Don't Be Afraid is an indie horror game by Hydra Games SA released in December 2020.
Eleven-year-old David finds himself waking up in a dark, cold room unaware of his surroundings when a masked man named Franklin Deagon greets him. David soon finds out that Franklin kidnapped him and wants to play "a little game" with him. Said game consists of David solving various puzzles as he navigates through a house filled with many mannequins that may or may not be sentient. As David traverses through the building, he soon realizes that he is not the first of Franklin's victims, and that there are other entities that want to kill him.
Don't Be Afraid provides examples of:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In the Escape ending, Theodore, thinking David is one of the children's ghosts, will immediately scream and fall to his hands and knees sobbing and praying the "monster" doesn't kill him. This gives David the chance to run away while he's paralyzed with fear.
- All Just a Dream: The Mother ending reveals that the whole game has been nothing but a horrifying nightmare.
- Big Bad: Franklin Deagon, the masked Serial Killer who kidnapped David so he could torture him in his house of horrors.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Escape ending. David escapes from Theodore and Franklin, Franklin is mauled to death by one of the ghosts he killed, and the spirits of the children can finally rest in peace. But Theodore is still alive, dozens of innocents have been killed (including David's parents and Jamie), and David is gonna be psychologically damaged for the rest of his life.
- Death of a Child: There's plenty of notes and corpses in the game to indicate that Franklin and Theodore have murdered multiple children. Jamie is killed onscreen by Franklin at the end of The First Toy, and if you get the Mother ending, David's friend, Tom, will have his head cut off. David will be killed as well in the Death ending.
- Decoy Protagonist: The prologue, The First Toy, is told from the perspective of Jamie the Guitar Boy. He's smart enough to get through many of Franklin's tests and even eludes his brother, Carl. But in the end, Franklin kills him anyway. The actual game stars David, another boy who has no relation to Jamie.
- Downer Ending:
- The First Toy ends with Jamie narrowly escaping Carl, only to die anyway when he runs into Franklin and is killed by him.
- The aptly-named Death ending sees David failing to escape Theodore (or the meat cooler) and ending up in the same basement he first woke up in. After completing one last test, he resigns to his fate and is killed by Franklin.
- The Dragon: Theodore, Franklin's accomplice who also gleefully tortures and murders innocents, preferably children. Franklin is the brains behind the operation, while Theodore handles most of the heavy lifting and kidnappings.
- Guide Dang It!: Getting the Escape ending is damn near impossible unless you collect everything that Andy left behind for you—some of which are very easy to miss. Even worse, the game autosaves and there are no level/chapter selections, so if you screw up and miss one single item you need to unlock the Monster mask, you gotta redo the whole game again.
- The Hero Dies: David is murdered by Franklin in the Death ending.
- Monster Clown: Theodore. Techinically, he's just a janitor during the day. But at night, he loves to dress up as a clown and pretend that the abandoned school is a carnival where he can "play" and chase after his victims.
- Multiple Endings: There are three endings to the game, all of which are dependent on which items you collect and which paths you take.
- Death: Theodore catches David just as he's about to escape and savagely beats him into unconsciousness. When David wakes back up, he's back where he started and far too weak to move properly. After finishing Franklin's final test, David willingly gives up, sits down in a chair, and allows Franklin to kill him with no resistance. This ending can also happen if David doesn't escape the meat cooler in time during the Escape Ending.
- Mother: After saving his mother from a death trap, David suddenly wakes up, finding himself shivering in his bed. His mother comes into his room and sings him a song to lull him back to sleep, revealing that the whole game was nothing but a nightmare.
- Escape: David successfully escapes from Theodore, only to run into Franklin himself. David is then chased by Franklin and locks him in a meat cooler, where he's killed by the ghost of one of the children he's murdered. With Franklin dead, David escapes and runs off into the night.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never revealed what happens to Theodore in the Escape ending after he breaks down crying from seeing the Monster mask.
- Would Hurt a Child: Both Theodore and Franklin, and presumably Lydia and Carl, have harmed and murdered multiple children. You even see some of their spirits in the Escape ending.
- Yank the Dog's Chain:
- Should you fail to get the Monster mask, Theodore will catch David when he's a few feet away from getting free. He'll beat David to a pulp and get sent back to Franklin's basement, where Franklin will later kill him.
- Should you fail to escape the meat cooler in time, this will also lead to David wounded and back in Franklin's basement, where he meets the same fate. Again, this happens when David is a couple yards away from freedom.
