"Keep playing the games I sent. Otherwise, bad things will happen."
Parasocial is a horror game created by Chilla's Art.
You play as a girl named Niina, a VTuber who goes by the name of Senra Nina, making a living by streaming games. You live in an apartment by yourself, but you have your best friend Asuka who comes to visit you, so you're not too lonely.
Until one day, after completing a game sent by a viewer, your face is suddenly revealed. Things start getting very uncomfortable as a hooded stalker starts hunting down Niina and sending her more games to play, or else...
The game was released on August 25, 2023.
Tropes for Parasocial include:
- Big Bad: The stalker, iLoveNiina, who targets and terrorizes Niina. Until it turns out he, Kyoa Akushu, is an Unwitting Pawn of Rikiya Miyamoto, Nina's ex-boyfriend who roped his mother Yukiko, the building manager, and her brother Sagio Shirota, who disguised himself as a cop, in a plot to gaslight and torment Niina into getting back together with him.
- Black Eyes of Crazy: Nightmare Asuka sports completely black eyes, right before she stabs you in the gut, ending the nightmare.
- Canon Welding: This game and the The Closing Shift are confirmed to take place in the same universe, with Chilla's cafe being a location Nina and Asuka visit to talk, a few of the same characters being there. It also leaves the ending of the game ambiguous with no mention of what happened to the young worker you played as, but one of the patrons openly ponders what happened to his teacher Hassaku, tragically confirming his body still hasn't been found.
- Engineered Heroics: Rikiya's entire scheme is built on him getting the stalker to terrorize Niina and then looking like the hero for Niina by saving her, so she'd fall for him again and date him out of gratitude.
- Everybody Did It: Specifically, every major NPC except Asuka was in on getting the stalker to harass Niina; Rikiya the Psycho Ex-Boyfriend plotted it all to swoop in and save Niina so she would get back together with him, the building manager Miyamoto is his mother, and the cop is his uncle Impersonating an Officer.
- Foreshadowing: A few that hint towards the sinister plot unfolding around Niina.
- Shortly after her face gets revealed on stream, Niina gets a text message warning her to keep playing the game or bad things will happen, and a message through the door from a stalker. These incidents happen right after the face reveal, and far too soon to have been from the game she played giving away her face, meaning the culprit already knew her phone number and where she lived.
- The Building Manager will bring up a potential stalker incident during the phone call with her and will warn Niina about going out alone at night. When she finds out she's recently broken up with someone, she will try to pester her about details before apologizing for being too nosy. It's revealed Rikiya is her son and she already knows Niina is being stalked because she's in on it.
- Asuka tries to assure Niina that she's safe in her room because it auto locks, with Asuka being the only other person who has access to open it. The Building Manager can access it too, but this information is used by Rikiya to make Niina doubt Asuka when he sets her up to be collaborating with Nina's stalker.
- The first time you encounter Rikiya, the stalker is right outside the convenience store and starts following you once you leave, as though Rikiya told him to be there or vice versa.
- The local police officer warns you that police are often too slow to respond to stalking incidents and since he lives nearby he gives you his number to call instead. This can remind any fans of Chilla's previous games with stalking where the police weren't of any use when it came to stalking. In this instance however, it's because the man's not a real cop and doesn't want you contacting the police, because they could potentially ruin the conspiracy.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: In-Universe example. Niina's last game is an eerily accurate reconstruction of her neighborhood and apartment building, with the "goal" being her own room. This is where the stalker reveals the footage he's been taking and the tension comes to a boil.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Subverted. In the bad ending, you can pick up the frying pan as a weapon, but it turns out to be useless against the stalker.
- Impersonating an Officer: The "officer" you encounter throughout the game who offers his help to Niina against the stalker is actually a man named Sagio Shirota, who was hired by his nephew Rikiya to help his scheme to "save" Niina from the stalker and win back her love.
- Meaningful Background Event:
- During the final stream, if you're looking back when you complete the game, you can see a hand reach out with a camera phone right before the video at the end reveals it.
- Niina pays no special attention to it, but if you're reading the chat during her streams, a user named "ILoveNina" says something pretty much every stream about what Nina was doing during the day or night, from commenting on her food choices at Chilla's café to asking if she enjoyed her bath.
- Multiple Endings: There are two main endings.
