Gameplay-wise, it's a series of very well-choreographed scares in a tiny piece of a suburban household, like Silent Hills. Story-wise, it holds a plot rich with real horror and tragedy, told entirely through journal entries.
It takes place in a single bedroom, with the player character reading the diary of a teenager and their tragic decay into depression and insanity over a boy they have a crush on named Brian, or "B". Meanwhile, there's someone, or something, stalking them.
The characters include two couples: Sam and Brian (a Cute Bookworm and a Lovable Jock), and Stacy and Kyle (an Alpha Bitch and a Jerk Jock).
This game provides examples of:
- Academic Athlete: Brian is a superstar athlete and a bookworm.
- Accidental Murder: Kyle's emotional confrontation with Sam ends with him accidentally scaring her off a cliff, which gets her killed.
- The Ace: Academic Athlete Brian is perfect. It seems like everyone has a crush on him. Even the Guys Want Him. Deconstructed however as he's only so perfect because society pressures him to be perfect. He's really torn up over his mom's recent death too.
- Alpha Bitch: Stacy, a bitchy cheerleader who dates jocks. She even helps Kyle ruin Sam's life with "pranks".
- Apocalyptic Log: The main gameplay consists of the player character reading through a diary that is actually revealed to be two diaries, one for Sam and one for Kyle. Considering that 1) Kyle accidentally kills Sam and 2) Kyle goes either mad with jealousy or mad with guilt and you are playing through the aftermath of both situations, both can be considered apocalyptic logs.
- Armored Closet Gay: Kyle seems like a meatheaded stereotypical jock, but he's actually a psychological mess who hates himself for being gay. For extra metaphorical points, his final return to the apartment before the ending has him literally come out of a closet.
- The Beard: Stacy is clearly just one of Closeted Gay Kyle's many ways of repressing his sexuality, as he is obsessed and in love with Brian.
- Big Bad: The Stalker with a Crush for Brian, who isn't Sam, nor Stacy, but Kyle.
- Camera Fiend: The stalker keeps taking photographs of the player without their permission. It's a combination of Kyle stalking Brian, and Sam's ghost stalking Kyle.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The journal you read to understand the story of the game. There are actually two of them and understanding who wrote each journal uncovers the truth behind what happened.
- Early on in the game, you pick up a tree branch that's just randomly hanging around in your bedroom and use it to reach for a journal page that's under your bed. This is the same branch that Kyle used to reach for Sam's bag to get rid of it moments after he had pushed her off a cliff.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Not only did Sam fall off a cliff, but she broke every bone in her body, including her neck, and slowly choked to death on her own blood.
- Cruel Cheerleader: Stacy is a cheerleader and has no problems helping Kyle ruin Sam's reputation and spread rumors about her, despite Sam not doing anything to her.
- Depraved Homosexual: Kyle is a gay Yandere who is obsessed with Brian to the point of stalking him, ruining Sam's life to isolate Brian, and killing Stacy in a moment of passion when she tries to confront him about it.
- Diaries Are Girly: Played With. The game is played in first-person through the player character reading a series of diary entries that detail a teen's crush, later jealous obsession with a boy named Brian or "B". Since the player character model isn't shown, based on the writing in the journal, the game leads you to believe you are the titular Sam, the new girl who moved in from out of town who starts dating Brian, or Stacy, a Cruel Cheerleader who hangs out with Brian. You're neither. You are actually reading two separate journals. One does belong to Sam, but the obsessive Stalker with a Crush one belongs to Jerk Jock Kyle, Brian's best friend who is secretly in love with him and jealous of Sam. Bonus points for Kyle's diary being the one with pink hearts on the cover, while Sam's is a plain green one.
- Downer Ending: Kyle ruins Sam's life, Stacy ruins Kyle's life, Kyle accidentally gives Sam a slow and brutal death, Kyle gives up on life. And this is all before the game even starts. So it's basically a Downer Beginning. From those revelations, any way to end it is not gonna be good.
- If you pick yes on being questioned on if you wanna keep the diary, the game has you wake up on the same bed you've awoken on the beginning of the game, making it clear that Sam's ghost will keep haunting Kyle without end and will keep having horrific hallucinations.
