How far will you go in order to survive?
Blood stains your hands. You gather your strength and stab the knife into the demon’s flesh, hoping that this time it will stay dead.
The Many Deaths of Lily Kosen is a Horror Visual Novel, developed by Melbourne-based Too Many Teeth Studios
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A group of friends set out together on what should be a nice, relaxing weekend camping. Despite problems that start cropping up during their trip they are determined to make the best of their situation, only to be confronted by a secret from their past.
The game sees the player character thrown into a nightmarish situation, pitted against a deadly demon who is out to stalk their friends. The monster will resurrect each time it is defeated, suffering many deaths only to return again and again. As the story progresses, the player will have numerous opportunities to talk to their friends and potentially lower their stress levels. Without low enough stress levels, the characters will not be able to withstand the series of demonic attacks.
It was released on July 21, 2023 for PC via Steam and itch.io
This work provides examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: Upon completing the game with surviving characters, their playable spin-off stories are unlocked from the main menu.
- To Absent Friends: Depending on if any characters die over the course of the story the epilogue can be one of these.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: The cast decide to collectively refuse to talk about having murdered their friend and instead pretend nothing is wrong because they would sound insane with no means to prove the supernatural exists. They eventually decide to confide in one another and be each other’s therapists rather than hiding it forever.
- In the Golden Ending the cast discuss now attending or planning to attend appointments with therapists.
- Antepiece: The game of Paper, Scissors, Rock that is played against Hannah at the beginning of the game serves as a short tutorial on the importance of choices.
- Anyone Can Die: Any member of the cast can die throughout the story and have multiple opportunities to do so.
- Batter Up!: Victoria carries around a baseball bat at times, often using it to threaten people. She does later use it as a weapon against Kalnash, as well as having it used to kill her in turn.
- Big Damn Heroes: Victoria saves the protagonist when ambushed by Kalnash in the classroom.
- Bittersweet Ending: Any ending except the Golden Ending or the Joke Ending. Kalnash has been banished and the main characters are free to live the rest of their lives. At least the ones that are still alive.
- Bloody Horror: A few instances of this
- Kalnash’s burnt and bloodied body at the campsite is an early example of this trope.
- If the player character does not save her, Hannah ends up bloodied and mutilated on the ground of the graveyard. Or later outside of the school.
- At one point in the game, the player discovers a bloodied chair in the classroom. Should they investigate further?
- Bookends:
- The prologue and climax of the game both have a ritual being performed, though with opposite intents each time.
- The Golden Ending has the cast going on another camping trip.
- Candlelit Ritual: The prologue of the story has a group of hooded figures performing one. Later chapter 4 has the characters performing another to permanently kill Kalnash.
- Cassandra Truth: Hannah eventually confides in her parents about the entire supernatural situation and everything that they have done. They don’t believe her and put it down as stress induced delusions.
- Central Theme: It’s important to talk about issues in your life - even if they seem trivial - instead of just bottling up your problems.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Victoria brings the petrol camping in what appears to be a done and forgotten gag. It's later used to kill Kalnash.
- The ritual circle in the prologue is the same ritual circle later used to permanently kill Kalnash.
- The text Gabriel receives the day after the camping trip hints at his later contact with information on how to stop Kalnash.
- Color-Coded Speech: Kalnash has purple text for all of their dialogue, the only character to get this treatment.
- Cosmetic Award: Each CG that you unlock can be accessed and viewed from the menu at your leisure.
- Creepy Cemetery: Though it is ostensibly an ordinary cemetery, the one the characters visit does come across this way. And was the site of at least one demon rising from a grave.
- Dark Secret: The group share one as to what happened to their friend one year ago.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Kalnash attempts this in their first appearance, though gives up the facade once called out on it.
- Deader than Dead: Kalnash keeps coming back to life after being killed. The solution to this ends up being killing Kalnash under specific circumstances - in the ritual circle where they were first summoned.
- Deadly Hug: Kalnash attempts to give one to Hannah during their first appearance.
- Deal with the Devil: Lily comes up with a plan to make one of these to cure an illness.
- Demonic Possession: Kalnash does this to Lily.
