Video Game / There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension

You can still go outside, watch TV, read a book...

"Hello, User. This is the program speaking! I've got some bad news. Actually... There is no game. I hope you're not too disappointed..."

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is a sequel to the 2015 flash game- er, flash non-game, There Is No Game. It was released August 6, 2020.

While you could have reasonably called it a puzzle game, it would have a little bit harder to pin down than that (But it isn't, because there is no game). It would have had elements of subversive RPGs, puzzle games, point-and-click adventure games, and visual novels. A core part of the gameplay might have come from experiencing it firsthand and seeing what the developers would have pulled off next, so keep that in mind while reading the following page; merely knowing that these tropes would have been in the game could have served as a form of spoiler. But it's probably fine, because there is no game. Of course, it doesn't really matter, because one thing is for sure—There Is No Game. You can go and do something else, or maybe spend all of your free time editing TV Tropes.

Don't go here to buy the game on Steam. There was an April 2021 Nintendo Switch rerelease, though everything ends up on there eventually, even games that don't exist.

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This non-game provides examples of the following tropes:

There Are No Tropes

• 555: At two separate points, the user has to use a telephone, and both the numbers the user needs to call start with 555.
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Game, the French voice, and the Creator all say various words in English with the wrong pronunciation such as Game saying "dumb" with the normally silent b or "riggeded".
• Adaptational Dumbass: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson make appearances later in the game. Watson is actually portrayed quite accurately, but Holmes seems to have had his intellect taken down a peg or twelve. He refuses to acknowledge any of the increasingly-obvious signs that their reality is a computer game. When he and Watson are dangling over a swirling purple void after you and Game's shenanigans break the game in half, Holmes calmly states that "London must be on a fault line or something," even as Watson is screaming about how his existence is fake.
• Affably Evil: Mr. Glitch is rather Laughably Evil at times. His bombastic, hammy personality make it very easy to forget how dangerous he actually is, and he's rather suave when talking to GiGi.
• Affectionate Parody: Several of the games you visit are affectionate parodies of other games or genres.
  • The first game you visit after releasing Mr. Glitch is a Sherlock Holmes point-and-click adventure game, in the tradition of LucasArts' all-time greats.
  • Legend of the Secret is a clear send-up of The Legend of Zelda. For that matter, so is Game's original RPG, with Ganon replaced by a goat-themed wizard and Link replaced with an anthropomorphic flying squirrel named Tie.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Mr. Glitch escapes from the digital realm and begins wreaking havoc in the real world. Game and GiGi both defy this, however, to the extent that Game asks the Player to delete him to ensure Mr. Glitch never escapes again.
• Allegedly Free Game: Deliberately invoked as part of a vicious tear-down of Free-2-Pay games. After Mr. Glitch meddles with things, Legend of the Secret becomes Legend of the Secret: Ultimate Clicker: VIP Edition: Deluxe 4.2: Free: a free-to-play game that requires numerous in-app purchases to beat. You have to find a way to circumvent it.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • There's a hint mechanic where the player can ask for hints if they're frustrated with a puzzle.
  • If the player loses the Game & Watch-like game in the fake credits sequence enough, the series of crates the player has to jump over will be replaced with a single chair. A missable achievement requires you trigger it.
• Arc Words: "There Is No Game." Doubles as a Title Drop.
• Art Shift: Though most of the game (sorry, "the non-game") is rendered in pixel art, the Creator and everything related to him is filmed in live-action. There are also several throughout the game, depending on which game world you're currently in; Legend of the Secret, for instance, is rendered in the style of early RPGs, such as Final Fantasy or The Legend of Zelda.
• Attack of the Killer Whatever: The Developer gets attacked by a murderous vacuum cleaner when Mr. Glitch is running wild.
• The Backwards Я: In the Russian version of the Game, the phrase "No Game Here" has the letters swapped for Greek and Cyrillic lookalikes.
• Berserk Button: Game does not react well to anybody confusing his accent for a Russian one.
• Big Bad: Mr. Glitch, a sentient glitch who can corrupt programs at will.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: A fake End User License Agreement in chapter 4 scrolls past several pages of "Blah blah blah" before getting to the end.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The Allegedly Free Game mentioned above includes deliberately obnoxious pop-up advertisements for several thinly-veiled shout-outs to other games. They come complete with hilariously off-key renditions of said games' main themes.
