Video Game / Ikenfell

Welcome to the school of Magic.

Ikenfell is a turn-based tactical RPG with timing button input being a central combat mechanic, created by Happy Ray Games and released on October 8th, 2020.

The game's story follows Maritte, an Ordinary who comes to the titular magic school of Ikenfell to look for her sister Safina who didn't return home for summer vacation. Soon however, she develops magical powers that are different from those of other witches, and it's not a coincidence that it develops when she steps onto school grounds.

With her new pyromancy, Maritte must find her way into the school and uncover the mystery of her missing sister as well as the sudden wild shifts in magic that are plaguing the area.

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This work provides examples of:

• Actually Four Mooks: Most of the Pre-existing Encounters will turn out to be multiple enemies, and often not even the same kind.
• Actually, I Am Her: The epilogue reveals Pertisia is actually Salia Snow, the famed singer who visited Ikenfell once.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Attempting to interact with most of your surroundings won't get you anything; however, there are some things you can interact with that will reveal hidden items or passages. For example, interacting with the mirror in one of the bathrooms reveals an extra stall with a gem inside. There are also wardrobes/cupboards found in many rooms, while most don't do anything, some will open to reveal items; good luck finding out which ones.
• Always Second Best: Safina tends to invoke this reaction.
  • Gilda felt incompetent at Ikenfell, not helped by Safina's bullying, until she suddenly developed previously unseen lightning magic. Finally thinking she has come into her own, Gilda then keeps losing to Safina's formerly Ordinary younger sister Maritte, who only just developed her own magic. Gilda takes a major hit to her self-esteem for a while because of this.
  • Maritte was always looking up to her big sister Safina, but could never measure up. The shame of her sister being an Ordinary caused Safina to not tell anyone else at the school except Pertisia that Saf even had a sister. Maritte is rather upset by this news, to the point that she ends up making Safina's apology a Rejected Apology at the game's end because of Saf's behavior.
• Amicable Exes: Maritte and Gilda dated between the game's end and epilogue, but separated when they realized they were in love with other people (for Maritte, it's Pertisia, while Gilda has a new girlfriend called Jeanne). They remain close friends, though.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: After a certain event where Maritte suffers a Heroic BSoD and rejects her magic over what Safina did with the Summerstone, Ima temporarily takes over the role of party leader from Maritte. It's justified by zir being a junior professor and sixth-year student, and ze's already trusted by the other party members anyway.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Several quality-of-life options are included to make the game easier or to not harm people with photosensitivity.
  • An option in the menu allows you to to automatically receive "Nice" timing on attacks, with the possibility of "Great" timing also open. There's also an option to just get "Great" timing for everything if you don't want to use timed hits at all, or keep struggling with them.
  • You can turn on a menu option to instantly win a fight, while still receiving full experience points for it. This allows you to skip any fights that are too hard, or to not waste your time on trash mobs that you'd curb-stomp with little effort. It's also useful for skipping stages during boss fights so you don't have to go through the first stage again if you lose.
  • A menu option lets you shut off Epileptic Flashing Lights and attack patterns. There's also an option to include content warnings so you can be prepared, or so you can skip the cutscenes they happen in.
  • Most scenes before boss fights will have a save cat and sometimes even a shop nearby, as well as a specific song playing, to let you know you're about to enter a boss fight. And for fights that don't have this beforehand, if you lose you'll get the option to restart the fight rather than go back to your last save (this also applies to all other fights).
  • In sections where you have to sneak past sentries, your party will be reduced to only the character you're controlling, since it wouldn't be fair if you had to worry about the NPCs of your party getting caught. Some of these sections also have checkpoints so you don't have to start over if you get caught halfway through.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have 3 characters in your active party at a time, who will be shown in the overworld as well.
• Auto-Revive: One of the items that can be bought from Zhané the Gem Witch has this ability, but it only works once per battle.
• Baddie Flattery: The boss of the Dueling Arena is Professor Radegund, essentially the school's equivalent of a gym teacher. During the fight, she'll praise your characters for getting her down to half health, and once again after beating her. Justified, as Professor Radegund's testing your strength; the fact you're winning is what she wanted to see.
• Bag of Sharing: The party shares an inventory, with the only items brought to it when you get a new member being whichever items they’re initially equipped with.
• Barrier Warrior: Pertisia fights using glass to form piercing constructs and shields.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Ibn Oxley is an amicable, foppish coven wizard who goes down easily in a fight to a teenage girl who has been using her powers for all of a few minutes. Except he is an exceptionally powerful spirit mage who is being restrained by his handler/lover Bax, and once that restraint is removed, all bets are off.
