Leftovers is a freeware horror game created for the SCREAM JAM 2021. It was programmed by Realmpact, with the art, script and design being done by Skekarin.
A shy young boy's mother has overdone it a little while cooking and now there's too much for just the two of them to eat. She asks the boy to deliver the leftovers to their neighbors and not come back until he's gotten rid of absolutely everything. The neighbors won't bite! Hopefully...
The game is available for free on itch.io
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Contains examples of:
- Abusive Mom: The mother acts nice enough at first, but she's incredibly pushy and demanding with her son. Worse, if her son returns prematurely due to having been scared (or worse) by the neighbors, she doesn't care about his very obvious distress and instead snaps at him to finish what he started. In the Game Over you get if you return home too often without having delivered all the leftovers, she full-on screams at him and calls him "fucking useless".
- Apartment Complex of Horrors: A mother asks her young son to deliver some leftovers to their neighbours in the levels below. Some of their neighbours are creepy; a little girl bullies the player character and hides the foodbox from another neighbour. The player character meets his (unseen) father's mistress; she phones to boy's mother, enters her apartment, then comes out with a knife and chases the boy upstair looking like a homicidal maniac.
- The Bully: The school girl on Level 5 is one, with the boy remarking that she regularly torments him at school. She's also this to the adults, as an optional side quest revolves around her hiding another tenants food, knowing that his dog will probably starve to death. Why does she do this? Because the man's dog licked her once and she thought it was disgusting.
- But Thou Must!:
- You can shake your head 'no' when mum asks you to deliver the leftovers, but it won't change the story apart from some alternate dialogue.
- Similarly you can decline the old man from Level 2's invitation for a chat. The old man will merely provide you a closer look at his box cutter and insist you stay.
- Disappeared Dad: The boy's father is conspicuously missing at the start of the game, merely being alluded to by the mother and the other neighbors. It's all but stated that Hillary killed him and turned his remains into the very leftovers the boy is currently delivering.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Kenneth cheated on Hilary, so she killed him, cut his body up and had her own son deliver his remains to the neighbors as "leftovers".
- The school girl's response to a dog licking her once? Trying to make the animal starve to death.
- Foreshadowing:
- If you tell the old lady next door you haven't been a good boy, she warns you that being honest to a fault isn't always a good thing. If you answer the old man from Level 2's questions honestly, you'll get a Game Over in which the boy is kidnapped and his mother is murdered.
- The mother tells the boy not to come home before all the leftovers have been delivered. Returning prematurely too often leads to a Game Over.
- Once only one leftover package is left, the boy mentions a "friend" of his father's that lives on Level 7. Said "friend" is Laura, his father's mistress.
- Featureless Protagonist: The protagonist doesn't have a sprite, unlike every other character. You see his hand when he knocks on doors and he can be seen on some of the photos in his apartment, but that's it.
- Harmful to Minors: The mother sees nothing wrong with having her child deliver his father's dismembered corpse to the neighbors as leftovers. Or, more egregiously, telling her husband's mistress exactly what it is she just had delivered to her, even though her son is still present. Worse, if the ending where you manage to flee back home is any indication, she knew the revelation would drive Laura into a revenge-fueled, murderous rampage and follow the boy home and was banking on it to complete her own revenge scheme. Never mind that her own son might end up dead in the process.
- Implied Rape: The creepy woman from Level 6 repeatedly states how cute she finds the boy and makes some rather concerning comments about his looks. If the boy accepts her invitation to take a quick rest at her apartment, she tells him she'll "be gentle" as he enters. After a cut to black, the boy exits the apartment again, horrified and crying for his mother.
- Jerkass: The school girl was willing to make someone's dog starve for licking her once, for starters!
- Kick the Dog:
- The woman from Level 8 calls the boy an idiot if he tells her the food he's handing her is free. If he tells her it isn't, she gets mad and throws a cockroach at him for "payment".
- The school girl from Level 5 hides another tenant's food so he'll be forced to put down his dog to survive. If the boy helps the man to get his food back, she later on block his way while he's trying to escape from Laura, which can end up getting him killed.
- Nice Guy: Some of the neighbors are genuinely nice, thanking the boy for the food and not doing anything to scare or bully him.