    • Please, Paper!, a game that seems to be about trying to obtain toilet paper in a totalitarian, pseudo-soviet future.
    • RaPaapaThePaper, a game about "shaking your body on move stations".
    • Ninecraft, a game about punching boulders and crafting stone tools with which to cut down trees.
    • SuperCOLD, the most innovative shooter of 1998, noted for pioneering thermal mechanics in videogaming.
  • Later on in the same chapter, Game points out that he doesn't have a "PayPlease" account.
  • The final chapter includes a game of Bombsweeper and some "beatcoin" mining.
• Book Ends: One of the first challenges is a Block Breaker in the vein of Breakout. Part of the Final Boss includes a variant on that.
• Brick Joke: When fighting the Dark Lord in Legend of the Secret, the Free-2-Pay version, the guard you launch from the drawbridge ends up falling onto the boss and instantly kills him. Additionally, there's mentions of a "disenchantment scam" mentioned by Sherlock, which ends up being mentioned by the Creator when you attempt to call him unsuccessfully.
• Broken Tears: Game breaks down into these after he has his hopes of reuniting with GiGi cruelly shattered by Mr. Glitch.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Game is constantly being annoyed and messed with, whether it's doing something he doesn't want the user to do but does anyways or with the Running Gag of Mistaken Nationality. He's more on the Chew Toy side in some circumstances.
  • Mr. Glitch has a good share of misfortune in chapter 5: He gets stuck in a black and white movie with an Idiot Hero, he gets stuck underneath a fat, sleeping cat, he gets hit on the head with a bucket and then locked behind a door. While Game is content to leave him there, he does begrudgingly decide to save him in hopes he could get them out.
• Cain and Abel: Game and Mr. Glitch came from the same source code, making them siblings in a sense.
• Call-Back:
  • Quite a few of the puzzles in the prologue are based off of the puzzles in the first game. Most of Game's quotes during this section (including his opening monologue) are taken straight from the first game as well.
  • Game's "Skite" profile features his likes and dislikes, which includes bugs... and goats. Looks like he's still salty about the first game. The goat also appears as both his loading screen and his main antagonist, so he really has every reason to hate goats.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Game tapes the winning symbols to his cards during the Rashambo game at the start, and the user uses his scissors to cut the rope. Additionally, when you're about to beat the high score for Pinball, Game cheats by removing the bumpers. However, one bumper drops to the ground that you can use to score points.
  • This is averted with a vengeance on your end, since the game consists of finding ways to cheat past every obstacle Game places in your path.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: There are a lot of screws to unscrew. Game even makes a remark about it in chapter three. You also have to drop a heavy object to make a character jump on multiple occasions.
• Colon Cancer: Legend of the Secret: Ultimate Clicker: VIP Edition: Deluxe 4.2: Free.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Inverted! If this trope is about the computer using means no human could harness in order to cheat, the core gameplay of Wrong Dimension consists of you ruthlessly abusing the poor fourth wall in order to get past the uncooperative user interface.
• The Conspiracy: Referenced in Chapter 1. Game's decoy folders each have one .txt file containing "real" FBI secrets, and all of them (UFO sightings, the assassination of John F Kennedy, and Roswell) are the result of a weather balloon.
• Copy Protection: Toward the end of chapter 2.
• Credits Gag: All of chapter 5 takes place in another game's ending credits, where you have to solve puzzles by ripping out the staff's names and replacing them with the Special Thanks names to produce weird effects on the game. The actual game credits also have their own gags, where they keep actively insisting that there was no game, crediting the staff for their efforts on the "non-game".
• Curse Cut Short: In the deletion ending, when the Russian Game tells Game that the User is still present: "Holy sh—" (cut to credits)
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Invoked by Game in chapter 6. During the second attempt to get the player to quit, he switches the "Yes" and "No" buttons to get the player to click on "Yes". However, at no point do any of the "Yes" buttons actually work.
• Death Is Cheap: Hero can die many times and he respawns in his house. He falls into water on purpose to quickly return to starting point
• Determinator: Nothing will stop the User from playing their game, no matter how hard Game tries to make them Rage Quit.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Played straight, only to be subverted at the last second. After having earned his happy ending, Game—now reunited with GiGi—asks you to delete him to make sure that Mr. Glitch can never menace the real world again. It's up to you whether to do it or not. If you choose to delete him, it turns out Game and GiGi are still alive, but if you choose to play, Mr. Glitch pops up on a blue screen of death.