• Big Damn Heroes: Petronella saves the day at the end of the game. They use their alchemy, along with a healing rune from Rook, to bring Bax back from the brink of death. This enables Bax to talk down Ibn Oxley from his despair-induced madness.
• Black and Nerdy:
  • Rook is a massive book worm, and general lover of inquiry.
  • Ima is a huge history nerd zirself. Ze's such a accomplished scholar that ze's already a junior professor while still being a student.
• Blackout Basement: Some rooms in the Southern Dorms and the Roost are dark and have a few circles of light, making it difficult for you to see everything in the room, and easier to run into enemies.

• Book Ends: One of the first boss fights in the game is against the fabulous Ibn Oxley. The last boss fight in the game is against a decidedly less fabulous (and far more powerful) Oxley.
• Boss Banter: Some of the bosses will talk during battles, usually when the next stage is about to start.
• Boss Tease: It turns out Ibn Oxley really is the most powerful mage in the coven. It's just that Bax was intentionally holding back his magic. When Ibn thinks Bax is dead, Ibn loses control of his power.
• Boss Warning Siren: During most scenes that take place before boss fights, the song "Save Cat" will play to let you know that when you next interact with whoever is involved, it will initiate a boss fight. This isn't always the case, however, and you might be thrown into some fights without getting a chance to save beforehand.
• Broken Bridge: These are found all over the game, mostly in the form of entrances to buildings being locked or blocked by something. Some areas of Ikenfell's grounds are also blocked by vines that are cleared after certain plot advancements.
• Broken Pedestal: Maritte learns some pretty bad things about her big sister over the course of the story, but what really hurts her the most is that Safina kept Maritte a secret from the other students out of shame. Well, all of them except Pertisia. Petronella and Rook aren't too happy when they find out they Safina intentionally didn't tell her best friends about her sister. Also, as Maritte learns more about what Safina did by supposedly releasing the Dark Fold and keeping everyone else Locked Out of the Loop, the pedestal breaks even further. At the end of the game, Maritte even tells Safina that she can't forgive her for everything that she's done yet because of how much Safina hurt her feelings.
• Can't Drop the Hero: Played with. Maritte is the central focus of the story, and must always be in the party. However, after a certain even where Maritte suffers a Heroic BSoD and rejects her magic over what Safina did with the Summerstone, Ima takes over the role of party leader instead. Maritte is still technically in the party, but she can't be switched into the front lines. Maritte becomes playable again later, and she can be switched out freely after she becomes playable again.
• Cast Full of Gay: All of the party members are non-heterosexual and/or transgender. Several of them show attraction to the same gender or non-binary people, with Rook, Ima, and Petronella preferring to not identify as a gender. (Respectively, they use he/him, ze/zir, and they/them for pronouns.) Outside of that, there are several other same-sex couples, including Ibn Oxley and Bax being in a romantic relationship, both of whom are men.
• Chest Monster: There's a hidden room in the Stacks where opening the chest it contains will start a fight against Attack in the Box, who only takes more than 1HP of damage while its eye is exposed.
• Climax Boss:
  • The boss battle against Ibn, Bax and Gilda takes place about halfway through the game, and the cutscene afterwards reveals that Safina destroyed the Summerstone, leading to everyone panicking that the Dark Fold is on the loose, as well as Maritte being upset that her sister would release something so deadly.
  • The boss battle against the Unseen serves as the climax to Pertisia's character arc as she learns to face the creature that scarred her, and that she won't have to face it alone.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Some enemies are able to temporarily reduce a party member’s defense in battle, causing them to take more damage. There are also some items that allow the party to do this to the enemies.
• Damage Over Time: Some enemies can cause your party members to be poisoned, losing some of their HP for a certain number of their turns. Petronella also has two skills where this can be done to enemies.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The strategy for most bosses is to just keep depleting its health until it's defeated, although there are spells and items you can use to inflict status effects if you can get close enough. Most of these bosses also have at least one other stage, and will summon other enemies to stall you.
• Defeat Means Friendship / Defeat Means Playable: Gilda joins the party after being defeated in your second rematch in the Spirit Oval.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Pertisia starts off very standoffish to the point you can't even control her after she joins the party at first, however Maritte's kindness and warmth eventually win her over. Pertisia even falls in love with Maritte due to Maritte's kindness.
