History VideoGame / Lorelai

* KarmaMeter: It seems like the game is setting up something like this with the "Karma +1" messages that come on screen when the player does something kind without any reward, like returning a starfish to the sea. [[spoiler: As it turns out, it doesn't mean anything and the ending is not affected by how much karma you do or don't have.]] In the Al chapter, though, there is something like a karma meter at the top of the screen that reflects Lorelia's choices to help or hurt him. It starts out as a blue color; once it turns yellow or even red, it can't be reversed.

* TimeDissonance: Time clearly works very differently in the Queen of Maggots' realm, considering that she's able to send Lorelai on a sidequest that seems to take days/weeks before returning her to the very same night that the game's main plot is taking place over. [[spoiler: Jimmy also tells Lorelai that the Queen of Maggots already knew she would be killed a second time when she sent her back, which implies that she may exist outside of time altogether to the point that she can see future events and is using that knowledge to manipulate Lorelai to achieve her desired outcome.]]

* MutualKill: [[spoiler: Lorelai finally succeeds in killing John with a broken bottle to the neck, but she succumbs to her injuries from their fight shortly after. Thankfully, she has a way to return to life and had unfinished business in the afterworld anyway.]]

* YouAreTooLate: [[spoiler: When Lorelai is finally able to return to life a second time, she is determined to kill John once and for all and save Bethany and Zack. She is horrified to discover that he has already murdered both of them, drowning Bethany and impaling Zack with a steel rod(although the latter hangs on long enough to confess his love for her). She does succeed in killing John as revenge, but in the regular ending of the game, she's left completely shattered by the loss of the people she loved and wonders if there was more she could have done. Thankfully, it IS possible to bring them back to life if the player makes the right choices and gets the golden ending instead.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: At the care home, Lorelai has to get rid of maggots that are crawling all over the door of Greta, the elderly resident who died on her first day at the job, before entering to turn off a buzzer. That imagery, coupled with the corpse saying that "she" is coming, is very likely to set off some warning bells for anyone who's played the previous two games in the series regarding who Lorelai is likely to meet in the afterlife...

* BreatherEpisode: After a harrowing opening, the first half of Chapter 4 works as this. It consists of Lorelai and Zack having a conversation that includes some possible fun moments (mostly regarding video games he's made) and development for their relationship, as well as a low-stakes objective to create a makeshift diaper for Bethany. Once you enter into the 2nd half of the chapter, though, the game's dark storyline and overall intensity ramps up again in a hurry.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: At the care home, Lorelai has to get rid of maggots that are crawling all over the door of Greta, the elderly resident who died on her first day at the job, before entering to turn off a buzzer. This imagery, compared with the words the corpse actually speaks, allude to the fact that Greta has dealt with the Queen of Maggots before and so will Lorelai by the end of the day...

* HopeSpot: After Lorelai [[spoiler: dies and comes back the first time]], she manages, with Zack's help, to kill John and save Bethany. They're able to retreat to the safety of Zack's flat afterwards and catch their breath. Better yet, when the police arrive, they're very helpful and understanding, assuaging Lorelai's fears that they'll immediately take Bethany from her. It finally seems like everything's going to be just fine. And then the police officer asks Lorelai to return to her flat with him, and [[spoiler: [[ItWasHereISwear John and Miranda's bodies are both gone.]] It turns out John survived and killed the 2nd police officer. He then gets the jump on the remaining officer, kills him with a knife, takes his gun, and shoots Lorelai right between the eyes, sending her straight back to the afterlife.]]

* ExtremelyShortTimeSpan: With the exception of a flashback to when Lorelai's father was alive and the ending, the entire game takes place over a day. If you also exclude the part where Lorelai is working at the care home, it takes place over 4-6 hours.

* ShipperOnDeck: In a very dark example, the Queen of Maggots herself refers to [[DoggedNiceGuy Zack]] as Lorelai's "goofy boyfriend to be."

** [[spoiler: Al had a tough time at work and turned to drinking, which eventually led to him hitting his pregnant fiancée, who then left him. He tries to clean himself up by admitting he has a problem and going to Alcoholics Anonymous, and with Lorelai's help, he can stay on the path to recovery. His fiancée, while delighted at his gradual recovery, has no intention of getting back together with him, specifically because she cannot forgive the fact that he hit her. If he's on the mend, it's implied that he might be able to start a new relationship with Susan, the Cat Lady, but even his good ending leaves his life ambiguous.]]

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: [[spoiler: The regular/bad ending has shades of this trope. As Lorelai herself says, she did get everything she wanted in the end: her own flat, independence, and a new life. It just came at the steep cost of losing everyone she loved, leaving her alone and devastated.]]

