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Released November 2, 2015 on Steam, the Five Nights at Freddy's-inspired horror game Boogeyman follows a little boy bound to his bed, being forced to use his flashlight to ward off a mysterious beast haunting his bedroom.

Has a sequel, Boogeyman 2.

Not to be confused with The Boogie Man, an RPG Maker horror game which also features the titular monster as the antagonist.


The game provides examples of:

  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: The book that explains the Boogeyman's origins makes it clear that it attacks and kills children because it needs to consume their souls for sustenance. In addition, none of his dialogue implies that the creature is openly malevolent or sadistic. This offers no comfort to his victims, as it means there is no way to reason with him.
  • Bogeyman: The main titular antagonist.
  • Cassandra Truth: Invoked by the cassette tapes that guide you. As you're just a kid, of course no one will believe you when you say there's a boogeyman hunting you, forcing you to deal with the problem yourself.
  • Comeback Mechanic: If you've been wasting too much power, you can search below your bed for some new batteries that will regenerate a little bit of it. However, it's but a gamble: there's a chance you will find nothing upon searching, or the Boogeyman himself might be awaiting for you to look down.
  • Controllable Helplessness:
    • If you go to the basement too early, the doors will shut behind you, and the Boogeyman will slowly creep towards you. You can try to run around, but you'd be merely delaying the inevitable.
    • If you run out of power, you're basically at the mercy of the Boogeyman. Unless you're close to dawn, he's gonna get you. You just don't know when.
  • Creepy Long Fingers: The Boogeyman has them.
  • Evil Sounds Raspy: The Boogeyman has a very deep, raspy voice.
  • Expy: The Boogeyman is basically the Rake in this interpretation, with a light-related Weaksauce Weakness.
  • Featureless Protagonist: You're a kid named Thomas, that's all.
  • Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The events of the game take place in days leading up to Halloween, with the sixth and final night being Halloween itself.
  • Immobile Player Character: Mostly, although you can eventually explore the house.
  • Jumpscare: Not only the Boogeyman when he kills you, but also some of your stuff. Most notably your toy robot, which might turn on and play a jingle on its own.
  • Kid Hero: Thomas.
  • Me's a Crowd: The Boogeyman has the ability to create duplicates of himself. You can see more than one of him in the room at once. Exploring the house, listening to the tapes left by the room's previous occupant, and reading the book about his backstory reveals that he can create more Boogeymen from the souls of his victims. One of his quotes is "There's more than one of us".
  • Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: As the nights go by, the pictures Thomas puts up on his wall grow increasingly horrific. The poor kid's psyche has obviously taken a battering.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: The most tense moments of the game come when your lights get sabotaged, depriving you of the little visibility you have within the room. It can come to the point where you can only visibly check the window without your flashlight, if the weather is clear. If the Boogeyman has already opened pathways that allow him to get in without creating noise, you might as well just start flailing your flashlight wildly in fear of him sneaking up on you.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: The Boogeyman can pop out from several places, including outside your room, the air vent, through the window and inside your closet. Considering he's perfectly capable of getting to you through any entrance point your room has without passing through the closet itself, he's either telporting to within the closet, or the house has some baffling design choices. Specially so since, if he came from the closet, he retreats back to it when you stun it with your flashlight and closes the door.
  • One-Word Title
  • Ten-Second Flashlight: Better put every second of flashlight usage to something good, because it won't last.
  • Shout-Out: To Minecraft, as there's a Creeper-looking poster on Thomas's wall.
  • Soul Eater: The Boogeyman eats the souls of those he kills.
  • Start of Darkness: A book you can find while exploring the house details the Boogeyman's origins. It is the offspring of a witch, who was pregnant while being hunted by people for kidnapping children. Knowing that they would not spare her unborn baby, the witch used her magic to make her baby come out early, while also giving it supernatural powers so it could survive on its own. This child became the Boogeyman, and it tore itself out of her stomach and escaped before the people hunting the witch arrived. It does not need human food or drink, but has to consume the souls of children
  • Villains Out Shopping: In the basement, you can find a secret room where you will see two Boogeymen dancing with each other..
  • Weakened by the Light: The only thing that can stop the Boogeyman is your flashlight.
  • Would Hurt a Child: The Boogeyman. He eats their souls.

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