• Difficulty Levels: The Timing Mode setting in the options menu allows the player to choose between Manual (the default), Semi-Auto, and Auto. Semi-Auto makes it so that mistimed hits are automatically "Nice" while Auto guarantees all hits are "Great."
• Disconnected Side Area: The Snatcher's Lair isn't seen on the map, and is initially reached by travelling through the Unseen; once you reach the end, you travel back to the school using a toilet. There's also the Ruins, which is seen on the map, but can only be travelled to by having the Raven take you there and back.
• Disney Death: Bax is fatally wounded prior to the final battle and loses consciousness. The party manages to revive him so that he can stop Ibn.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Aeldra's use of Blood Magic to remove her feelings of pain and anguish from herself carries strong overtones of self-harm.
• Door to Before: You’ll often find that doors or openings which you can’t travel though at first will become available once you reach them from the other side after making it to the end of an area. There are also Traveller Oaks, which function as a warp system, and a few NPCs who can take you back to the beginning of a place so you don’t have to backtrack all the way through it.
• *Drool* Hello: The scene prior to fighting The Headmistress' blood in the archives has its oozing blood from atop the room.
• Duel Boss: Gilda will challenge Maritte to a one-on-one rematch in Chapter 3.
• Early-Bird Boss: There are a couple.
  • Beacon, the Chapter 1 endboss, is fairly challenging; you're one character short of a full party, you're trying to learn the timings for Petronella's spells, and you're about as undergeared as you can get.
  • The Chapter 2 midboss, Gilda, could also qualify; she's a fast, flashy opponent with the tightest attack timings you've encountered so far, and you're still shy a third party member.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Dark Fold, a spell that went haywire, and threatened to devour all of the land. It was trapped in the Summerstone with the Summer Sapling, and despite initial concerns, was completely eradicated in the process.
• Eldritch Location: The Stacks, which is where the oldest tomes of magic are kept in Ikenfell. The place is haunted by shadow monsters and ghosts, and killing the ghosts unleashes splotches of Blood Magic. The boss of the area is also an avatar of pain called Agony. The basement of the place is literally covered in blood, with the entire screen pulsating like a heartbeat, which increases in volume and frequency the closer you get to Agony. The blood is from Aeldra, who is literally siphoning away her pain and guilt over what she did with the Summerstone and the Dark Fold.
• Elemental Powers: Several characters have suddenly developed these despite it not being normally possible for mages to do such things. Among them, Maritte gets fire magic despite supposedly being an Ordinary, and Gilda's magic changes to lightning power.
• Enemy Summoner: Quite a few of the bosses will summon other enemies as part of the fight, making it more difficult as you not only have to deal with their attacks but the turn order is also changed to include them.
• Eternal Recurrence: A variation. Every thousand years or so, the "season" of magic changes, causing great upheaval of the magic system, changing the types of powers found in people, and causing all texts from that era to simply vanish. It also requires the Sapling to die to function properly, and Aeldra's refusal to let it do so threatens all of Ikenfell, if not the whole magic world.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The events of the game take place over one or two days after the prologue.
• Eye Scream: Pertisia's left eye is covered with a nasty scar that forces her to keep it closed, which she received after being attacked by the Unseen. Ima has been using zir magic to cover up the wound, but Perty tells zir to remove it during Chapter 8.
  • Gwenora also has a scar on her eye, which she says was caused by Safina.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Ibn Oxley claims to be the most powerful mage in the coven, but he goes down rather easily in a fight. Except he really is the most powerful mage in the coven, his power is being kept in check by Bax. When Bax is taken out, the amicable fop suddenly becomes much scarier.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: The third and final fight with Ibn Oxley involves the party getting sucked into the Ghost Realm, the setting's other alternate dimension.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Maritte first sees the Twilight Yard, Rook tells her that it's a good place to go on dates, and then becomes quiet, claiming nothing is wrong when Maritte asks if he's alright. It's later revealed that he and Safina used to date, but he broke up with her because he didn't like her keeping secrets from their other friends.
  • During a cutscene after the party meets Ima, ze talks to Pertisia about a spell that she's under, but we don't learn the details until later: it's to hide the scarring on her face. There are also a few scenes where Pertisia reacts with a Visible Silence when secrets are brought up, because the hidden scar is a secret of her own.
• Friendly Fireproof:
  • Averted for most spells. It's possible to hit allies with AOE skills or heal/buff enemies with AOE support skills. It's possible to take advantage of this by defeating an exploding minion when it's next to another enemy.