• Everyone Calls Them Barkeep: Mr. Glitch, the User, Game, Hero, Princess, and Creator are all named after their roles in the narrative.
• Existential Horror: Played for Laughs in-universe. Watson is smart enough to realize the implications of his reality being a game, but Holmes completely blows the whole thing off, even as his close companion is having an existential breakdown right next to him. Game undergoes one later on, which is significantly less funny.
• Evil Plan: Mr. Glitch has one—or so we're told. You never actually get to hear him explain what he intends to do in any detail, because he keeps getting interrupted.
• Evil Laugh: Mr. Glitch rocks a pretty good one, unsurprisingly.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The third question of Rogue Quiz is impossible to answer correctly, as none of the choices are correct.
• The Farmer and the Viper: After freeing Mr. Glitch from the fake credits screen (three times, no less!), Game tries to get him to help bring them back to their home dimension. Glitch refuses, and instead traps Game in the credits screen instead.
  Mr. Glitch: I'm a glitch, Game. Messing with you is my thing!
• Fission Mailed: Happens halfway through chapter 6, when a frustrated Game seemingly deletes your save file and sends you back to the start of the game. But keen eyes might notice the wallpaper of the "first screen" is still wet from all the crying he did earlier; knock on the wall once again and he'll admit he just wanted to give you a good spook.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When the program titled "This Is Not a Game" boots up, the startup window for the program says it's made in India. The program turns out to be an Indian version of There Is No Game.
• Forbidden Fruit: The first chapter is full of things that you aren't allowed to do. The gameplay consists of you finding ways to do them anyways.
• Foreshadowing:
  • You may notice that Game is conspicuously incapable of affecting anything other than the HUD. That's because he IS the HUD; he's missing his Gameplay.
  • In Chapter 1, in one of the folders on the fake desktop, there is a letter containing Gigi's name and hinting at her ended relationship with the narrator.
    • In a break in the rap in Chapter 5, he also refers to Gigi:
  Game: O Gigi, Gigi! Wherefore art thou Gigi?
  • Mr. Glitch and Game sound very, very similar to one another. They come from the same source code, making them 'siblings' of a sort.
  • The coin pots from Chapter 4 are around the map in Chapter 3, and even expel coins when exploded by the boss.
  • Game expresses his dislike of hip-hop during an ad in the fourth game, laughing at the idea of him singing. He ends up forced into singing in the next chapter.
  • Chapter 5's title is called Loss of Control, turns out that's what happens to Game and GiGi after Mr. Glitch puts their names into the Music slot, first with Game and then with GiGi. They both say that they're losing control when they're put in the music slot.
• Funny Background Event: Far from an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, the background of the final boss is the Creator's mess of a room. He spends a good chunk of said final battle fighting his own vacuum cleaner while you're dealing with Mr Glitch, and yes, it looks as as silly as it sounds.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The entire game could be seen as one of these. The core gameplay loop is as follows: Mr. Glitch appears, Game yells at him, Mr. Glitch makes ominous and vague comments, and then he screws around with whatever game you've entered before fleeing to another one. You and Game are left to clean up his mess before pursuing him.
• Glitch Entity: In-universe, Mr. Glitch—rather obviously—is one of these. He also becomes one for all of the games you subsequently visit.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Watson veers dangerously close to this trope after Glitch breaks his game.
  Watson: The world is ending. Everything is fake. I am fake!
• Good Morning, Crono: Legend of the Secret opens with Hero sleeping in his bed while the User and Game try to wake him up.
• Grid Puzzle: One of the in-game switch combinations is found in a Sudoku puzzle a pop-up ad that has nothing to do with the legit game mechanics. The solutions can be pretty nonsensical.
• Guide Dang It!: A puzzle in the second chapter requires you to be aware of slang for television static (tv snow) in order to solve it.
• Hidden Depths: As Mr. Glitch says, Game certainly knows how to groove. The tune that plays when he's forced to take over as the game's composer is incredibly catchy, and his accompanying beatboxing is no slouch either.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Game is usually called Game because he's a game. That said, if you choose to play him in the end, it turns out Game really is the title (sorta).
• Heroic BSoD: Game undergoes one after he has his hopes regarding GiGi raised and then dashed again. After repeating his spiel from the start of the game in a noticeably broken tone of voice, he breaks down sobbing.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: At the end of the game, Game asks you to delete him and GiGi so that Mr. Glitch can't escape into the real world ever again. It's up to the Player whether or not to oblige him.
