Epiphany City is a 2022 Adventure Game developed by Cameron Ladjevardi and David Elliot, released on Steam and itch.io.
Lily is an artist who seems to have everything going for her, until her mother becomes ill. After a failed attempt to save her mom's life via crowdfunding and commissions, she seems to have hit rock bottom, living at her friend Rose's apartment after falling into a deep depression. The only joy in her life comes from idolizing the town superhero, Superb Man, and when she has to give up a chance to see him, Lily loses all hope...until she finds a mysterious prophecy with powers that enhance innate abilities.
Rewriting the prophecy to suit her own description, Lily is given mystical abilities that revolve around picture frames, allowing her a degree of Reality Warping powers. With these powers, Lily must come into her own as a hero, stop the villainous Mischief from bringing the world to ruin, and prove to others and herself that hope can be found, even when all seems lost.
This game contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: It's implied that Mischief's father Kaiser abuses his son, as the latter is terrified of him and fears disappointing him in any way. Later in the game, when Mischief hesitates to fight Lily, Kaiser overwhelms and corrupts him with darkness so that he'll do it. He does heal him after he fails, but he still shouldn't have done it in the first place.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The game autosaves after every puzzle you complete, and resets the puzzles if you leave the room should you mess up. There's also no point where you can get a Game Over. Later in the game, if you fail to stop Mischief or Kaiser's attacks then you just have to start the puzzle over, and the final battle is impossible to lose.
- Asshole Victim: Superb Man's first prey as a supervillain is Kaiser, who was busy trying to murder children before he pushed Superb Man to the dark side.
- Beware the Superman: Superb Man, who is a Corrupt Corporate Executive with an extremely Condescending Compassion attitude, to the point that his line, "you must not have achieved very much", is basically his Character Catchphrase. It's not really that surprising when he becomes a Fallen Hero due to his entitlement.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Lily learns that her mother is dying from a heart condition on her 18th birthday. Things only get worse from there.
- Casting a Shadow: Mischief, his father, and their minions all have shadow-based powers, given from the Dark Tree.
- Chekhov's Gun: The running gag of reading the prophecy upside-down becomes crucial in the endgame, as this causes it to be rewritten and actually describe the game's events.
- A Darker Me: In the endgame, people affected by the shadows become the worst versions of themselves.
- Despair Event Horizon: Happens to Lily at the start of the game. Later on several people seem to have been overcome with one as a result of Superb Man becoming corrupted.
- Developer's Room: Once you get the power to create picture frames by walking, you can walk around the building in the hub area to pick it up and descend hidden stairs to meet the dev team.
- Drunk on the Dark Side: After absorbing the Dark Tree's powers, the first thing Superb Man says is that the villains were right—evil is more fun.
- Embarrassing First Name: Superb Man's real name is Herbert, much to his chagrin.
- Expy:
- Superb Man is an obvious expy of Superman.
- Mischief seems to be one of Lancer, being a young boy who wants to please his villainous father (and isn't very good at it), as well as leaving signs to read similar to the signs in the Field in Chapter 1.note
- Failure Hero: Lily initially fails at everything she tries to do, mainly due to circumstances beyond her control. The prophecy lampshades this, calling her a failure but also a diamond in the rough.
- Fallen Hero: Superb Man, after getting angry that he is not the Hero of the Prophecy and ending up corrupted by the Tree of Power.
- Foregone Victory: The final battle with Superb Man is impossible to lose; no matter how many times you fail or are attacked, Lily keeps going.
- Foreshadowing: Dahlia the Prophet says the Prophecy does not actually give superpowers so much as enhance what is there. Lily was already moving around bits of pictures in the tutorial level, hinting that she was the intended recipient all along.
- Guide Dang It!: Some of the puzzle solutions aren't very obvious, one of the earliest ones being the first flower, which you have to assemble from the various pieces you find across the beach.
- Hate Plague: After Superb Man becomes corrupted and brings darkness upon the city, several citizens become depressed or apathetic. Rose in particular gets angry at Lily, and after Superb Man is defeated apologizes and says she felt compelled to say those mean things.
- Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Lily is said to have eaten a lot of ice cream after failing to save her mother.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Dahlia gives up her power to save Lily from Kaiser.
- Hijacked Destiny: In rewriting the prophecy, Lily steals the powers that were supposed to be given to Superb Man. Ends up subverted in the end when the prophecy was talking about her after all.
- It Was with You All Along: The fourth flower turns out to be the world of the entire game, now changed for the better thanks to Lily.
- It's All About Me: Superb Man is so angry over Dahlia saving Lily and not him that he absorbs the shadows to become a proper villain, killing anyone in his path.
- Jerkass: Superb Man only cares about his status and selects an art contest winner based on their dad being a tech mogul who can help his ambitions, despite Lily having the objectively better drawing.
- Jerkass Has a Point: As unfair as Lily's situation is, Superb Man is right in saying she stole the powers he was supposed to have. Ends up subverted in the end when the prophecy was talking about her after all.
- Kafka Komedy: Lily's misfortunes, such as a montage of not being picked for job interviews, being kicked out of her apartment, hurting her wrist to the point of her hand comically falling off, and having her mom candidly talk about dying, are played for dark humor.
- Lack of Empathy: Superb Man is focused on making money, good press coverage, and keeping his top hero status over actually saving people. His prophecy qualifications even lampshade this, saying he values strength over love.
- Minion with an F in Evil: Mischief tries to impede Lily's progress but is only really good at evading Superb Man. This makes him feel useless to his father.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: Due to the game's theme of thinking outside the box, several puzzles are solved in unintuitive ways, usually involving the shape of objects mimicking another—the Ocean Flower, for example, is discovered by placing 4 unrelated setpieces together in such a way that, when combined with a setting sun for the middle piece, they become a flower.
- Obliviously Evil: Mischief thinks he's a superhero because he has powers, despite causing, well, mischief with them. He becomes upset after Lily tells him he's a villain, and later doesn't want to hurt her until he's forced to by his father.
- Reality Warper: Using the magic picture frames, Lily can alter objects around her and reshape the world, such as rotating a clock to change the actual time of day.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: After absorbing the Dark Tree's energies, Superb Man gains pale skin and a red and black costume to signify his fall.
- Super-Empowering: The superpowers Lily receives enhance her existing abilities as an artist, while Superb Man's powers enhanced his charisma, looks, and strength as he was a former personal trainer.
- The Battle Didn't Count: In the final chapter, the battles with Kaiser have you successfully completing puzzles, only for him to shrug it off and blast you anyway.
- Trauma Conga Line: Happens to Lily in the prologue. First of all, only her mother and her best friend want to come to her birthday party, and then her mother announces that she's dying of a heart condition that they can't afford the surgery for. Despite Lily's efforts at commissions, she can't raise enough money, and damages her wrist from overworking herself. Then she enters a competition and paints a really good picture of Superb Man, only for him to dismiss it and choose a bad quality picture as the winner because the artist is the son of someone from an important company. Even worse, Lily keeps getting rejected from all the jobs she's applied to, and is evicted when she can't pay the rent. As she leaves to stay with her mother at Rose's house, her suitcase gets damaged. Then, after six months, her mother has died, and Rose isn't happy with Lily doing barely anything with her life due to her despair.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Much of the game is a nonviolent adventure game with obstacles that are free to deal with at your leisure. The Dark Forest includes combat-oriented button-pushing minigames that must be completed quickly and precisely, followed by timed puzzles.