  • Played straight with certain skills like Rook's Seeker skill or the enemy Bad Weather skill, which ignores allied units entirely.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: At one point in the game, Maritte gives up her fire magic and is temporarily unable to include in your active party. However, despite this, she’ll still level up and learn new skills, likely to save you the effort of having to do it yourself when she becomes playable again.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Pertisia has a magically-concealed claw mark over her eye from a monster from The Unseen, which is fought as the Chapter 8 midboss.
• Goodies in the Toilets: There are several bathrooms in the game where you can find gems that are hidden, some of which are actually in the toilets. In fact, there is one bathroom where you find an item needed to progress. Some bathrooms also have enemies in them.
• Gradual Regeneration: Petronella's "Aura" and Ima's "Rainbow" can be used on party members to increase their HP over several of their turns, as can specific items.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Some of the gem locations can be hard to find, mainly because they involve going offscreen to access them. Sometimes the edge of the room will have an indication of where to go, but other times parts of the room will be completely hidden until you do a specific action such as interacting with a bathroom mirror.
  • The Orchard has an area with a memory shard and a gem that appears to be inaccessible because the only apparent way to get there is blocked by crates - you have to get there by going through an opening that’s hidden by a tree, which is only indicated if you pay attention to the path’s pattern.
  • There’s an area in the Ruins with three chests that can only be reached by going through a secret passage from the narrow path after you’ve turned off the barrier - you’ll have to keep moving along the edge until you find it.
  • Finding the Allcat’s clan is also difficult - you have to interact with the stones in one of the Dueling Hall’s rooms until they reveal a secret passage, but you need at least one party member to have a power level of 100 or more to be able to move them all.
  • One of the bathrooms in the Spirit Oval has a secret passage that leads to a gem, but there’s another secret passage that branches off that and leads to a creepy-looking part of the bathroom with a mirror where you can encounter an Optional Boss if you’ve completed Gwenora’s sidequest. She even lampshades that you won’t be able to find it.
• Heroic BSoD: Maritte undergoes one after finding out that Safina intentionally released the Dark Fold by breaking the Summerstone, which would potentially kill thousands of people. Even though it turns out that the Summer Sapling destroyed the Dark Fold ages ago, there's no way that Maritte knew that at the time.
• Important Haircut: After regaining her magic and vowing to find Safina in order to get the truth, Maritte gains mismatched eyes (one red, one blue), and her hair turns from redheaded to a sparkling maroon. She's also shown to have had her hair cut short in the post-credits epilogue.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: There are chests everywhere that you can open to find useful items, even in bathrooms! They can also drop seemingly out of nowhere after winning an enemy encounter. However, Zhané’s chest is one that she won’t let you open unless you bring her 10 Sparkly Gems.
• Infinity +1 Sword: In the final level, the party can acquire their best weapons by doing optional trials with one member doing a solo battle against a group of enemies. There's also the Kitty Wand, which can be equipped by any party member and is just as powerful as the weapons earned through the trials.
• Information Broker: Meracchi, a student who uses a army of mice familiars to collect intel and offers to sell it to the player.
• Informed Equipment: No one in the party is seen wearing anything other than what they’re wearing when they join even if you swap it for other items. Most notably, Maritte has to wear Safina's hat and cloak to bypass a spell to get into her room, but she is not actually shown wearing them, and one of your active party members has to wear all of the cat items found behind the cat doors in order to fight the Allcat, which they again are not shown wearing.
• Interface Screw: If you have screen shake enabled, then when you go into the Stacks' basement, the screen will move with a heartbeat-like effect, including the dialogue boxes when characters are talking or when interacting with things.
• Joined Your Party: You get a short message whenever a character joins the party. When Pertisia joins, since she's only helping you retrieve Safina's cloak at first, the text says "Pertisia joins the party! ...Sort of.", and she can't be controlled in battle. After reaching the Snatcher's Lair, the text after a cutscene will say "Pertisia joins the party! ...For real this time!", and you'll be able to control her actions.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In the Archives, the party learns about the seasons of magic. Not only does this change how the world's magic works, people will forget everything related to the previous season after it changes. This also causes books and other mediums of information to become undecipherable if they pertain to the previous season. However, Safina's Heart Prism can circumvent the concealment of information.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The clutch effect. If an attack that reduces a character to 0HP gets a "Great" timing, they’ll revive with 1HP, but only once per battle, making it useless if the next turn is another attack directed at them.