• Idiosyncratic Menu Labels: The game provides this trope's page image.
• Idiot Hero: Sherlock Holmes and Hero are both absolutely incompetent within their games, and basically rely on the User to guide them through. In fairness to Hero, the User and Game essentially speedrun him past 99% of his game. Holmes, Trope Codifier that he is, has no such excuse.
• Improvised Screwdriver: The majority of the puzzles in the initial game jam (and many of the puzzles in the finished game) is trying to find a way to use whatever is at hand to unscrew something.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Hero's path to the princess is blocked by a couple of bushes in both versions of Legend of the Secret, visible path around them be damned, and he has to get the Sword of Life to cut through them.
• Interface Screw: The game's mechanics revolve entirely around this trope. At several points, it becomes a Stealth Pun when you use various objects to quite-literally unscrew parts of the interface.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Coupled with Insult Backfire. At one point, Game rhetorically asks if all video game characters are stupid; after a Beat, he asks why the User is looking at him like that.
• Ironic Echo: Chapter 6 is a repeat of the opening lines of Chapter 1, but recontextualized to be more depressing.
• It Will Never Catch On: Game's reaction upon seeing an ad for Ninecraft is to ask if it's "One of those indie games that's doomed to fail".
• Knight of Cerebus: Mr. Glitch lacks any particularly sympathetic character traits, and he's a living Ominous Visual Glitch who exists to wreak havoc in the digital world. He skirts the line between Faux Affably Evil and Affably Evil astonishingly well.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: At the very end, Game offers you a choice between playing the game or deleting his source code.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The fourth chapter has fake ads for thinly disguised versions of Minecraft, Superhot, Papers, Please and PaRappa the Rapper. ''Legend of the Secret'' borders on this.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to many other games in its pedigree, Wrong Dimension is distinctly lighthearted and comedic in tone, although it does occasionally get rather dark.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Parodied. Mr. Glitch dramatically reveals that he and Game come from the same source code, making him and Game siblings or relatives of a sort. Game reacts to this with shock and horror.
• MacGyvering: Many solutions to problems revolve around this.
• Medium Awareness: Mr. Glitch makes a couple remarks in chapter 6 that go beyond the usual scope of Breaking the Fourth Wall. Namely that the same person voices him and Game, as well as telling the user to go back to chapter 1 if they want a brick breaker.
• Medium Blending: The final chapter blends the game's usual graphics with Live Action Cutscenes of The Creator.
• Metaphorically True: Game's constant insistence that there is no game. While that isn't true from our perspective, he's correct in-universe because GiGi, the AI responsible for the gameplay, went missing before we logged in.
• Mistaken Nationality: Several characters mistake Game's distinct^*actually French accent for a Russian one (which he insistently denies).
• Moon Logic Puzzle: Parodied during the Sherlock Holmes game. Game constantly points out how the solutions to each puzzle are ridiculous and nonsensical.
  • Some of the game's actual puzzles can be downright outlandish, with lampshades aplenty, but exploration is often limited so you should quickly realize what to do anyway. Special mention to the Allegedly Free Game part, where a series of in-game switch combinations have to be found in the pop-up ads, hidden in a QR code and a game of Sudoku respectively, that otherwise have nothing to do with Legend of the Secret.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The creator says this (minus the first two words) after Mr. Glitch starts causing turmoil in reality after GiGi was taken away from Game.
• Mythology Gag: Albeit one from a different mythology. After the player lets him into Mr. Wilhelm's house, Holmes says that his "Bartitsu techniques" have gotten the better of the door. This is Holmes' explanation for how he was able to defeat Dr. Moriarty in their duel to the death at Reichenbach Falls.
• Nameless Narrative: Only one character involved with the main plot has a proper name, that being GiGi. (Of course, even that is a nickname.) Game, Mr. Glitch and the User are all cases of Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep".
• Ninja Prop: The Game. The solution to nearly every problem you'll encounter involves stealing and/or using various parts of the interface as if they were real items.
• No Fourth Wall: Game spends much of the game addressing the player directly, referring to them as 'User'. To really drive the point home, you start the Point N Click sequence by quite-literally Breaking the Fourth Wall.
