7Days
is a short free indie video game. It's a psychological horror game done in first person perspective with pixellated graphics and Adventure Game elements, a style similar to Imscared and I See You.
The game has very little plot or background. All you know is that you are a person who wakes up in a bed in a house. You are trying to get out of the house. This being a horror game, things aren't that simple. In fact, you can't even get out: every time you try, the exit eludes you, and you inevitably find a note, reading which causes you to wake up in bed again. Each time you leave the bedroom, things get stranger and scarier...
Due to the nature of the plot, the game is best experienced yourself. Almost every trope on this page is a spoiler in some way. You have been warned.
Not to be confused with the 1998 TV series 7 Days, or the 2007 manga Seven Days.
7Days contains examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: You're forced to crawl through the ventilation system at one point.
- Alien Geometries: The house's floor plan is not only weird and probably impossible, it also changes from Day to Day.
- Always Night: Outside, the sky is completely black and empty.
- Arc Words:
- SAM. Is it a name? An acronym for "Sacrifice And Murder"? Completely meaningless? Most assume it's the name of the face-monster-thing, but all that's really certain is it shows up everywhere.
- Also, the end of every Day is marked by finding a note with "SAM" written on one side and "It's not time yet" on the other.
- Big Bad: SAM is the shadowy monster that chases after the player. The ending implies that it is a figment of the player’s imagination during their coma.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In contrast to its fellow pixel-horror games, it doesn't do this very much. Only once, in fact. It seems to be talking directly to the player at the end...but then, who's to say it wasn't the whole time?
- Chaos Architecture: The house is layed out differently in every Day.
- Chekhov's Gun: The screwdriver is the only item used more than once.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The doors in the first room. Black and white. The keys needed to open them are the same colour.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Words written on the walls in blood are a constant feature.
- Dissonant Serenity: SAM calmly recites philosophical-sounding gibberish in a way that comes off almost as friendly...even while jumping out at you from nowhere, chasing you, or causing the world to descend into madness.
- Eldritch Abomination: SAM might be one of these.
- Eldritch Location: The house starts off ordinary. Then it starts rearranging itself. Then comes the blood on the walls, the pictures that randomly change, the moving mannequins, the prison cells, the sacrificial altar, and so on. Then comes Day 7, and things start getting REALLY weird.
- Fauxlosophic Narration: SAM is fond of doing this.
- Featureless Protagonist: You don't see the player character or know anything about them. The ending might suggest that there isn't even a player character, just a point of view from which the player interacts with the game.
- Gainax Ending: PLEASE WAKE UP.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: It's not time yet.
- Mind Screw: The whole point of the game. Everything starts normal, but Day by Day it slowly descends into the depths of madness. Then there's the ending...
- Minimalism: An important part of the game. There's no coherent plot, no developed characters, no established setting. Just fear.
- Minimalist Cast: Just you, SAM, and a few mannequins.
- Nightmare Face: SAM is very capable of pulling this off.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Although the game has its fare share of jumpscares and intense chases and suchlike, most of the real scariness comes when you're submersed in the subtly surreal and creepy environment with nothing happening, but knowing that literally anything COULD happen...
- Offscreen Teleportation: The mannequins follow you in this way.
- Shout-Out: The Gainax Ending is an old Creepypasta.
- Slasher Smile: SAM has this expression permanently. In fact, it IS this expression permanently.
- Surreal Horror
