Video Game / Miserere

The Protagonist in their dark, lonely space station.

"Recently, my dreams have become increasingly hard to control. Is this a sign of my deteriorating mental health?"

—Miserere's nameless Protagonist

For twelve years, an unnamed astronaut has been living solitarily in a small space station located on a planet close to the center of a galaxy. While the astronaut initially enjoyed their solitude, they now primarily experience boredom and depression. Now the astronaut's only joy is their vivid dreams during their constant sleep. However, recently the astronaut's lucid dreams have become more disjointed and difficult to control. As our protagonist continues to sleep and dream, they realize that they have painful demons from their past that they must come to terms with.

Miserere ("have mercy" in Latin) is a freeware game made on RPG Maker by the independent game developer Snow Owl. It is highly inspired by the RPG freeware game Yume Nikki, another Surreal Horror game made on RPG Maker which involves heavy exploration of bizarre dream worlds. The most recent version of Miserere, v1.02, was completed August 2012. This version can be downloaded here.

Many of these tropes are found within plot twists revealed during the endgame. Therefore, expect many unmarked spoilers ahead. It's recommended to play through the game before perusing the tropes on this page for the best possible playing experience anyway.

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The game provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Present in some of the dreams' settings. Additionally, the protagonist lived happily here with their mother during their childhood.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: This is a given, since this game is greatly inspired by Yume Nikki and is about exploring bizarre dream worlds.
• Alien Blood: Averted. Despite being half-alien, the protagonist's death-scenes within their dreams show them having human-like red blood.
• The Aloner: The protagonist has been living in a remote space station by themselves for over a decade.
  Protagonist: I can't remember the last time I saw another human being....Or actually, I can. The real problem is, I can't remember the last time I saw a REAL human being.
• Ambiguous Gender: From their sprite's androgynous appearance, the protagonist may either be a male with shoulder-length hair or a female in unisex clothing. The fact that the protagonist never reveals their name doesn't help to clarify this mystery. They could be something else entirely, considering they are half-alien.
• Bad Future / Crapsack World: In the time period that the protagonist lives in, rats are frustratingly commonplace. In comparison, rabbits, snakes, and monkeys are extinct. Oxen, tigers, horses, sheep, roosters, dogs, and pigs have been extinct for so long that the protagonist cannot identify them.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Beating the game entails the protagonist battling their darkest demon, who takes the form of their mother's murderer.
• Beautiful Void: The dream worlds consist of gorgeous yet eerie and lonesome surreal landscapes.
• Biblical Motifs: Motifs from Christianity found within the dreams include crosses, stained glass windows from a cathedral, God's pointing hand from the "Creation of Adam" painting, and disembodied bishop heads. Satan is mentioned once in a short story and even appears to the protagonist in reality from the dream world as a possible hallucination.
• Big Bad: Carrie, the “hero” of Terra Puritatem who murdered the protagonist’s mother. Or at least, a nightmare that takes her form.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Quite a few. Giant spiders, a hive of giant insects, giant grinning worms that teleport you...
• Bittersweet Ending / Gainax Ending: So by the end of the game the protagonist has managed to kill their darkest inner demon within their dreams, who took the form of their mother's murderer. The last scene of the game is the protagonist mourning over their mother's corpse. But does the protagonist ever wake up, recover from their clinical depression, or return to Earth in at least a happier mood? No one knows.
• Black Bug Room / Bleak Level: None of the surreal, dimly-lit areas in the protagonist's dream world's Beautiful Void are exactly chipper. However, near the end-game the protagonist can now fall asleep in the bed near the mechanical controls room. The dreams the protagonist explores while asleep in this bed are even more dreary than the dreams experienced before, since this is where the protagonist confronts their deepest, darkest memories.
• Creepy Doll: The doll head that the protagonist acquires always looks toward their general direction no matter which angle the protagonist is viewing the head.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The protagonist has one...
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: The protagonist remembers their deceased mother as "Loving, caring, understanding, kind and wise."
• Disappeared Dad: The protagonist's mother was murdered in the past, but where exactly was their father the whole time?