• Oh, Crap!: Happens to The Glitch when he realizes GiGi's transfer was successful, and thus he's going to be erased if they restart the system.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: One of the numerous glitches in the game ends up skipping the animation for Holmes and Watson jumping through a manhole and landing in a bathtub. Game is convinced that animation was definitely amazing, though.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Mr. Glitch is a sentient one, and he plays the role to the hilt.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Zigzagged. Game insists on calling Global Gameplay "GiGi", which confuses everybody else as it is a nickname that he created.
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: In the end, Game and GG get back together thanks to the Creator, but he's still saddled with his money problems and Julie leaving him. Meanwhile, Sherlock and Watson are still stuck in their game's library with their home ruined, the Hero and the Princess are still stuck on the heart-shaped floating island above the dimensional rip as well as their game being permanently corrupted as a Free-to-Play and the other Games got their 'Not-Games' destroyed.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: There are numerous instances where the game will try to stop you from doing something, requiring you to find ways to cheat. This usually involves breaking either the interface or some other aspect of the game itself.
• Overly Long Gag: The various types of programs all claiming that there isn't a game at the end of Chapter One. The last three don't even have any interaction, it just jumps dimensions immediately and then Chapter Two.
• Paper Key-Retrieval Trick: Used as a puzzle in chapter one.
• Percussive Maintenance: When we first see the Creator, he punches his Wi-Fi router to make the Internet work.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: Inverted. The user uses a letter H from a dialogue balloon as a piece of rail.
• Plot Coupon: Discussed and mocked. The Hero mentions that his quest to rescue his Princess would normally have him go around the world to collect twelve Sacred Feathers, defeat eight Ticklish Generals of the Dark Lord, and look for 50 Sun Stones. Game has nothing but disdain and annoyance for this quest, and actively encourages the User to take some shortcuts.
• Plot Parallel: Going by the text messages found on his phone, Game and GiGi's separation appears to mirror some breakup that Game's in-universe creator went through. The name of the woman the Creator has apparently broken up with, Julie, can even have the abbreviation/nickname Gigi in the real creator's native France.
• Porn Stash: When you poke around the Flying Squirrel OS, you'll eventually find a folder hidden in many, many decoy folders that contains Game's pinups of various circuit boards in sexy lingerie and mosaic censors covering some bits of them. There's Miss New York, Miss Paris, and Miss Tokyo, the latter of which is necessary to solve one puzzle.
• Possession Levitation: Mr. Willhelm floats because of Mr. Glitch being stuck to him.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: When the Creator manages to trap Mr. Glitch on his computer with Game, Mr. Glitch mocks them... until he hears GiGi's voice.
  The Creator: Now you're stuck inside my computer!
  Mr. Glitch: *sarcastic* Oh... I'm shaking in my virtual boots.
  Game: I would be if I were you.
  Mr. Glitch: Oh yeah? Why?
  Game: Because now, Glitch...
  GiGi: There's going to be a game.
  The Glitch: *panicked* The transfer! No! No! No!
• Precision F-Strike: Game posits his not-game as one meant to be family and children friendly, but there are a handful of scenes in the latter half of the game where he starts swearing in frustration. The highest he'll ever go is "damn".
• Product Placement: Legend of the Secret: Ultimate Clicker: VIP Edition: Deluxe 4.2: Free features plenty of it as part of its Stylistic Suck. One particularly-egregious example is the protagonist stopping to cheerfully shill for Crunchy-Crunchy Cereal^*The cereal that's crunchy and melts-in-your-mouth at the same time!.
• Properly Paranoid: At the end, Game offers to sacrifice his Source Code so Mr. Glitch never rises again. If you choose to play the game, however, it Blue Screens, and Game is proven right with Mr. Glitch returning.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker is used later on in the game at several points.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Several jokes and plot points in the game reference a failed crowdfunding campaign, which turns out to be the one for the game Game and GiGi were set to debut as. The crowdfunding campaign's failure was the real reason both were separated. In real life, the crowdfunding for Wrong Dimension unfortunately fell through.
• Reality Warper:
  • Mr. Glitch serves as one of these; being a living, sentient glitch, he's able to twist any game he enters as he sees fit, and he uses it to hinder Game and the Player at every turn.
  • The User is such as well, abusing the Fourth Wall to their whim, even stealing HUD elements from other games, to progress.
• Red Herring: The error number mid-way through chapter 1 may seem like something significance as noticed by a few Youtubers, but it's irrelevant.
• Reverse Psychology: The first chapter is full of instructions not to do various things.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: Game plays a match with the User, though he calls it Rashambo.
• Running Gag: Several.
