Colorless Poems is a surreal Explorer Horror game by Ryou Mutsumi made in July 2020. You play as Akari Yagura, an amnesiac girl who is hanging out with her sister Shiori in a mountain trip when a strange voice saying "help me" draws the latter away, prompting Akari to search for her. But she only comes across a terrifying white ghost-like monster who chases her everywhere she goes, and must escape it, find her sister, and uncover her lost memories to discover what is happening.
Can be downloaded here
.
Colorless Tropes:
- Arc Words: "High place", "go to the high place", and variations thereof. Akari is constantly told by signs to go to the highest place in the mountain to find Shiori, and some of the puzzles require you to go on the path with more elevation (which consumes stamina). It turns out that Uta can induce summit disease in humans and has already done so to Shiori, and now wants Akari to be its next victim.
- Big Bad: The white ghost-like entity that kidnapped Shiori Yagura, who Akari is trying to rescue. It is known as Uta and possessing the dead Shiori while trapping Akari in a never-ending nightmare.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Any time the pale-white monster with Black Eyes of Evil shows up, everything except Akari herself turns black-and-white.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The monster haunts the forest areas in the mountain, and Shiori had a close encounter with it in the backstory, leaving her with a phobia of forests (and mountains).
- Hell Is That Noise: The monster has an ear-piercing screech it lets out anytime light is shined in its face.
- No Escape but Down: In both endings, Akari is cornered by the monster on a cliff, so she takes her chances and jumps off. In End 1, she falls apart and presumably dies, while in End 2 she awakens from the initial nightmare.
- Scaling the Summit: Akari is constantly told by the signs around the area that she has to climb to the top of the mountain in order to find her sister Shiori. This is naturally complicated by the monster that stalks the trees of the mountain and chases down Akari. However, this is a trap by the monster, Uta, who is basically an Eldritch Abomination version of summit disease who drives its victims to the summit where it can possess them.
- Sprint Meter: Or rather, a walk meter. In rooms that are considered sloped, merely walking in them will decrease your stamina, which can be replenished by staying still. This is both used during the chases with the monster and to solve some puzzles that require you to go towards the direction that depletes your stamina.
- Story Breadcrumbs: The backstory surrounding the events of the game is pieced together through documents found in various places, including hidden memos that get sent to Shiori's phone if you unlock them.
