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Wails For Freedom is a 2018 Survival Horror game by Dave Microwaves Games.

You play as a man named Ryan, and are trapped in an abandoned, haunted asylum. To make matters worse, one of Ryan's legs is gone and he's forced to use a wheelchair with limited mobility. Find fuses to get the front door open, but make sure to steer clear of the ghosts, lest you become one yourself.

This game uses the following tropes:

  • Abandoned Hospital: The game takes place in one, complete with broken shelves and overturned medical equipment.
  • Abandoned Hospital Awakening: Ryan wakes up in the abandoned hospital at the beginning of the game with no memory of how he got there or where he is.
  • And Then John Was a Zombie: In one ending, Ryan fails to escape and is turned into one of the ghosts.
  • The Darkness Gazes Back: Because of the hospital having little to no lighting and the ghosts being black, the player is usually only able to see their glowing green eyes staring from the darkness.
  • Deliberate VHS Quality: The entire game is seen through the view of an old camera, complete with scan lines and the recording dot in the top left. Justified, since the hospital is pitch black and Ryan needs the camera's night vision to see.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: A later update added the non-canon "Barney Mode", where the asylum is painted neon colours (mainly pink) and the ghosts are replaced by a monstrous version of Barney. Notably, Barney Mode is actually harder than the standard mode.
  • Handicapped Badass: Ryan is missing one leg and confined to a wheelchair. Despite this, he's able to avoid killer ghosts and break out of the asylum on his own.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: In contrast to most depictions of ghosts, the ones in this game are depicted as black, squid-like creatures with luminous green eyes. It's also implied that dying and turning into a ghost are two different processes.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: In the ending to Barney mode, Ryan escapes only for Barney to charge out of the building and kill him anyways.
  • Some Dexterity Required: The majority of the game's Fake Difficulty comes from the wheelchair being intentionally rough to control. It has problems accelerating, slippery movement and unreliable breaking, and it also turns rather slowly.
  • Suddenly Always Knew That: Despite being strongly implied to have had both legs and walking on his own the last time he was awake, Ryan knows how to perfectly use a wheelchair by himself.
  • Tyop on the Cover: The game's official description had several typos in it, such as saying that Ryan used a 'wheelchiar' to navigate. These were finally fixed in late 2023, 5 years after the game's release.

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