- Bad Ending: If Niina chooses not to trust Asuka near the end, the stalker catches the protagonist, but is attacked by Rikiya, seemingly rescuing her. Niina is indebted to Rikiya and decides to date him again. However, Asuka approaches Niina and shows her a picture of Rikiya collaborating with the stalker, revealing the whole thing to be a setup by Rikiya to make him look like a hero. The game then prompts you to retry.
- Good Ending: Should Niina continue to trust in Asuka, she tries calling Asuka and is led to the next-door room where the stalker has captured Asuka. After freeing Asuka, Niina immediately runs to the police station, avoiding the building manager and fake cop on the way. The next day, Rikiya, the building manager, the fake cop, and the stalker are all arrested for collaborating with each other. Niina makes a nice meal for Asuka out of gratitude, and she talks to her about the new game by Chilla's Art: The Convenience Store.
- Manipulative Bastard: Rikiya can trick Niina into dating him again by using the forged evidence of Asuka collaborating with the stalker to play on her paranoia, isolating her from anyone she can trust while surrounding her with people he's set up to help him.
- Mundanger: Much like The Closing Shift and The Karaoke, there are no supernatural threats in this game, and the main threat is entirely human.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The game emphasizes the paranoia and terror that comes from being stalked. Many sequences in the game occur with no danger, but with the stalker looming over Niina's head, trying to do any errand alone becomes nail-biting. Even going out to a convenience store for some snacks or taking a bath becomes a tense affair as it's impossible to tell if any stranger nearby is harmless or not, or if your home has been invaded unawares.
- Psycho Ex-Boyfriend: It's implied that Niina broke up with Rikiya because of his possessive behavior toward her. Obviously, he doesn't take the break up well, so he sets up a plan to get back together with Niina, which includes hacking her streaming, invading her home, and isolating her from people she can legitimately trust.
- Recursive Reality: Because of Parasocial's premise, the video game is about a VTuber playing video games, with the basic controls then interfacing with a second set mapped onto Niina's PC. As the stalking continues, this turns into an unsettling Droste Image, when Niina is sent a fan game and discovers that she's looking at a perfect recreation of her apartment flat, while sitting in her own.
- Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: At one point, Rikiya sends you a picture of Asuka with the stalker, claiming she's suspicious, scaring Niina enough to block Asuka out of paranoia. Asuka however, turns out to be completely innocent and benevolent the entire game, and distrusting her leads to the bad ending.
- Shout-Out:
- The end of the nightmare sequence where Asuka stabs you in the gut is very similar to the infamous First-Episode Twist scene from Oshi no Ko.
- The game as a whole shouts to previous works by Chilla's Art, such as Aka Manto, Night Delivery, Stigmatized Property, and the The Convenience Store.
- On the shelves of the café (from The Closing Shift) and Convenience store are various bags of coffee, snacks, and drinks featuring VTubers from many parts of the internet, including hololivenote and Nijisanjinote .
- Show Within a Show: One of the games that Nina streams is Aka Manto, one of the earliest games made by Chilla's Art.
- Stalker Shrine: Trying to call Asuka when the tension peaks lead you to the apartment next door, where the ringtone is coming from. Exploring the apartment reveals an unnerving collection of photos of Niina, and Asuka tied up in the bathroom.
- Stalker with a Crush: Rikiya and Kyoa to the protagonist.
- Rikiya stalks her because he plans to trick her into getting back together with him.
- Kyoa is a Loony Fan who thinks the protagonist is his girlfriend.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Niina downloading and playing a fangame that sabotaged her streaming software kickstarts the events of the game. Asuka suspects that clicking the suspicious link may have started everything, and advises her not to open links or files like that, and not to continue engaging with the game.
- Asuka herself falls victim to this. If you keep trusting her; despite knowing Niina is scared of a stalker and she agreed to help watch her for the night, she leaves in the middle of Niina's stream to go get food, despite Niina's protests and assuring her she'll be quick about it. This ends with her getting attacked once she's out there and leaves Niina alone with the stalker, as she feared.
- Yandere: Rikiya toward Niina. He's so obsessed with Niina, that he concocts an insane plan to isolate her, play the part of the hero, and win her affection again.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: Nina (the player) must download and install dangerous software from an untrustworthy link that was pasted into her chat at the beginning of the game in order to progress the story.