• Lazy Backup: You can only have 3 members in your active party at a time, and you can only switch them at save cats. If you lose a battle, you will get a game over and will either have to restart the fight with the same party members, or go back to your last save if you want to change them.
• Leaked Experience: Party members who aren’t in the active party and therefore don’t take part in battles will still gain experience points and level up, just not at the same rate as the ones who are.
• Magic Eye: Maritte gains a blue eye after she reclaims and fully embraces her magic.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: Maritte suddenly gains magic at the beginning of the game, despite being an Ordinary. She soon finds out that she's not the only one, as several other characters either gained new magic or had theirs mixed up. It's because a new "season" of magic just started.
• Mini-Dungeon: The game has a several areas you have to travel through that aren’t very long, but do have puzzles and/or enemies you must get past in order to reach the end and gain access to the next area.
  • Chapter 1 has an odd example, where the Forest is the main dungeon, but the last boss of that area is actually found within the inn’s basement, which consists of just a few rooms (although the enemy encounters there are difficult at that point in the game).
  • Chapter 3 has another odd example where you don’t even see all of the Library before you have to travel though the Lockup, which is very small, in order to retrieve Safina’s hat from Blackhat.
  • When you do get to see all of the Library, it turns out to be a small area with only a few encounters before you are joined by Pertisia, who opens the door to the Northern Dorms, which again doesn’t take very long to travel though, although you are stalled by a one-on-one fight between Maritte and Gilda, and then you travel to the actual dungeon that is the Snatcher’s Lair.
  • The Twilight Yard consists of you having to collect stars (while running into some enemies on the way) in order to unlock Chapter 4’s first dungeon, the Astronomy Tower.
  • The Orchard and Cemetery are first new places you visit in Chapter 5, where you just have to fight enemies on the way to Sigbert’s cabin, where the key to the Roost is.
  • Speaking of the Roost, while it does have some difficult enemies and puzzles, it doesn’t take as long as the Astronomy Tower or Spirit Oval, and there isn’t a boss fight when you reach the end; that’s saved for the next area, the Ruins.
  • The Duelling Hall is only a few rooms of enemy encounters before the fight with Radegund, who unblocks the door to the Archives afterwards.
• Mirror Boss: After completing a somewhat esoteric endgame sidequest, you can challenge echoes of the party by interacting with a sinister mirror in the Spirit Oval bathroom.
• Muggle: Called "Ordinaries" here. Maritte starts the game as one, though a Mass Super-Empowering Event causes her to gain fire magic.
• Mundane Utility: The epilogue shows Maritte using her fire magic to keep warm in an icy village while wearing only a cocktail dress. Rook, bundled up over several layers, notes that it must be nice to have.
• Multi-Stage Battle: The final battle. It starts with a grief-stricken Ibn Oxley starts at the top of the spell tower before he drags the party into the Ghost Realm.
• New World Tease: The map shows almost everywhere you will go to in the game. One particular place, the Ruins, is shown near the top left corner, and isn’t visited until about halfway through the game.
• News Travels Fast: When the party finds out that the Dark Fold has been destroyed for years, but Aeldra believes it’s still there so she’s still keeping the Sapling contained, they inform Radegund, who says she will let Bax know about it, but later on, when they learn in the archives that keeping the Sapling contained could possibly cause the world to end if not released soon, Maraoveux says she will stay in the archives to study further, yet Bax somehow knows that the Sapling must be freed in Chapter 8 even though the only other people to know this would be the party, who don't seem to tell him. Then again, everyone might have assumed that would need to happen anyway, and there are people who are known for spying and sharing information.
• No Antagonist: Deconstructed. There is an antagonist, but their behavior and goals are purely benevolent. Despite the evidence that suggests that an Eldritch Abomination called the Dark Fold being the game's antagonist, it turns out that it's long gone. However, Headmistress Aeldra legitimately fears that it's still alive. Fueled by said fears and years of suppressed guilt and self-loathing, Aeldra causes more than a few problems out of paranoia. The season of magic changing is being held back by Aeldra, out of a refusal to let the past die and for magic to change. Safina found this out, and attempted to stop Aeldra from holding it back, because a refusal to let magic change would mean The End of the World as We Know It.