* SoleSurvivor: [[spoiler: If you exclude the ladies at the care home (who aren't really connected to the main plot anyway), it's possible to end the game with the ''entire'' main cast dead save for Lorelai, making her this. Of those characters, only three deaths (Miranda, John, and the Queen of Maggots) are scripted events that cannot be changed. Zack, Bethany, Jimmy, and Al can all be saved under the right circumstances.]]

* SoleSurvivor: [[spoiler: If you exclude the ladies at the care home (who aren't really connected to the main plot anyway), it's possible to end the game with the entire main cast dead save for Lorelai, making her this. Of those characters, only three deaths (Miranda, John, and the Queen of Maggots) are scripted events that cannot be changed. Zack, Bethany, Jimmy, and Al can all be saved under the right circumstances.]]

* SoleSurvivor: [[spoiler: If you exclude the ladies at the care home (who aren't really connected to the main plot anyway), it's possible to end the game with the entire main cast dead save for Lorelai, making her this. Of those characters, only three deaths (Miranda, John, and the Queen of Maggots) are scripted events that cannot be changed. Zack, Bethany, Jimmy, and Al can all be saved under the right circumstances.]]

** [[spoiler: At the dream house, Lorelai will encounter Jimmy the Traveler after he's been captured by the Queen of Maggots and transformed into a crow. He will talk about how hungry he is and beg Lorelai to feed him fertilizer. The player can feed him multiple times in a row, or they can walk away at any point, ignoring his cries for help. If you give him fertilizer three times, he will explode...and Lorelai will find his mangled remains in the real world later on when she goes to wake him up. Otherwise, he'll be sleeping and she can wake him up, after which they'll have a conversation about their lives and what comes next. This conversation will be influenced by whether you're in the "golden ending" or "regular ending" route as well. In the golden ending, Lorelai tells Jimmy all about her new life with Zack and Bethany, while in the regular ending, she avoids talking about them because her heart is shattered and she can't bear to.]]

** [[spoiler: What differentiates the golden ending and the regular ending from one another is whether Lorelai was able to save Zack and Bethany or not. If Lorelai admits her love to Zack in the factory and tells him the truth about what's happened to her in the afterlife, he will give her a lighter, which can be used to relight Zack and Bethany's candles later on and bring them back to life. This leads to a happy reunion in the real world and the three of them becoming a little family in the epilogue. If she doesn't take those actions, she won't get the lighter and Zack and Bethany remain dead, resulting in an ending where a devastated but resilient Lorelai ends up alone. It's also possible for the player to get the lighter and then simply NOT light the candles (deliberately or by genuine mistake if they forget about it). This sequence of events ends up as a "regular ending" route too, but the ending scene is slightly changed with Lorelai sadly wondering what would have happened if she'd done so.]]

** [[spoiler: At the dream house, Lorelai will encounter Jimmy the Traveler after he's been captured by the Queen of Maggots and transformed into a crow who's locked in a cage. He will talk about how hungry he is and beg Lorelai to feed him fertilizer, refusing to eat perfectly edible pumpkins in the garden because he's convinced they're filled with blood. The player can feed him multiple times in a row, or they can walk away at any point, ignoring his cries for his help. If you give him fertilizer three times, he will explode...and Lorelai will find his mangled remains in the real world later on when she goes to wake him up. Otherwise, he'll be sleeping and you can wake him up, after whcih they'll have a conversation about their lives and what comes next. This conversation will be influenced by whether you're in the "golden ending" or "regular ending" route as well. In the golden ending, Lorelai tells Jimmy all about her new life with Zack and Bethany, while in the regular ending, she avoids talking about them because her heart is shattered and she can't bear to.]]

** [[spoiler: What differentiates the golden ending and the regular ending from one another is whether Lorelai was able to save Zack and Bethany or not. If Lorelai admits her love to Zack in the factory and tells him the truth about what's happened to her in the afterlife, he will give her a lighter, which can be used to relight Zack and Bethany's candles later on and bring them back to life. This leads to a happy reunion in the real world and the three of them becoming a little family in the epilogue. If she doesn't take those actions, she won't get the lighter and Zack and Bethany remain dead, resulting in an ending where a devastated but resilient Lorelai ends up alone. It's also possible for the player to get the lighter and then simply NOT light the candles (deliberately or by genuine mistake if they forget about it). This results in a "regular ending" route too, but the ending scene is slightly changed with Lorelai sadly wondering what would have happened if she'd relit the candles.]]
** [[spoiler: If she drives Al to drink during Chapter 5, he ends up dead in the epilogue. Otherwise, she sees him in Susan's store and notes that he's still fighting every day.]]
** [[spoiler: If you feed fertilizer to Jimmy the Traveler while he is stuck as a crow, he'll eventually explode. When you find him in the real world afterwards, he's dead, with his arms and legs blown off and crows eating his remains. If you refuse to feed him the fertilizer, he'll be sleeping, and Lorelai can wake him up, after which they'll have a conversation about their lives and expectations.]]

