Crowscare is an RPG Maker Explorer Horror game by arcadekitten in the same universe as It's Not Me, It's My Basement, Tricks N Treats, and Cemetery Mary. This game stars Ryo, a scarecrow boy preparing for the Harvest Festival with his father. He wants to know who his mother is, but is told he has no mother and his father created him from straw and hay.
One day, Ryo learns that his father needs mushrooms for his potions and will need to use his magic. Ryo decides to help out his father and find the mushrooms himself, going into the woods in the area. But the woods are said to be haunted by a witch who victimizes any children she finds. After a small talking crow attempts to dissuade him from venturing into the woods, Ryo decides to go anyway.
But when he meets the witch, Venna, she turns out to be much nicer than he was told. She agrees to be his surrogate mother, as long as he keeps this to himself to avoid the suspicion of the fearful villagers. And so, Ryo gains her help in preparing for the Harvest Festival, while learning the truth that was kept from him for so long... a truth he may not want to hear.
Can be downloaded here
.
This game contains examples of:
- The Bad Guy Wins: In the first ending (Blood Moon Festival), Venna (the game's villainess) succeeds with manipulating Ryo into helping her kill everyone in the village.
- Big Bad: Venna the witch turns out to be plotting to kill the villagers and is manipulating the protagonist Ryo into sabotaging the Harvest Festival so she and her “friends” can eat them.
- Exact Words: The curse on the crow aka Ingram that forces him in his crow form states that the only way to reverse his curse is to consume the blood of a family member. Ryo, who believes Venna to be his mother and currently being a scarecrow, offers him a piece of straw from him, which does break his curse.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Sometimes rumors and gossip are completely correct, and some people really are just bad to the point that they can't be changed with The Power of Love. Ryo spends the work thinking that Venna the witch is a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold, but she is just using him to carry out a massacre on the people of Blackwood.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: Ryo transforms into a scarecrow at sunset and back into a human at sunrise, with there being nothing he could do to influence the transformation.
- Multiple Endings: There are three endings, two bad and one good.
- Bad End 1: Blood Moon Festival: When Venna gives Ryo a strange potion and tells him to pour it into the goddess statue in the village, he does so. It then proceeds to kill everyone in the village, at which point Venna reveals that she was using him to gather meat for her and her "friends".
- Bad End 2: The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: Ryo refuses to go along with Venna's plot, so she tries to kill him and rips off his legs before Dad drives her away. Because Ryo will die if he becomes human again when the sun rises, Dad decides to block out the sun with his magic.
- True End: A Smile To Match My Own: If the player does all secret objectives, the crow, actually Venna's son Ingram, will help Ryo stand up to Venna and protects him from her, killing her. The Harvest Festival is held, and Ryo and Ingram become friends.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: Embry from It's Not Me, It's My Basement appears in the village on the first day. This seems to be an alternate timeline, as their parents and Dr. Light are alive.
- Red Herring: For most of the story, Venna the witch seems to be genuinely nice. By contrast, Ryo's Dad is hinted towards being the real villain- he seems to oddly take offense when Ryo jokingly calls him an evil witch, suspiciously claims that Ryo has no mom and he made him from hay, and may be the source of the rumors about Venna being an evil witch, causing the townspeople to regard her with fear. However, the endings show that this is not the case at all- he's genuinely a good parent with no ulterior motives and Venna is every bit as dangerous and malicious as he and the townspeople claim.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: The crow is adamant that there is nothing good about Venna, and that Ryo should stop pretending life is a storybook where the creepy witch is a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold. And he's proven absolutely right in the end.
- Subverted Suspicion Aesop: Discussed by the Crow, who brings up the standard Suspicion Aesop that is a staple of children's stories, then claims that reality is nothing like that and Ryo should stop trusting the witch Venna just because she seems nice. He turns out to be very right in the end, and is speaking from experience.The Crow: I know what you're looking for, kid. You want something subversive, right? Everyone talks about an evil witch in the woods, so you wanted to befriend her and prove them wrong, right? And then it turns out that it's all one big misunderstanding! She was a good witch after all! Or maybe she was bad, and it just took the kindness of someone else to make her better. That's what all the storybooks teach you, right? Tough luck, kid. It doesn't work like that in the real world. Sometimes people are just evil and there's no helping it. And all the second chances in the world won't make a difference.
Ryo: You keep saying this kind of stuff... But I don't understand. Ever since I met her, she's been nice to me. She helped me get back home, she cooks me dinner, she teaches me stuff.
The Crow: And what do you do for her in return?
Ryo: Huh?
The Crow: No good favor goes unreturned. She's going to make you pay her back for those favors one way or another. And I don't think you'll be ready for when that happens. - You Remind Me of X: During the second time Ryo sees Venna, she tells him he reminds her of her biological child.Venna: (to Ryo) Your generosity, and your kind smile... it just reminds me so much of my own little one.