• No Saving Throw: Some enemy attacks can cause the poison status effect, but in most cases it can be avoided if you get a "Great" timing. However, there are a few enemies late into the game where a "Great" timing will not prevent the affected party member from being poisoned.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Party members at 0HP will be KO'd rather than dying. However, they can only be revived with specific items rather than just any healing items. If the attack that reduces them to 0HP was defended well, they'll come back with 1HP, referred to as a "clutch", but it only works once per battle, and is pointless if the next turn is from one of the enemies.
• Notice This: Most of the gems that aren’t in treasure chests will sparkle, complete with a sound effect, so you know where to look. The same sparkle is used for a fireplace that can take you between floors in the Southern Dorms, and a toilet in the Northern Dorms that takes you to the Snatcher’s Lair.
• Ominous Save Prompt: In places where a boss fight's about to happen, there will usually be a cat sleeping nearby, or one will wander onscreen and lie down when a pre-battle cutscene ends (or before you start exploring a new area). Most of these instances also have a specific song playing called "Save Cat".
  • A more downplayed example comes before you enter the Southern Dorms, where you are advised to buy some more items if you haven't already, and a cat appears after the cutscene when you first go in. This is because it's the game's first major dungeon after the previous areas were shorter and easier to navigate around.
• One Size Fits All: Only weapons/wands are limited to party members except the Kitty Wand, which can be used by anyone; anyone can wear any of the other items, regardless of whether it’s feminine or masculine (although it doesn’t really matter since one half of your party is female and the other half is non-binary).
• Optional Boss: The game has a few extra boss fights, if you can find them. These include the Allcat, the Echoes, and Codexus. They don't become available until during the final dungeon, however, as finding the Allcat and the Echoes involve sidequests that require access to said dungeon, while Codexus is a book that gets knocked off the top of a shelf in a specific cutscene, also during the final dungeon. There's also Attack in the Box, who can be found in a hidden room in the Stacks.
• Playing with Fire: Maritte's suddenly developed pyromancy is quite bizarre, as no one has seen a fire mage before. Nobody in the current era, at least.
• Poor Communication Kills: Safina caused a lot of this because she never told anyone exactly what she was up to. When Pertisia confronted her about her plans, she responded by trapping her in a mirror rather than actually telling her, and she destroyed the Summerstone without telling Aeldra that she was actually trying to free the Sapling and that the Dark Fold was dead, leading to Aeldra putting her under a sleep spell and trapping the two of them in the Spelltower, where she continued to keep the Sapling contained, causing earthquakes all over the school.
• Post-Adventure Adventure: The main stort is about an ordinary named Maritte travelling to the eponymous Wizarding School to check in on her sister Safina, and spontaneously gaining magic just before the plot sets in motion.
  • Safina's previous adventures at the school serve as a framing device for Maritte's relationship with the rest of the party (which consists initially of Safina's two best friends Rook and Petronella) deconstructing the "Kid Hero having adventures at school" archetypes, but we only get hints and flashbacks of them.
  • It's revealed when Pertisia joins the party, that she used to be best friends with Safina, and went on several adventures with her. Their antagonism started when she was maimed and scarred during a misadventure, and Safina basically abandoned her after finding new friends.
  • A previous adventure serves as the basis for the wider plot. More specifically, the school's headmistress Aeldra was left traumatised after her friends were killed around her protecting the Summer Sapling. The lockdown's been caused partially by her trauma clouding her judgement (not helped by her using Blood Magic to draw out the emotional pain), and a case of Poor Communication Kills (Safina realised the world will die if the Summer Sapling isn't freed; Aeldra didn't realise that the evil that was sealed with it is long dead; both misunderstood one another's intentions).
• Pre-existing Encounters: All enemies can be seen, and some can even be avoided if you're fast enough. However, there are some that block your way, meaning you will have to fight them to get past them.
• Queer Establishing Moment: Ikenfell features a Cast Full of Gay, with some needing no explanation (for example Petronella and Ima are nonbinary and openly use they/them and Ze/Zir pronouns respectively; Gilda openly comments on how attractive she find other girls). That said, this trope still comes up a few times:
  • The only confirmation Rook (who's masc presenting and uses he/him pronouns) is nonbinary is a flashback where he asks Safina not to call him dude.
  • Ibn Oxley and Bax are shown to be close, but aren't confirmed as a couple until Bax makes a Love Confession and gives Ibn a Cooldown Hug after the Final Boss fight.
  • The epilogue also confirms that Petronella is aroace, and Maritte and Pertisia are in a relationship, with Maritte and Gilda having dated for a while but broken up. This is also the only time in the game that Maritte openly refers to herself as gay..