* MultipleEndings: Various choices can influence how the game plays out.
** [[spoiler: The biggest difference is whether or not Lorelai admits her love to Zack, kisses him, and tells him the truth about what's happened to her. If she does all three, he gives her a lighter, which she can use to relight the candles in the Afterworld, bringing Zack and Bethany back to life. Otherwise, she won't get the lighter and Zack and Bethany stay dead. It's also possible for the player to get the lighter and then simply not light the candles (deliberately or by genuine mistake if they forget about it), which has the same result with a slightly changed ending scene.]]

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: [[spoiler: The regular ending has shades of this trope. Lorelai DOES have what she always wanted: her own flat, independence, and a new life. However, it came at the steep cost of losing everyone she loved, leaving her devastated.]]

* BigDamnReunion: [[spoiler: If Lorelai lights Bethany and Zack's candles before eating the rest of the stew at the end of the game, she will awaken in the factory and walk outside only to find them alive again and waiting for her. She breaks into a run at the sight and joyfully embraces them. It's a unique example of the trope because they last saw each other only hours ago instead of months/years, but since they were all ''dead'' until just recently, their reunion in the living world is still a very big deal.]]

* PromotedToParent: [[spoiler: In The Golden Ending, this happens to Lorelai (and Zack too, although he's not related to her) when Bethany is allowed to stay with them. In fact, you could argue that Lorelai had already achieved this status at the beginning of the game, considering how neglectful Bethany's real parents are. It's only made official at the end.]]

* YouAreTooLate: [[spoiler: When Lorelai is finally able to return to life a second time, she is determined to kill John once and for all and save Bethany and Zack. She is horrified to discover that he has already murdered both of them, drowning Bethany and impaling Zack with a piece of rebar (although the latter hangs on long enough to confess his love for her). She does succeed in killing him, but in the regular ending of the game, she's shattered by the loss of the people she loved and wonders if there was more she could have done. Thankfully, it IS possible to bring them back to life if the player makes the right choices and gets the golden ending instead.]]

Laura "Lorelai" Wood is a young woman with a difficult home life, to put it mildly. [[DomesticAbuser Her stepfather John]] is an unemployed and oftentimes violent alcoholic, [[BrokenBird her mother Miranda]] is completely unwilling to stand up to his abuse, and her baby half-sister Bethany is routinely neglected by them. She doesn’t have much support outside of her family, either; her only real friend is Zack, the indie game developer who lives next door. Despite all of her hardships, though, she’s just started her first job and has dreams of taking Bethany away and starting a new, better life — only for tragedy to strike and steal it all away in one fell swoop. Suddenly, Lorelai finds herself trapped in an unsettling, surreal afterlife and must somehow return to the real world to save her loved ones with the help (?) of the enigmatic [[HumanoidAbomination Queen of Maggots]]. What comes next is a very dark and poignant ComingOfAgeStory.

* ShesNotMyGirlfriend: Lorelai can immediately set the record straight when a police officer assumes Zack is her boyfriend. Funny enough, there is also the option to say "yes" to the question and avert the trope entirely, which prompts a WaitWhat reaction from Zack and Lorelai reassuring him that they'll talk about it later.

* ShesNotMyGirlfriend: Lorelai can set the record straight when a police officer assumes Zack is her boyfriend. There is ALSO the option to say "yes" to the question and avert the trope entirely, which prompts a funny WaitWhat reaction from Zack and Lorelai reassuring him that they'll talk about it later.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: In the care home chapter, Lorelai will find out from Zoe that the owner was in a car accident that morning caused by a dog chasing a cat into the street – which is unfortunate, because Lorelai ''caused'' that very accident and had mentioned a dog to Zoe as her reason for being late. When Zoe accuses her of being behind it, one of the possible responses fits this trope. The player can say that they're surely must be more than ONE black dog in the city...which just makes Zoe more convinced because she never said anything about the dog being black in the first place.

* YouAreTooLate: [[spoiler: When Lorelai is finally able to return to life a second time, she is determined to kill John once and for all and save Bethany and Zack. She is horrified to discover that John has already murdered both of them, drowning Bethany and impaling Zack with a piece of rebar (although the latter hangs on long enough to confess his love for her). She does succeed in getting her revenge against John, but in the regular ending of the game, she's shattered by the loss of the people she loved and wonders if there was more she could have done. Thankfully, it IS possible to bring them back to life if the player makes the right choices and gets the Golden Ending instead.]]