• Doppelgänger: During one event the protagonist watches their shadowy doppelganger commit suicide.
• Dream Emergency Exit: The protagonist wakes up from their dreams by pinching themselves.
• Dream Land: Every setting except those within the space station is this.
• Dream People: More like dream creatures. The only actual "person" the protagonist can have a meaningful conversation with in the dream world is the game's villain Carrie.
• Driven to Suicide: After having watched their shadowy Doppelgänger commit suicide by jumping off a building's steep ledge, the protagonist contemplates suicide also; however, they don't follow through with it.
  Protagonist: There is nothing between me and certain death. I get vertigo just by going close to the edge.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Considering the protagonist's obvious clinical depression, the closed-eyes appearance on their sprite could be interpreted as these.
• Empty Room Psych: The rusted ship area has quite a few jammed doors that the player will not be able to open, even with the various keys they may find throughout the game. Also in the rusted ship are two rooms which hold nothing of real importance. Either way, the player may furiously try to open the doors or explore these useless rooms trying to find something important or interesting...
• Evil Laugh: By the Big Bad Carrie, right before the final boss battle with her.
• Eyes Always Shut: The protagonist's
• Faceless Eye: The little eyeball people in the fungus cave area
• Fan Sequel: Miserere is heavily inspired by Yume Nikki. However Miserere is not as similar to Yume Nikki as other fangames such as .flow or Yume 2kki since it has dialogue, characterization, and a coherent plot. In this sense, it is similar to other "second generation" fangames such as Answered Prayers, Fleshchild, and The Looking Glass.
• Fantastic Racism: The protagonist and their mother, who are half-alien and full-alien respectively, suffered persecution from regular humans and had to live in the sewers for safety. Eventually the mother got murdered by an alien exterminator.
  • Fantastic Ghetto: Aliens and alien-human hybrids must live and hide in the sewers to escape persecution from humans.
  • Fantastic Slurs: Alien-human hybrids are referred to as "mutants."
  • Knight Templar: The organization Terra Puritatem wants to exterminate all aliens and alien hybrids in place of the ineffectual government because these undesirables "...attack citizens, they eat our crops, and they befoul our homes!"
• Freak Out: The protagonist experiences this when they finally begin to remember their childhood in the sewer, but can't remember what their beloved mother looked like.
• The Future Is Noir: Even in reality the space station is dimly lit at best.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Over a decade by themselves in the remote space station may be the reason why the protagonist is having increasingly deranged and disturbing dreams as well as possible hallucinations in reality.
• Good Morning, Crono: The game begins just as the sleepyhead protagonist wakes up at their desk. The protagonist then remarks that they should do some work, and this gives the player a chance to explore the space station.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The protagonist must collect all parts of a doll to give to the lonely old lady in order to progress to the second part of the game.
• Gratuitous Latin: The game's title Miserere ("have mercy") and the alien exterminating organization Terra Puritatem ("pure Earth"). This is especially apparent since this game takes place in a future that includes distant space travel, massive animal extinctions, and illegal extraterrestrial immigration. What use would a long-dead Classical language be in this high-tech era?
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: The protagonist's mother is a beautiful humanoid alien.
• Gray Rain of Depression: Many of the areas in the clinically depressed protagonist's dream world are dark and rainy. Even the sky bridge area, which is relatively well-lit and with upbeat music, is rainy.
• Guide Dang It!: This gameplay mostly involves finding an item in one area and then using that item in some other specific area to progress the game. Considering that the dream world is a Wide Open Sand Box, this entails lots of exploration, attention to detail, and trial and error if a player is to abstain from a strategy guide. Interestingly, this game is actually somewhat more forgiving in this aspect than Yume Nikki and other fan-sequels, as the areas are slightly more linear, smaller, don't wrap around themselves (meaning there aren't any of the void-like open areas these games are known for), and are connected a bit more coherently.
• Half-Human Hybrids: The protagonist is a human-alien hybrid.
• Hallucinations: After particularly traumatizing dreams the protagonist will begin to see these in reality.