- Nightmare Face: Several of the neighbors have grotesquely deformed faces. Not at all helped by the fact that some of them get really up in your grill while you talk to them, giving you a nice, detailed look at their deformities and creepy expressions.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: You can ruin the school girl's "prank" of hiding another tenant's food by bringing it back to him. If you do, the girl waits for you on the next stairwell and ominously tells you you'll regret this. When you're forced to flee from a knife-wielding Laura later on, she shows up to block the last set of stairs to your apartment, potentially leading to you getting caught and killed.
- No Name Given: No one in the game is named, not even the protagonist. Averted with the boy's mother, the woman the boy's father cheated on her with and the boy's father. Their names are revealed to be Hillary, Laura and Kenneth respectively.
- Only Sane Woman: The woman who discovers the eyeball in her leftovers simply asks if giving out leftovers in this apartment is a tradition or something (she's new), cheerfully accepts the leftovers, and acts weirded-out when she sees how strange they look. Yeah, she could have been a little more polite at seeing the weird leftovers, but other than that, she's one of the few normal neighbors.
- Pay Evil unto Evil:
- Discussed with the old man on Level 2. He asks the boy if he thinks murderers should be punished and, if the boy says yes, if the same should apply even if the murderer he's alluding to is the boy's mother. If the boy agrees again, the old man muses about his innocence, then locks him inside the apartment with a heavy implication that he will kill the boy's mother as payback for her killing his wife.
- Laura attempts to do this when she goes insane, chasing the boy all the way to his apartment to kill both him and his mother for the murder of the boy's father. Turns out Hillary intended to do this to her from the beginning on and is already waiting behind the door with a knife.
- Pet the Dog: If the boy agrees with everything the old man on Level 2 says, the old man compliments him on his innocence, muses how all may not be lost and is implied to lock the boy away and go to kill his monster of a mother.
- Psycho Knife Nut:
- The old man on Level 2 carries a box cutter when he opens the door, which he uses to force the boy to chat with him if the boy says he doesn't want to talk. If you don't get his questions right, he'll also stab the boy to death or locks the boy in the apartment and implies he'll kill his mother.
- The woman from Level 7 snaps after the boy's mother reveals to her what the "leftovers" she just got handed really are, grabs a knife from her apartment and chases after the boy.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Downplayed. The woman from Level 6 is clearly a pedophile and is heavily implied to assault the boy sexually if he lets himself be lured into her apartment. She is by far one of the creepiest tenants, getting even more monstrous in appearance after she gets what she wants. However, she's not portrayed as more evil than the tenants who flat-out try to kill the boy.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Laura snaps when she's told what the leftovers really are, gets a knife from her apartment and screams about how she's going to kill everyone in the apartment building.
- Run or Die: Laura goes violently insane after your mother reveals to her that she killed her lover (your father) for cheating. As soon as you can, you should run, as Laura has no trouble killing you to get back at your mother.
- The Secret of Long Pork Pies: It's all but stated that the leftovers the boy is delivering to the neighbors are the cut-up remains of his father who his mother killed.
- Serial Killer: It's implied that the mother is one. Not only did she kill her own husband for cheating on her, an old man from Level 2 also claims she killed his wife.
- So Proud of You: A darker-than-usual example. The mother tells her son she's proud of him if he manages to deliver all the leftovers (which were really parts of her husband's corpse) and lure Laura to her (implied to be so she can kill her).
- Stalker with a Crush: The man from Level 8 is one for the boy's mother. He at first rejects the leftovers, until he recognizes the scent of "the beautiful chick from Level 9". After that he's eagerly sniffing the container to get more of said scent and practically salivates over it while imagining how he'll savor every bite.
- Stylistic Suck: The game combines a barren 3D environment with 2D character models that use limited animation to create a tense and creepy atmosphere.
- Til Murder Do Us Part: It's eventually revealed the mother killed her husband when he cheated on her.
- Video Game Caring Potential: You can help the man on Level 2 get his stolen food back, so he won't have to eat his dog. Though doing so will make the bully an obstacle in the coming chase scene.
- Villainous Breakdown: If the Player Character doesn't carry out the mother's Evil Plan, she snaps and calls him "fucking useless".
- Wham Line: The woman from Level 1 says one upon further inspecting the leftovers, revealing what they truly are.Woman: Wait- Is that an eyeba-
- Would Hurt a Child:
- The old man on Level 2 will kill the boy if the boy says he doesn't think killing an innocent person is wrong or that murderers shouldn't be punished. Averted if the boy says that killing is wrong and further agrees that murderers should be punished even if the murderer were a loved one of his, for example his mother.
- Laura is fully willing to murder the boy as part of her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
