Trust me and everything will be fine. I am a good person.
The Bright In the Screen
is a 2008 horror Adobe Flash game.
You are a stick figure. You are in an empty facility of some kind. You cannot remember why you're here or how you got here. The facility is totally empty except for you, a mysterious entity sending you messages through the many screens scattered throughout the facility, and the "red freaks", insane red stick figures that attack you on sight.
This game provides examples of:
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: You play as one of the Red Freaks in one level.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Uh, not exactly. A screen informs you that "You are red when you are not looking". And then later on "You are a happy smiling Red Freak." Towards the end of the "goodbye" screen, you begin flashing red.
- Blackout Basement: In two levels it's pitch black except for some words lit up in white. You can hover the cursor over yourself to use your flashlight. At least you still have your gun.
- The Blank: The "Red Freak Museum" shows self-portraits of the Red Freaks as this.
- Book Ends: At least in one version, the ending literally takes you right back to the start. "Your new assignment" indeed.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Everything red can kill you.
- Dialog During Gameplay: After clicking on a screen, it plays through its message independent of everything else. Because of this you can walk off from the "dialog" and miss things, watch multiple screens of dialog at once, or have to dodge Red Freaks if you want to read all of a message.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In the "Trash" story on some screens in the first version, a character misses the trash can, accidentally littering. The two others that witness this then proceed to beat him to death.
- Easter Egg: If you load the SWF file directly and stretch the window way too much in one direction, you can see some counter-glitching measures, like: a deadly red wall underneath all levels, red buttons to kill yourself in normally unreachable places, and informative messages such as "What did you just did" and "HOW YOU DARE GLITCHING MY GAME YOU LITTLE RED FREAK".
- You can also read "What have you done?" if you click "Commit suicide" in any room, and stretch the window horizontally.
- Empty Room Psych: The "game" you can play while the game is loading. You can move around and shoot powerful-looking beams... but there's really nothing to shoot and nowhere to go. The old version had this room labeled "Red Therapy" and the new version tells you "You are red when you're not looking." The latest version (Ruffle ver) is labeled "We make our own chaos"
- Fake Platform: In some areas, screens and places that are black fool you into thinking there's a nice solid place to walk. They sometimes drop you into a room with Red Freaks. There's also an unavoidable one in the beginning. "I told you to mind the gap."
- Foreshadowing: "You've already been through this".
- Gameplay Automation: the "Seems like you've completely lost it" level. You only control the screen, and "you" navigate to the next level perfectly.
- Horror Hunger: The "Meat" stories shown on some screens in the second version. "This is AWFUL! I need it RAWRER!" *next screen shows blood all over* "Delicious."
- Humanoid Abomination: The "Red Freak Museum of Art" shows the Red Freaks as this.
- Informed Equipment: "You have a gun in your inventory."
- Interface Screw: in one level the screen jumps around as if glitching. Throughout the game the screen seems to vibrate just a tiny bit.
- Level Goal: The doors at the far right of each level.
- Little Known Facts: The "Red Freak Facts" on some of the screens. "Fact: Red Freaks are all the same. But they don't care." "Fact: Opinion = fact. This is a fact."
- Madness-Induced Omnivore: One of the unsettling slideshows shows a crude stick figure sitting in a restaurant, with the text "My steak is not completely cooked... but the raw bits taste better. Waiter! I want my meat RAWRER!" After a transition, the stick figure is sitting cheerfully at the table again with a splattered red smile.
- Mind Screw: The game's description says, "Experience first-hand social human behavior," and it only gets stranger from there.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: The messages in the screens are either cryptic messages or outright lies.
- Nonstandard Game Over: If you right click and choose "commit suicide", the entire game screen turns gray and the only way out is reloading the game, starting from scratch.
- Do this during the ending, and you'll get a message saying "What have you done?" That's the closest you'll get from a Happy Ending, all circumstances considered...
- Ontological Mystery
- Press X to Die: "Red buttons. They hurt you." They are useful if you get stuck and need to die to restart the level, though.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "Red Freak Fact #2: Red Freaks learn trough(sic) repetition." "Red Freak Fact #3: Red Freaks learn trough(sic) repetition."
- Schmuck Bait: "Don't press A though. A is bad." "Some of these guys are really angry." "Don't touch red walls." "I don't reccomend(sic) considering suicide." Among others.
- Silence Is Golden: There are no sound effects for most of the game.
- Teased with Awesome: You have a gun that automatically kills any Red Freaks you click on for a while in the middle of the game, but it gets taken away from you once the lights are back on.
- Unreliable Narrator: "This world was not made for you." "You can close the game whenever you want to." "If I were you... I would stop doing this." "YOU NEVER LISTEN!"
- Zombie Gait: The slower Red Freaks walk this way.
