SPOOKWARE is a 2021 microgame game developed by BEESWAX GAMES and published by DreadXP.
The game follows 3 skeleton brothers: Lefti, Midi, and Righti, as they attempt to get their lives together after spending their lives doing nothing but watching movies on their shared basement.
The game is separated in 4 episodes of 3 chapters, each featuring a different setting and mechanic as the three brothers go from one misadventure to the next, all of them containing matching and thematic spooky minigames to solve.
The game also has a version called SPOOKWARE: Watch Party. The version is free and includes: The original version of the game, which was made for a game jam; SPOOKWARE @ The Video Store, a previously paid part of the Dread X Collection; and the demo for the game which includes only the Prologue for the full game.
Tropes
- Chromatic Arrangement: The skele-bros consist of the blue-wearing Lefti, green-wearing Midi, red-wearing Righti.
- Colourful Theme Naming: All suspects in Chapter 2 are named after colors: Lady Red, Mister Blue, Sir Green, and Inspector Orange.
- Cool Big Bro: As collectively eccentric as they may be and the kind of mess they get into, the skele-bros are genuine good siblings to each other, and Righti and Midi both show love, trust, and appreciation for their youngest Lefti.
- Cool Shades: Righti wears shades and insists in acting cool.
- Dead All Along: Inverted. The twist of chapter 2 is that the victim was actually alive and just had their bones spread out for some reason.
- Improvised Lockpick: Righti is able to use his finger as a lockpick, changing the order of his phalanges to match the lock.
- Rhythm Game: A lot in chapter one, since it is a musically themed adventure. The player must repeatedly play a rhythm minigame to convince five other musicians to join the school band, culminating in the chapter's final minigame, which is a much longer and more complex version of the minigame.
- Self-Deprecating Humor: When a cigarette brand called Spookware is found, Midi calls it a stupid name.
- Shout-Out: A lot to movies, considering the movie buff protagonists.
- The final minigame of the prologue features the titular character from Nosferatu.
- One of the movies Midi mentions them watching is called Portrait of a Skeleton on Ice.
- The Colourful Theme Naming in amidst of a murder mystery in chapter 2 is likely a reference to Clue.
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Spiritual Successor: Explicitly inspired by the WarioWare series of games, but spook themed. - Sticky Fingers: Mister Blue is one of the suspects of chapter 2 and a kleptomaniac who keeps stealing stuff from around the ship for no reason, and even Righti's car.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Occasionally, the skele-bros dream of a mysterious figure in a glitchy version of reality that wears a dark cloak and a deer's skull. These segments are eerie and scary in a way that clashes with the generally fun-spooky atmosphere of the setting.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Keeping up with the skeleton theme, everyone in this world seems obsessed with milk, which is good for the bones.
- Turns Red: An interface example: towards the end of every chapter you have a sequence of minigames that have to be completed to finish the chapters. Midway through, all of them get harder and speed up, which causes the entire screen to be tinged red for the remainder of the sequence.
- Wham Line: At the end of chapter 2, the Captain saying that he was attacked by the entity with a deer head and black cloak that the skele-bros had been seeing in their nightmares.
- Whodunnit: Chapter II has the skele-bros being tasked with solving a murder on a cruise when they're mistaken for the detective that was supposed to board instead of them.
