What Lies In The Fog
is a short RPG Maker horror game by Nichmannn. You play as a nameless Stranger who is rescued by a Priest. He brings you to his church and explains that the town is being attacked by The Fog, and tasks you with gathering the remaining townspeople to the church so they may be sheltered against the entity. But it will not be easy, for the townspeople will refuse to tag along unless you do something for them. It's up to you to save the town.
This game contains examples of:
- Big Bad: The titular Fog is an evil entity attacking the town and seeking to devour everyone within, and you are tasked with sheltering the townspeople from it.
- Creepy Crosses: At first, the cross on the front wall of the inside of the church is a normal cross. But in one of the endings, it inverts to reveal that the church has been a trap laid by a demon the entire time.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The colors are all in black and white to aid the gloomy, haunting atmosphere.
- Exact Words: A meta variant. The description of the game says that you have to bring the villagers "somewhere safe". The Priest tells you that you must bring them to the church, so one might assume this is what the description meant... but its not. The church is not safe at all- its a trap by the demonic "priest". The actual safe place is inside the town well.
- Foreshadowing:
- The summary of the game tells you that your goal is to bring the villagers somewhere safe. But it never says that the church is safe, despite what the Priest tells you... because the Priest is a demon who turned it into a trap and is lying to you. The village well is the actual safe place that the description is referring to.
- An attentive player might notice a strange big hole in the roof of the church. That hole is undoubtedly where the demon entered the town from, also hinting that he is the Priest.
- Nameless Narrative: With the sole exception of the Fog, the characters are all referred to by titles (Priest, Doctor, Woodsman, etc) instead of names.
- Multiple Endings: Three, depending on where you take the villagers:
- Standard Ending: If you take the townspeople to the church like the Priest wants you to, he will reveal himself to be the demon servant of the Fog who tricked you into bringing everyone to his master- the Fog then eats everyone except him.
- Bad Ending: If you instead feed the townspeople to the Fog, the Priest attacks you for stealing his job, only for the Fog to eat him instead and take the protagonist as its new servant.
- Secret Ending: If you find the rope under the church and take everyone to the well, the Priest ends up eaten by the Fog, who leaves the town alone.
- Railroading: Once you bring a villager to one of the three possible hiding places and leave them there, you are locked into one of the three routes and cannot take the other villagers to the other two spots. Try to do so and the villager will say they prefer to be with everyone else. This is done because each of the three endings requires the villagers to all be in one spot.