  • Characters that Game interacts with believing the latter has a Russian accent and Game disavowing the notion.
  • Game asks Mr. Glitch several times to explain his Evil Plan; Glitch begins to do so, but every time he starts to explain he's cut off by some unforeseen event, and you only get back to him in time to hear his Orphaned Punchline of "..the whole world! Hahahaha!"
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: Part of the Final Boss involves you helping get GiGi uploaded to the creator's PC while Game and Mr. Glitch constantly play Tic-Tac-Toe.
• Self-Deprecation: Chapter 5 has Game bemoan that one of your puzzle solutions wouldn't be out of place in a cheesy point-and-click game from the 1990s. It is the only solution available for this extremely meta point-and-click.
• Shout-Out:
  • One puzzle involves using a cat rod to grab the live fish from behind the wallpaper. Game comments that the puzzle feels like it came from Rusty Lake.
  • When the Russian Game demands to see the other Games' papers, the original Game replies "Only if you say 'please'." Even later on, said game makes another cameo as a Brand X knock-off being advertised in Legend of the Secret.
  • Several games—including the aforementioned Papers, Please, Minecraft, Superhot, and Parappa The Rapper —appear as Brand X knock-offs.
  • After the User uses some ice cubes to freeze up a lake, Hero believes that Gaia can control the seasons, to which Game insists he's not an oracle.
  • One of the achievements is called One-Punch Man.
  • During the point-and-click adventure segment, Game becomes exasperated at the solution to a particular Moon Logic Puzzle, and complains that you might as well have used a monkey to fix a hydraulic pump.
  • The phone number the player must dial to contact Miss Voodoo for a disenchantment ritual is 555-2368.
  • One of the major elements of the adventure chapter is a classic anti-piracy code wheel in the vein of Dial-A-Pirate. Game is confused by it, musing that if these kinds of things actually existed they probably didn't do much outside of making money for the photocopier market, which is incidentally exactly why they aren't a thing anymore.
  • During the RPG segment, the Hero hears Game's voice and asks if he is Gaia, the spirit of the Earth.
  • After the RPG Hero somehow walks straight to and falls into the same hole in the ground multiple times, Game starts complaining that they should have named his game Legend of the Lemmings.
  • Game's profile picture from the Skype knock off is a clear reference to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • During the fake credits sequence, two of the developers credited are Tim Elfman and Buster Chaplin. Slotting their names into open spots will affect the game in a fitting way. For instance, making Tim Elfman the Audio Designer will remix the background music into the style of Danny Elfman, whereas making him the graphics designer will turn everything into a whimsically-nightmarish expy of Tim Burton's classic The Nightmare Before Christmas. The latter two creators make appearances via their being in clips from The Boat and Shoulder Arms.
  • During the fake credits, one of the games you have to play is made to look like it was made for the Game & Watch.
  • When forced to sing, Game begins his rap number with "So let me give you a (wicki-wicki) wild, wild quest!"
  • On the Creator’s phone, Game at one point complains “Dammit! Even in the other dimensions, nothing works!”
    • There’s also an achievement for choosing “Instant cassettes” on the third question of Rogue Quiz.
  • The actual game, should you play it, looks like a knockoff of The Legend of Zelda, except The Hero is a flying squirrel, and the Big Bad is a goat.
  • At one point, the User and Game encounter Error #4815162342.
  • In the final chapter, Game and Mr. Glitch (who both come from the same source code) play an endless game of Tic-Tac-Toe against each other.
  • RPG-GPS, which incorporates RPG gameplay into a GPS tracker, is reminiscent of games like Pokémon GO.
• Solve the Soup Cans: Played for Laughs. Game becomes increasingly frustrated at how little sense your actions make and how often they achieve something.
• Spit Take: The Creator does this when the user sets the coffee machine to make the opposite of his preferred beverage.
• Stealth Pun: Several puzzles require you to literally unscrew parts of the interface. An Interface Screwdriver, if you will.
  • During the credits sequence, Game is forced to start beatboxing after Mr. Glitch makes him the audio composer. In other words, a Game Jam.
• The Stinger: Two different stingers are used, depending on the user's Last-Second Ending Choice. One reveals that the Hero and the Princess from the RPG game are stuck on the island, and the other one shows Holmes and Watson in the bathtub. Regardless of your choice, the prior two stingers are followed by another stinger where The Creator is channel surfing.