- If you pick no instead, Kyle will wake up in real life, and confess his crimes to the police and will say one final goodbye to B, even if he will never hear it. Justice is served, but it doesn't matter.
- Driven to Suicide: Out of guilt and despair, Kyle tries to kill himself. But whether he goes through with it or not is up to the player.
- Dumb Jock: Sam expects Brian to be this, shocked at seeing a jock in a library. But he turns out to be an Academic Athlete.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Stacy eventually gets fed up with Kyle's obsessive hatred of Sam and snitches on him to Brian. Not out of sympathy for Sam, but because she mistakenly believes that Kyle wants to get rid of Brian so he could have Sam. See Wrong Genre Savvy below.
- Foreshadowing:
- When first reading through the diary, players believe they're playing as Sam (who's a girl). However, when paying close attention to the bedroom, you'll notice that the clothes lying around are men's clothes.
- Early on, Sam's real diary notes that Brian and Kyle are "more than friends." In addition to this, Kyle's diary refers to Brian by his full first name when talking about him generally/in reference to Sam or the others, but when referring to his own relationship with Brian, Kyle uses the more personal nickname "B."
- In an early scare, the wardrobe will be filed full of needles instead of clothes. It's an early sign that Kyle has been injecting himself with drugs, and that the scares are All In His Head.
- Frameup: Kyle frames his obsessive stalkings on Sam.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Kyle is driven to stalking and murder over the jealousy of Sam and Brian's relationship.
- Hell Is That Noise: The ghost makes a creaky croaking noise exactly like The Grudge. It's the last noise Sam made as she choked on her own blood.
- Hidden Depths: Brian is not the Jerk Jock one would initially think, and actually takes a keen interest in Stephen King's Misery when recommended it by Sam. And while Sam peppering her diary with drawings is probably to be expected from the Cute Bookworm that she is, it's much more unexpected from a Jerk Jock like Kyle, who ACTUALLY owns the Journal. The art is mildly Animesque, to boot.
- Insidious Rumor Mill: Driven by Envy Kyle spreads rumors on social media with help from Stacy that Sam is a Stalker with a Crush for Brian who just got lucky enough to actually date the object of her obsession because he's in love with Brian and wants to split the two up. He also spread the information that Sam's dad is in prison for sexually abusing teens. Everyone at school is critical of Sam and Brian turns his back on her completely. Later, Stacy, thinking Kyle did all of that because he wanted to hook up with Sam, exposes Kyle for orchestrating the rumor mill and everyone, including Brian, shun him instead.
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed; Kyle is quickly exposed for his cruel pranks toward Sam, and gets shunned by everyone, including Stacy and Brian. However, he gets no comeuppance for murdering Sam. However, the player has the option to make him confess his crime to the police, subverting this trope.
- Kill It with Fire: Kyle burns all of the evidence (i.e. the notes and journals) and has such little to live for that he doesn't really resist the flames himself.
- Lovable Jock: Sam expects to hate Brian for being a jock, but she eventually warms up to him for being a Nice Guy.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Driven by Envy Kyle ruins Sam's life and kills her because he's jealous that she gets to date his secret crush Brian.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: At first, it seems like a typical "haunted by a ghost girl" scenario, but it's likely more psychological and metaphorical than that.
- Mistaken for Gay: Inverted. Stacy's Face–Heel Turn happens after she comes to the conclusion that Kyle is trying to break up Sam and Brian so that Kyle can hook up with Sam. She's only half-right about her Closet Gay boyfriend, as he's really in love with Brian.
- Multiple Endings: The game's end depends on a choice the player makes when they reach the end of the diary.
- By choosing "Yes". Kyle decides to keep the diary, and essentially re-starts the cycle of guilt he's stuck in. Sam's Ghost/Kyle's guilt returns in the end, implying that, by keeping the diary, the events of the game will just repeat themselves.
- By choosing "No" and then not moving. Kyle sets his diary on fire, but stays still and lets the flame consume him as well, implying he died from smoke inhalation.
- By choosing "No" and then moving towards the door. Kyle finally gets his head straight. With his diary gone, he decides to finally turn himself into the police, and gets arrested for murder, which he says is some sort of closure for him.