- Disposing of a Body: The characters have the opportunity to do this to Kalnash by hiding the body at the bottom of a lake.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Kalnash is briefly seen remaining completely silent when first summoned and possessing Lily in the prologue.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The cast have been repressing the trauma of having killed their friend for a year, and then go through a whirlwind of deadly or near-deadly encounters repeatedly killing what looks like their friend until they are finally safe.
- Exact Words: Kalnash interprets them possessing Lily to be a valid interpretation of the ritual to heal her body and give it a smarter mind.
- Evil Laugh: Kalnash. On multiple occassions.
- Foreshadowing
- On several occasions during the first act the characters can be seen talking around the absence of a fifth person.
- Gabriel recieves and initially dismisses a phone message he gets in the second act.
- Prior to Kalnash’s first appearance, the player can have a conversation with Hannah at the lake. She has an in-depth discussion about the use of fire in horror films and how visceral a death it is to burn alive. Little do they know, this will very soon occur in front of their very eyes.
- Gasoline Dousing: The Protagonist is required to do this to Kalnash to bypass their unnatural resilience.
- Golden Ending: One ending to the game has all of the cast members survive. Managing to do so requires multiple conversations with each character before certain stages of the story while also taking care of your own mental state and gives little room for error in dialogue choices.
- "Hell, Yes!" Moment: This occurs towards the end of the game when your stress level becomes as low as possible. Hilariously subverted in a rare situation where [[spoiler: all your friends immediately die in the very next stress check.
- Horrible Camping Trip: Zig Zagged. The cast’s camping trip runs into numerous problems from forgetting crucial supplies, car troubles, and difficulty setting up tents. Despite this they end up having a genuinely good time on the trip. At least until they run into an old friend.
- Humongous Mecha: Star-bot in the Joke Ending.
- It's Not You, It's Me: While no breakups are never seen on screen, this is one of Gabriel's major worries - he thinks that all his relationships aren't working because of a perceived fault in himself being impossibly picky over partners.
- Joke Ending: Victoria manages to buy a Humongous Mecha from a cartoon the characters watched and defeat Kalnash with The Power of Friendship.
- Keeping Secrets Sucks: The main cast have been sitting on the secret of their friend’s death and that they were responsible for killing her for over a year and are having trouble dealing with the trauma of it.
- Kill It with Fire: This happens to Kalnash thanks to a fuel-assisted blaze.
- Leitmotif: Each of your friends has one that plays whenever you engage them in a one-on-one conversation.
- Limited Wardrobe: All of the cast have a single outfit that they wear over the game.
- Loading Screen: Included as a break between scenes. They have pieces of character trivia or gameplay tips included on them.
- Mood Whiplash: A camping trip between friends suddenly turns into a [[spoiler: discussion of the characters having murdered their friend, then said friend showing up.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The plot is instigated by the cast attempting to summon a demon to cure Lily.
- Ominous Fog: The school is shrouded in fog right before Kalnash ambushes the group.
- Ominous Music Box Tune: The tune that plays on each loading screen.
- Plot-Driven Breakdown: Gabriel’s car breaks down near the beginning of the game, leaving the characters stranded at the lake. Just in time for Kalnash to make an appearance.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The death and subsequent possession of Lily is the event that kicks off the plot of the entire game.
- Present Absence: Lily isn't mentioned very often, but whenever they are, it's obvious that they were a very important member of the friendship group and that even a year later, they're still missed.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Averted. All the cast frequently stumble over their words and second guess what they’re saying.
- Running Gag:
- The Protagonist has an obsession with bread that other characters frequently make fun of.
- Socks in the lake
- Skipping School: The characters decide to skip out on school to play poker at Victoria's urging. Victoria herself also has a [[Delinquents reputation]] for this.
- Shoutout:
- The player can have an optional conversation with Hannah at the lake, where they discuss horror films. She describes a scene in a zombie movie where a burning man runs out of an oven. The protagonist of this film just so happens to be a “generic white guy with a dumb haircut, that has half his fringe in his eyes or whatever.” She can’t quite remember, but Hannah recalls that he was looking for somebody’s daughter.
- One conversation with Gabriel has him asking the protagonist how many breads they've eaten in their life.
- Summoning Ritual: In the prologue a group of hooded figures are performing a ritual to summon a demon.
- Take a Third Option: The only way to survive the encounter in Lily’s house is to remain silent instead of selecting a dialogue choice.
- Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: Kalnash does this to Victoria.
