centered on the first two days of your shift with noticeable differences:
  • There is no email program on the desktop.
  • The demo only has one day, and you even unlock more entries in the middle of that day.
  • You get more entries on hazards on the first day compare to the final where you only had about 10 entries.
  • Gary calls you on the first day that something is attacking him which is the Boggart.
  • The prank caller contacts you at the end of the shift rather than random times.
  • The game ends at the end of the first day with Carol saying your trial has ended.
• Shown Their Work: Before making the game, the creator and his wife were both actors at a medieval fantasy theme park and did a lot of research in order to help sell their performances. As such, most of the entries are taken from actual Celtic, Nordic and Germanic mythology and English folklore, with a few unique tweaks here and there. A good chunk of them don't stray too far from how they were originally envisioned.
• Sizeshifter: Trolls are 12-foot tall fae that can deflate themselves to fit inside homes when they need to steal clothing. They can re-inflate back to their normal size if startled, causing property damage to the house they've snuck into if they do it in the house.
• Speak of the Devil: It's heavily implied that Boggarts are capable of tracking down people once their name or presence is spoken, as it mentions that they will remain in their original location provided that one does not speak of it at any time in any fashion.
• Take Your Time: Even though you have to deal with calls from angry customers, you are not rushed to answer them quickly and can take your time finding out the information.
• Termite Trouble: One of the potential threats or pests are termites.
• There Is No Cure: Part of the game's horror comes from the fact that a number of the afflictions caused by fae creatures cannot be cured whatsoever. A person whose memories have been taken by Memory Wisps cannot regain them, the Fae Flu is incurable once contracted, False Beets cannot be removed from a host without killing the host, those touched by a Spriggan will eventually have a Sprig Tree grow from and consume them, etc.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Many supernatural pests will only grow active at nocturnal hours and are adept at keeping themselves hidden. Bed Hags take residence under structures for resting, Night Gnomes stalk people from outside their homes to watch them sleep, Hobbs and Boggarts perform their activities in the dark, Kobolds make homes from crevices and closets, and so on.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Many threats cannot be removed, even by HSH, meaning homeowners have to just tough it out till it leaves on its own. Some creatures might never leave the home at all. In these cases, HSH usually recommends to either placate it, or to leave and never return, depending on the danger.
• The Tooth Hurts: Leprechauns are known to attack people with braces in order to feed on the precious metal within. A caller whose household is harassed by one has his child complaining about tooth pains, and if you fail to solve the issue, his child will get his teeth damaged to the point of bleeding.
• Touch of Death: A Spriggan's touch will cause a Sprig Tree to quickly grow from within the victim, consuming and killing them within a quick span of time.
• Transflormation:
  • Fae Flu is a downplayed example. Those infected with it will have seeds take root in their skin pores and flowers growing from them.
  • Those who make contact with a Spriggan will have a Sprig Tree planted in them that quickly grows and consumes them, killing the victim.
  • Wood Secretions cause "translation of flesh" into wood if ingested. This happens to a caller's children if you fail to provide the correct package to her.
• Trash of the Titans:
  • The Horde is an invisible collective consciousness that's known to collect and store huge quantities of common household refuse. Once a Horde has introduced itself to a house, it'll quickly turn said house into a garbage-filled dump.
  • Travel Gnomes are known to turn entire households into an indoor soil-and-plant filled garden.
• Typhoid Mary: Several Sprites carry the Fae Flu, which doesn't affect them and which they don't intentionally spread, but it causes a debilitating, incurable illness to humans who come into contact with them. A good number of callers who aren't in immediate danger but fail to receive good advice will eventually call back and describe harrowing and painful symptoms from the otherwise passive fae that infected them.
• Unreliable Narrator: As the more supernatural entries begin to fill out, many proposed "solutions" suggest that the HSH is being deliberately misleading or otherwise excessively neutral in homeowner/pest disputes. Killing a pest is almost never explicitly proposed as a solution, be it a child-eating bush or a house fly (Except for "worthless mice"...). Most egregiously, the entry for the False Artifact suggests allowing children to slowly starve to death inside it and wiping all evidence of the child's existence with a Memory Wisp, rather than cutting open the False Arifact, even if only to perform a mercy kill. Some are also outright contradicted by callers, such as the Fae Feast being described in its entry as being compromised of "cornmeal, flour, and/or edible fungus," yet the caller describes as a massive pile of feces. Considering how the HSH is clearly run by fae themselves, their advice regarding nonlethal deescalation and defeatism to certain hazards should probably be taken with a grain of salt (and a sword of iron).
• Urban Fantasy: You play as a telephone operator for a pest control company in 1996 (with era-appropriate technology style) helping callers to identify household problems. These problems can vary from frozen pipes and roaches, to trolls, carnivorous furniture mimics, and gnomes.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can intentionally give your clients inaccurate information. This will lead to them calling back in dire straits, a few of them dying or being attacked mid-call. Do it too much, though, and you'll be fired and turned into a mouse.
• The Voice: Because of the premise of the game, you only hear voice calls with only the icon of the customer.
• Was Once a Man:
  • The Smart Mice are revealed to be humans that were turned into mice by the fae. This fate befell a previous employee, befalls a prank caller, and if you fail to give accurate information, you as well.
  • Also possibly the case with the fae behind the HSH. You can join them if you do well enough at your job, but whether all of them were once human employees is unclear.
• Would Hurt a Child: Many of the creatures in this world are known to hurt and devour children. Some aren't picky about their meals and will go after small animals too, but others specifically target young humans.
  • The False Rose Bush and False Artifact will blend in until they have the opportunity to eat one. A Missing Child report involves a description that matches that of a False Rose Bush.
  • Leprechauns are willing to tear out braces and crowns from them to sate their hunger for metal. Charles unknowingly complains about one and is initially dismissive of his child's cries, and after you've given him the wrong answer, he only realizes the true issue when his kid has caught sight of it and is already bleeding from their mouth.
  • Wood Secretions from mistreated wooden furnishings will lure children into physical contact and ingestion by emitting a candy-like scent, which is perceived as a fouler odor to adults. Consumption results in a painful transformation of the body into wood.
  • Bed Hags are large creepy humanoids that hide under any bedding structure. They steal the breath of those who sleep at night, so the entry specifies those with asthma and small children are at risk of harm.
• You Are Too Late: One caller is a mother whose son has gone missing, because her son has been ensnared by a False Artifact. As noted in the entity's entry, once a victim has been captured by the False Artifact, it's already too late to save them.
• You Have Failed Me: If your accuracy rating drops too low, you'll be turned into a mouse by Carol.
• Your Head A-Splode: Sprig Trees burst from humans, sprouting from where their heads used to be. Fail to assist Howard dealing with a Spriggan, and his returning call has him panicking as its touch eventually results in a tree rapidly sprouting from his head with a Sickening "Crunch!".

---

"Please remember that all you have seen here is strictly confidential. Do not tell anyone what you have learned here today."

---