- Never My Fault: Kyle insists that what happened is Sam's fault for getting in the way, not his. Kyle's final choice is whether or not he wants to maintain this mentality by choosing whether or not he gets to keep the diary in which he ostensibly paints himself as the real victim of the story. The better ending arguably happens by him refusing to do so, burning the diary and finally coming clean to the police.
- Opposites Attract: Sam theorizes this is the reason a Nice Guy like Brian is best friends with a Jerkass like Kyle.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: It's doubtful that Sam's ghost is really haunting Kyle. This ghost is just a metaphor for Kyle's insane guilt.
- Red Herring: Sam's diary is a little emotional, but nothing out of the ordinary for a teenage girl. Kyle is the real psycho.
- Red Herring Shirt: Kyle is this, both in Sam's real diary and his own - he is mentioned a small handful of times by Sam, and not at all in his own diary, fooling the player into believing he is largely unconnected or merely an accomplice to Stacy's antagonism, when in reality, Kyle is both the protagonist and Sam's Villain of Another Story.
- The Reveal: It's set up that the stalker's journal is written by Sam, but it's actually Kyle. It's a combination of Kyle framing Sam as a psycho, and his actual true feelings.
- Removing the Rival: Kyle tries removing Brian's girlfriend, Sam. First, he breaks them up through social manipulations. Then, after Brian finds out and "dumps" him, Kyle snaps and kills her. It's ambiguous whether or not it was on purpose.
- Room Full of Crazy: The bedroom eventually devolves into this, a visual metaphor of Kyle's fracturing mind.
- Samus Is a Girl: A villainous inversion since we're led to believe we're playing as a psychotic female stalker obsessed with a male classmate. However, we learn towards the end that we're actually playing as a psychotic male stalker struggling with his repressed homosexuality and obsession with another boy.
- Secondary Character Title: Sam may be a central character, but she's not the protagonist - Kyle is. The title serves to bolster the Bait-and-Switch that comes later on.
- Secret Diary: The whole focus. There's actually two, one written by Sam pre-breakup, another written by Sam post-breakup. The latter is actually Kyle.
- Sins of Our Fathers: Sam is bullied and treated like a freak for having a father who was convicted of molesting a teenager.
- Sir Swears-a-lot: All characters (the main students to be precise) is known for swearing a lot, maybe except for Brian.
- Slasher Smile: The game is absolutely riddled with images of what looks like huge, giant smiles cut out of newspapers. They represent the smiles of the girls on the Greenhart University posters, since that's where Brian decides to go to school, and his impending departure drove obsessed Kyle to insane desperation.
- Small Role, Big Impact: It seems at first like Kyle is a background character. That's exactly what he wants you to think.
- Spanner in the Works: Though she's mentioned a lot, Stacy is a minor character. She does, however, have one moment where she changes everything, by betraying the obsessive Kyle and telling Brian everything, which eventually leads to Kyle committing a murder-suicide.
- Spooky Photographs: The game's main motif, because Kyle took creepy pictures of Brian and used them to frame Sam as a stalker.
- Tomato Surprise: There are two and they're related. The journal you are reading are actually two journals, one by the titular Sam and one by the infrequently mentioned side character, Kyle. Also, you are not playing as the titular Sam, but as Kyle.
- Vengeful Ghost: It seems like Kyle is being haunted by Sam's ghost, for killing her. It's probably just a metaphor for his guilt though.
- Villain Protagonist: Kyle is such a central character that he's also the Big Bad.
- Walking Spoiler: If you haven't noticed, there are a rather large number of spoiler tags on this page. Kyle in particular is responsible for most of them.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The stalker is a monster, but a very sympathetic villain since you get to see their tragic decay of sanity through their journal. They become even more sympathetic once it turns out they're a self-loathing Armored Closet Gay.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Played With. Stacy breaks up with Kyle and tells Brian everything he did to ruin Sam's life because she's realized his real goal was to separate them so that he can make his move... except she believes that it's Sam he wants, not Brian. Regardless of her mistake, though, her plan works - Brian realizes what kind of person Kyle is, and promptly cuts him off.
- Yandere: The journal is written from the perspective of a Stalker with a Crush on Brian. It's set up to be Sam's, but it's actually Kyle's.