• Recurring Boss: Gilda fights Maritte three times before she joins the party.
• Red Herring: There are hints during some of the scenes involving Ibn and Bax that Ibn getting hurt will lead to something really bad happening to him. In the end, it's Bax getting hurt that causes it to happen instead.
• Pronoun Trouble: In a flashback, Safina mistakes Rook for the wrong gender and refers to him by incorrect pronouns. Rook clarifies and Safina immediately apologizes and begins referring to him correctly.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Safina is the red, and Maritte is the blue. Safina is hotheaded, egotistical, and impulsive; she even keeps people Locked Out of the Loop and just assumes everything will work out because of how good she is. Maritte is respectful, analytical, and cunning; she makes concerted plans for how to accomplish her goals, and is much more down-to-earth. Other characters frequently note the contrast between the two sisters, with many of them remarking that it's hard to believe that Safina and Maritte are related.
• Respawning Enemies: Leaving an area and entering it again will have previously-defeated enemies re-appear. It can be a nuisance when backtracking to find secrets, but it's also useful for Level Grinding (until you reach level 30).
• Rewatch Bonus: A lot of scenes on a second playthrough or viewing make more sense when you know the context behind them that's revealed later, most notably with some of the memory shard flashbacks.
• Running Gag: Bathrooms show up in quite a few areas within the school, and they’ll often have hidden secrets. Then again, what kind of school doesn't have bathrooms?
• Sad Battle Music: A sad piano song plays during the last phases of the final boss fight against Ibn Oxley, having transformed into a monster as a result of losing control of his powers when he believes that Bax has died. A slower version plays in the last phase.
• Save Point: Cats. Finding and petting a cat restores all of your HP, as its purring relaxes the party. This even lasts into an Eldritch Location known as the Stacks, where the party is healed in spite of the feelings of unease.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Dark Fold, which was imprisoned in the Summerstone before Safina destroyed it. Or so Aeldra thought. It turns out that the Dark Fold was actually destroyed when it was sealed, with only the Sapling remaining. The real danger is that keeping the Sapling contained is doing more harm than good, causing earthquakes that open cracks in the ground, because the season of magic is changing and it can only be fully completed if the Sapling dies.
• Series Continuity Error: In Chapter 8, Pertisia states that she and Safina were friends the year before before Rook and Petronella came to Ikenfell, with Ima confirming it when the others are surprised to learn this. However, this contradicts with the first memory shard in Chapter 1, where it's Safina's first day at the school and she meets Petronella, and Rook and Pertisia can also be seen among the other students. It's never explained if this is a case of Self-Serving Memory for Saf and/or Perty, or if it is just an error.
• Shock and Awe: Gilda's newfound power takes the form of lightning magic. Apparently, Gilda thought she was the only one in the world who had such a power, since it fuels her already-large ego when she gets it.
• Shoot the Dog: Occurs in the backstory, which led to the creation of the Summerstone. When Aeldra and her friends attempted to stop the Dark Fold in the past, the Fold killed everyone but Aeldra. In grief and rage, Aeldra used her powers to seal away the Dark Fold with the Summer Sapling by using the souls of her dead comrades as the Dark Fold's prison. However, the guilt of having to do this and failing to save her friends has been eating away at Aeldra for many years, to the point it drives her to use blood magic to exile her pain and guilt.
• Shop Fodder: You can get various coins, often from battles, that the descriptions explicitly say have no purpose other than to be sold for money.
• Shout-Out: Ima's song "Paint the Future" has zir saying ze'll use zir art "something like I'm Bob Ross".
  • When the party confronts the person who took Safina's hat, she at one point says "There is no Fleur, only Blackhat".
  • Chuckles is very reminiscent of the Chuckola Reserve in appearance and name.
• Status Buff: There are various items and skills that can temporarily increase one or more of a party member’s stats. Some enemies can also do this to each other.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Some rooms in the Stacks and the Spelltower involve you having to sneak past guards without being seen or they’ll send you back to the start. Fortunately, you won’t have to do it again if you return after completing them.
• Superboss: Each of the OptionalBosses are more difficult than the rest of the game's bosses and the majority of them are hard to find, and two of them also have different gimmicks in battle.
  • To fight the Allcat, you have to not only find 10 sparkly gems to open Zhané’s chest and obtain the Allkey which you then have to take to all the Cat Doors to get the items that the Allcat won't talk to you if a party member isn't wearing them, but you also have to find the Allclan in the first place, which involves lifting all the stone blocks in the Duelling Hall that you have no reason to believe are interactable, and at least one of your party members must have a power level of 100 or over to be able to move them all. The boss itself is also difficult, with high-damaging attacks, summoned enemies, and a status effect that can cause an instant K.O if not cured in time.
