"INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE"
While driving home late one night, you suffer a serious car accident in the middle of the woods. Your car is totaled, and for some reason you can't seem to find your way back onto the main road. Through the trees, you see a light, calling to you - there, in the middle of the forest, a classical arcade - Hemo's. Even though it looks long abandoned, it still has power, and it seems like somebody has recently been there. Hoping to find help, you enter the old arcade, searching for answers. All of the games and attractions are powered down - all but one, a strange little cabinet game titled JANITOR..
Janitor Bleeds is a retro First Person Horror game about escaping from a run-down, mysteriously-empty arcade; find objectives, solve puzzles, and stay one step ahead of the JANITOR. Previously featured in the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021, the game was fully released on April 7, 2022.
This game contains examples of the following tropes:
- And I Must Scream:
- The fate of those killed by the JANITOR, to be trapped in the game cabinet until they presumably set free by the player.
- The player suffers this in the Downer Ending, becoming the JANITOR and sealed in a featureless room with no escape.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Ending B has you becoming the new JANITOR.
- Artificial Brilliance: Compared to some other games in this genre, the JANITOR is quite capable of countering most of the player's tricks. Hide under a piece of furniture, or crawl into a vent where it can see you? It'll reach in, grab you, and drag you out. It might even randomly decide to check a hiding spot if it doesn't know where you are, and it will randomly check the stalls in the bathroom if it spawns in that area of the map.
- Artificial Stupidity: That being said, the JANITOR's AI suffers from a common flaw in indie horror games - kiting it while it tries to swing at you isn't difficult. The problem is that actually getting away from it once it's in melee range is significantly harder, since it can drag you out of most hiding places if you're not far enough in.
- Attract Mode: Janitor cabinets play a catchy-yet-unsettling jingle to alert the player to their location.
- Apocalyptic Log: The notes left behind by a previous traveler, and the staff of Hemo's Arcade. The former tells of being lured to the Arcade, just like you, and eventually being killed by the JANITOR; the latter tell of how Hemo's acquired Janitor to begin with.
- Big Bad: The Source, the Eldritch Abomination behind Janitor and the anomalies around Hemo's. Ending A sees you defeat it.
- Book Ends: At the start of the game, you release the JANITOR from a small, locked room. Ending B sees you imprisoned in a very similar place after becoming the new JANITOR.
- Developer Room: If you collect all the Teddy Bears, you can gain access to a secret area of the map. It contains layouts of every level in the game, a proposed layout for the arcade in general, more Teddy Bears than you can shake a stick at, and a cameo appearance by the Haunted PS 1 Demo Disc mascot.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Ending A has you defeat the Source. It isn't clear if this kills it, but it banishes it from our reality and causes Hemo's Arcade to revert to the decades-old derelict it truly is.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Hemo's Arcade is located somewhere in the forest, probably off of a main road. The evil lurking inside the Arcade twists roads to catch unwitting travelers, luring them to the Arcade itself - and once they've stumbled down the wrong road, it's too late to escape. They'll just wind up right back where they started if they go anywhere but Hemo's.
- Downer Ending: Ending B. You touch the Janitor cabinet, and it absorbs you, turning you into the next JANITOR; outside of Hemo's, another car pulls up..
- Easter Egg: Collect all the Teddy Bears, and you can open the Vault Door in the arcade's basement, granting you access to the Developer Room.
- The Game Plays You: You realize too late that playing Janitor is having real-world consequences; by the time it becomes obvious, you've already unleashed the JANITOR, and your only option is to keep playing. This is exactly what Janitor wants.
- Game Within a Game: Janitor is a simplistic Atari-like arcade game where you mop up puddles of water and blood. There's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
- Genius Loci: Hemo's Arcade; it isn't as actively aggressive as some examples, at least not initially, but it's very clearly a central part of whatever is trying to kill you. In Ending A, it's revealed to have fallen into ruins decades ago; everything else was an illusion.
- Glitch Entity: The JANITOR itself looks like a hulking mass of pixels and red light that vaguely resembles the protagonist of Janitor.
- Guns Akimbo: The protagonist dual wields Light Guns to take on the JANITOR, and later the Source.
- Here We Go Again!: Ending B shows another car pulling up outside of Hemo's, right after the protagonist has been turned into the new JANITOR.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Hemo's Arcade; "Hemo" as in "Hemoglobin". sounds like a great place to visit, doesn't it? Bring the whole family! In case it isn't subtle enough, the joint renames itself Blood Arcade later in the game.
- Light Gun Game: Later in the game, you acquire a pair of Light Gun pistols. These prove to be handy against the JANITOR, which is apparently video-game enough to be fatally harmed by them.
- The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Hemo's Arcade is a predatory variant. By the time you find it, it's already too late to get away, and when it vanishes again, it takes you with it.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: Janitor is sentient, predatory, and very eager to add the protagonist to its long list of victims. It succeeds in Ending B. In a twist of this trope, no harm is brought to the player if they die in the fictional game while playing it.
- Multiple Endings: Two; Ending A can only be acquired if the player's score is at least 16,000 points.
- Ending A, GAME OVER. Rather than touching the Janitor cabinet, the protagonist shoots out the last few boils inside of the Source, destroying it once and for all. The protagonist wakes up in the ruins of the now-derelict Arcade, which looks as if it's been left to rot for decades; they stumble outside, where several police cars have just pulled up, before collapsing and passing out.
- Ending B, JANITOR BLEEDS. Touching the Janitor Cabinet causes the protagonist's blood to be completely drained into the arcade cabinet, and their mind to be trapped inside of the JANITOR; they are left sealed inside of a tiny room, just like the one the JANITOR was trapped inside at the start. As the camera pans out over the still-functional Hemo's Arcade, another car pulls up outside .
- Retraux Games: Not only does the game itself have low-poly models, but the Game Within a Game is a simple pixelated 80's arcade cabinet.