* ShameIfSomethingHappened: Before explaining what she wants from Lorelai in exchange for another chance at life, The Queen of Maggots expresses that she should remember what's at stake, pointing out lit candles that represent Bethany and Zack's lives and commenting that "sometimes, it takes the lightest draft to put them out." A few minutes later, she makes the threat much more overt when Lorelai directly asks what will happen if she doesn't go along with the plan to drive Al back to drinking. [[spoiler: In the end, the threat doesn't really amount to anything, even if the player does the opposite of what they were told. However, it DOES reveal which candles represent Bethany and Zack, which allows Lorelai to possibly relight them after they've been killed by John later on.]]
* ShipperOnDeck: In a thoroughly dark example, the Queen of Maggots herself refers to [[DoggedNiceGuy Zack]] as Lorelai's "goofy boyfriend to be."

* BeautyEqualsGoodness: Zoe and Maria both subvert this. While [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Zoe]] is initially introduced as an heavy-set woman with an overly stern and cranky attitude, she is also compassionate, dutiful, and wants the best out of her co-workers while ensuring that they are able to face the reality of the residence passing away during their working hours. [[BitchInSheepsClothing Maria]] on the other hand is a young and attractive woman with a bubbly and cheerful attitude on the outside, but is also has a very insensitive and mean-spirited edge, such as when she gleefully pulls a prank on her new co-worker by trapping Lorelai inside a room where a resident ''died on the same night'' and records her reaction on her phone.

* BigBad: [[spoiler:John for the more mundane side of things. The Queen of Maggots for the other side.]]

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Maria, the nurse. On her first day of work, she pulls a cruel prank on Lorelai by locking her in a room with a corpse (Who can still talk, but it's not her fault) and [[spoiler: locks Al, ''the recovering alcoholic'', in the shed where the sherry is, [[KickTheDog filming as he struggles and eventually sobs.]]]]

* ComingOfAgeStory: A dark take on the genre. Lorelai is trying desperately to get out of her sorry life by becoming independent, being the only person in her household that actually has a job (that she just started). Events push her into that independence ''very'' fast when her mother kills herself and John [[spoiler: kills Lorelai and tries to kill Bethany]]. The game then becomes a test of how far she's willing to go and how much she's willing to sacrifice to get away and be her own person. [[spoiler: Exemplified by one of the responses that can banish the Queen of Maggots at the end. As the Queen is currently in the form of Lorelai, it's possible to choose the option "Goodbye, Lorelai," representing her saying goodbye to her old life and starting anew.]]

Laura "Lorelai" Wood is a young woman with a difficult home life, to put it mildly. [[DomesticAbuser Her stepfather John]] is an unemployed and oftentimes violent alcoholic, [[BrokenBird her mother Miranda]] is completely unwilling to stand up to his abuse, and her baby half-sister Bethany is routinely neglected by them. She doesn’t have much support outside of her family, either; her only real friend is Zack, the indie game developer who lives next door. Despite all of her hardships, though, she’s just started her first job and has dreams of taking Bethany away and starting a new, better life — only for tragedy to strike and steal it all away in one fell swoop. Suddenly, Lorelai finds herself trapped in an unsettling, surreal afterlife and must somehow return to the real world to get her revenge and save her loved ones with the help (?) of the enigmatic [[HumanoidAbomination Queen of Maggots]]. What comes next is a very dark and poignant ComingOfAgeStory.

Laura "Lorelai" Wood is a young woman with a difficult home life, to put it mildly. [[DomesticAbuser Her stepfather John]] is unemployed and an unrepentant, oftentimes violent alcoholic, [[BrokenBird her mother Miranda]] is completely unwilling to stand up to his abuse, and her baby half-sister Bethany is routinely neglected by them. She doesn’t have much support outside of her family, either; her only real friend is Zack, the indie game developer who lives next door. Despite all of her hardships, though, she’s started her first job ever and has big dreams of taking Bethany away and starting a new, better life — only for tragedy to strike and steal it all away in one fell swoop. Suddenly, Lorelai finds herself trapped in an unsettling, surreal afterlife and must somehow return to the living world to get her revenge and save her loved ones with the help (?) of the ever-enigmatic [[HumanoidAbomination Queen of Maggots]]. The result is a very dark and poignant ComingOfAgeStory.

Laura "Lorelai" Wood is a young woman with a difficult home life, to put it mildly. [[DomesticAbuser Her stepfather]] is unemployed and an unrepentant, oftentimes violent alcoholic, [[BrokenBird her mother]] is completely unwilling to stand up to his abuse, and her baby half-sister Bethany is routinely neglected by them. She doesn’t have much support outside of her family, either; her only real friend is Zack, the indie game developer who lives next door. Despite all of her hardships, though, she’s started her first job ever and has big dreams of taking Bethany away and starting a new, better life — only for tragedy to strike and steal it all away in one fell swoop. Suddenly, Lorelai finds herself trapped in an unsettling, surreal afterlife and must somehow return to the living world to get her revenge and save her loved ones with the help (?) of the ever-enigmatic [[HumanoidAbomination Queen of Maggots]]. The result is a very dark and poignant ComingOfAgeStory.