  • The Echoes require you to complete Gwenora's sidequest, and she even says you won't be able to find her last location (you get there by a hidden path in one of the bathrooms in the Spirit Oval). They also must be defeated together in a short space of time; if you take too long to defeat the rest while some are down, they'll revive.
  • Codexus is easy to find due to a cutscene making it obvious where to go, but does a lot of damage and summons various different enemies based on previous encounters.
  • It's easy to stumble upon Attack in the Box unprepared, and it also summons different enemies that you've fought before. It also only takes 1HP of damage unless its eye is exposed.
• Take Your Time: During the final dungeon, the earthquakes keep getting worse and worse, causing cracks to open in the ground. Despite the sense of urgency, there are two sidequests and three optional bosses (two of which are unlocked by completing said sidequests) that can't be finished until this stage in the game. You're out of luck if you expect there to be a Playable Epilogue to finish them; you'll have to do them before the facing the final bosses, even if it means ignoring the other characters urging you to hurry.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: The Spirit Oval features a lot of floor tiles that you have to keep switching between flat and raised to progress through rooms.
• Toilet Teleportation: When you reach the end of the Snatcher's Lair, you'll find a toilet, which the Snatcher says will take you back to Ikenfell (specifically a bathroom in the Northern Dorms), which can be used to travel between the school and the lair should you want to backtrack.
• Tragic Monster: Both of the back-to-back final bosses qualify.
  • The first of the final bosses, Headmistress Aeldra, is literally possessed by years and years of suppressed guilt and self-loathing over doing what they had to do against the Dark Fold. They're presented less as a paranoid maniac and more as someone who's guilt has eaten away their good sense.
  • After the first phase of the final boss, the second phase occurs when Ibn Oxley loses control of his incredibly powerful spirit magic when a possessed Aeldra mortally wounds his lover/partner, Bax.
• Turn-Based Combat: This is how battles work, with part of the interface conveniently showing whose turns are next. A character’s speed stat determines how often they get to have a turn, so the ratio of enemy to player turns can vary.
• Turns Red: The majority of bosses in the game have a second form with more dangerous attacks once their first health bar is depleted; for example, Beacon transforms from a flaming wisp to an ashen skull.
• Un-Sorcerer: Maritte is an Ordinary, meaning she lacks magic powers compared to her sister Safina; it's also implied that she's the only Ordinary in her family. However, when she steps onto school grounds, she awakens to fire abilities. After her Despair Event Horizon over Safina's actions, she wills her magic away, turning her back into an Ordinary. She gets better, embracing her magic and becoming a witch for real.
• Upgraded Boss: Ibn Oxley becomes more formidable each time you face them. During your second encounter, his partner Bax is empowering his attacks, and your rival Gilda has also joined in. When you meet for a third time, Bax's apparent death causes him to lose control of his spirit powers and transform into a ghostly monster. The first three phases of the fight resemble your previous encounters (superpowered Oxley Special and all), but he becomes far more monstrous during the last three.
• Upper-Class Twit: Ibn Oxley presents himself as one, particularly with his "Oxley Special" that does only a single point of damage until Bax assists him.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 4 serves as one. After the boss battle, a memory shard shows that Safina intentionally shattered the Summerstone, the only thing keeping the Dark Fold in check. When Maritte finds out, she undergoes a Heroic BSoD and gives up her magic because of how shocked she is that her sister would do that.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Two of them, one before the credits, and one after. The first one tells us what the main cast did after the ending cutscene, while the second one involves a Time Skip.
  • Aeldra retired from her position as Headmistress and moved to the countryside with Ifig. Meanwhile, Radegund became the new Headmistress.
  • Safina and Petronella joined the Coven, with the latter successfully finding a way for Ibn to keep his powers under control.
  • Ima became a full professor at Ikenfell and did more research about the seasons of magic.
  • Rook and Gilda decided to travel overseas to do more magic research. Maritte saw them off while also meeting other people with powers like hers.
  • Pertisia went back to performing music as Salia Snow.
• Wizarding School: The setting, of course.
• Wolfpack Boss: The fight against Ibn, Bax and Gilda at the end of Chapter 4, although the former two aren’t really teaming up with Gilda; she just decided to join in.

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