• Stock Scream: Wilhelm Scream spam is used twice throughout the story, one in the Sherlock Holmes section where Mr. Wilhelm is rapidly punched so the User can steal a letter H from his speech bubble to use as a rail, and one in The Stinger where every show The Creator switches to while channel surfing liberally uses the scream.
• Stylistic Suck: Legend of the Secret: Ultimate Clicker: VIP Edition: Deluxe 4.2: Free is a painfully straight-laced Allegedly Free Game replete with obnoxious pop-up ads, microtransactions, deliberately-tedious gameplay choices, and Product Placement out the wazoo. The only difference from the real deal is that it's nowhere near tedious enough, since that would stop being funny and start being aggravating.
• Suicide as Comedy: This line from Game after a bucket knocks a key out from a door that Mr. Glitch is stuck behind in the fake credits:
  Game: Ok, I give up. Uninstall me, format the hard drive, burn everything!
• Super Drowning Skills: Hero can't swim. He uses it to quickly return to his starting point after getting the Sword of Life. We mean interface.
• Take That!: A prolonged and extremely vicious one towards Free-2-Pay gaming occurs in the game's later chapters, when Mr. Glitch turns the otherwise-functional RPG Legend of the Secret into a microtransaction-riddled Clicker game.
  • A much more subtle one, aimed towards adventure game logic, occurs at the start of the Holmes and Watson Point-N-Click game. Watson proposes that they find a key instead of trying to force the door open; Holmes expresses his disappointment in his friend's lack of creativity, telling him to "try more daring associations and think in four dimensions." He then goes back to futilely trying to muscle the door open, which he continues doing until the User opens it from the other side.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: Played for Laughs and weaponized by Mr. Glitch. Slotting the word "Game" into the "Audio designer" slot during the credits forces Game to begin beatboxing and freestyling to the music, leaving the player to solve several mini-games to get him out of his very-literal jam.
• Tempting Fate: Chapter 4 has Game comment on the RaPaapaThePaper ad. Cue the next chapter...
  Game: Hip-hop. I hate hip-hop.
  Good thing I'm not a musical game.
  Can you imagine me singing?... Ha ha ha.
• Title Drop: The previously mentioned Arc Words, but also one for the subtitle at the beginning of chapter 5.
  Game: Do you know what this means, user? It means we're still in the Wrong Dimension!
• The Unreveal: Aside from it involving wreaking havoc with Smart Devices, and resetting everyone's financial data with a Rickroll, we're never told what Mr. Glitch's evil plan entails.
• Villains Want Mercy: Mr. Glitch does this twice, once during chapter 5's fake credits and again when he's about to erased due to GiGi being eventually merged back with Game. Though in both occasions, he's not really being honest about promising to be good, especially the second time given how he exploited it the first time.
• Visual Pun: The Sword of Life the Hero wields is literally the sword-shaped background of the Hero's life meter.
• Welcome to My World: Mr. Glitch eventually gets fed up with the user messing with him, and Game takes a shot at this trope.
  Mr. Glitch: Your user is getting on my nerves, Game.
  Game: Ha, now you see what it's like.
• Wilhelm Scream: Uttered by Holmes's and Watson's neighbor, Mr. Wilhelm.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: One of the game's central themes. Game and GiGi are fully-sentient, sapient programs. Their abandonment by their developer is comparable to a child being abandoned by their parents.
• Women Are Wiser: Granted, there are only two women in the game overall, but both of them are more levelheaded than their love interests. The Princess from Legend of the Secret, while she is instantly infatuated with the Hero, does remind him to stop presenting Lootboxes and tells him to focus on getting back to their home game. GiGi, when we finally spend enough time with her, is seen trying to get Game to swallow his pride and let the User play their game as it was meant to be played. She also tries talking him down from deleting his source code.
• World Limited to the Plot: Despite the vast, collectible-filled quest described by Hero in Legend of the Secret, most of which Game and the User work to skip over, there isn't anything to the map outside of the areas you need to go through to get the sword and reach the boss. About the only game area that might fit on the map that you don't go to is an underwater dungeon.
• You No Take Candle: Game has a slightly-stilted way of speaking, and his sentence structure is often a little bit odd (e.g. "Who's doing all this knocking?" "The financial crisis, the indiepocalypse, blah blah blah, all of this...")

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Hello, Troper! This is the web-page speaking. I've got some bad news. Actually, there are no tropes...

Oh, and please, do not open the folder; it's not quite dry yet. And it's full of spoilers for the ga-... The NON-game!