• Hand in the Hole: At one point the protagonist encounters a small, square, arm-depth hole in the wall. If the protagonist chooses to reach their arm into there, then they will obtain a key with no harm done to them.
• Hollywood Atheist: Years ago the protagonist used to be a devout Christian. However, years of regularly reading science novels and time alone to ponder their beliefs led the protagonist to no longer believe in any deity.
• Hub Level: Consists of a constantly dark and storming garden with eyeball creatures floating around.
  • The space station could count, as well, since the two different beds connect to entirely different dream worlds.
• Humans Are Bastards: This is the conclusion the Devil came to in the short story "The Devil Is Just A Tired Human."
• I Just Want to Have Friends: The old lady in the short story "The Sad Lady" has all the wealth in the world, yet yearns for a friend above everything else.
• Instant Waking Skills: Surprisingly enough this is always the case for the sleepyhead protagonist, whether they're waking up from a nasty nightmare or not.
• Jump Scare: The falling corpse in the rusted ship area.
• Leap of Faith: At one point the protagonist encounters a bottomless hole which recently had a boulder covering it. Depending on which areas the player had already explored in the dream world, the protagonist may have encountered some nasty things and died in-dream. The protagonist has the option of entering the bottomless hole, but there is the risk of dying in-dream. However, entering the hole is nonlethal and the protagonist can exit from the hole again.
• Light Is Not Good: There are monsters in the church area that resemble priests' heads that can kill you. The alien hunting organization Terra Puritatem also seems to be this.
• Living Statue: Sometimes the giant mossy statues may sniff at the protagonist as they walk past them.
• Lonely Piano Piece: There is one in the rusted ship area by Boards of Canada, which is fitting since the ship is abandoned and severely dilapidated. The red planet area also has one, which is fitting since this area is very dark with a lonesome atmosphere.
• The Maze: The bog area has an invisible maze.
  • There is also the hellish purple maze full of the monster wall-hands and disembodied bishop heads.
• Mental Story: The protagonist continues to be isolated and bored in the remote space station, so they spend the majority of their time sleeping and dreaming.
• Mind Screw: This is a given for a Surreal Horror game such as this.
• Missing Mom: The protagonist's mother was murdered in the past.
• Mood Whiplash: So in their darkest dream yet the protagonist has been uncovering painful memories from their past. They do this while exploring a dark and dilapidated abandoned movie studio which has music from Silent Hill 3 playing in the background. The protagonist then finds a conspicuous suitcase. The cheery and surreal world they find within the suitcase looks like a René Magritte painting with influences from Monty Python- though it is in fact a world from Iblard Jikan.
• Mysterious Past: The protagonist's. They began their life as an orphaned, persecuted human-alien hybrid who lived the the sewers. Just how did they go from that to an astronaut granted their own space station to live and work, which presumably requires intensive higher education and permission from a national space organization?
• Nightmare Face: At one point the protagonist encounters the face of a giant which looks corpse-like but with a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth and wild, angry eyes.
  • There's also the mossy statue with the creepy grin in the "MORE SACRIFICES" room.
• Nightmare Sequence: Pretty much all of the protagonist's dreams.
• No Name Given: The protagonist almost reveals their name in the beginning. However, they may have forgotten it after years of isolation.
• No New Fashions in the Future: From their sprite, the protagonist looks like they're wearing a plain black sweater, baggy denim jeans, and white tennis shoes.
• No-Paper Future: Averted. The protagonist owns several books, manuals, a notebook to write down ideas from dreams, and a movie poster.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In certain creepy areas you may hear faint ominous noises (like a crying baby or indecipherable whispering) in the background, yet you can find no discernible source of the noise...
• Off with His Head!: During one event the protagonist gets their head bloodily slashed off by a yeti.
• Ominous Fog: This, coupled with the poor lighting in many of the environments, makes exploring the highly detailed environments a challenge.
• One-Hit Kill: Malicious creatures in the dream world can kill the protagonist in-dream by simply touching them, causing the protagonist to wake up.
• One-Winged Angel: For the final battle Carrie transforms into a giant snake-like sewer monster.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: What else would inhabit the dream world of someone gradually losing their sanity?
• Overly-Long Tongue: During some jump scares in the game the protagonist will briefly get this for some reason.
• Pig Man: The piglet people in the pig pen area have human bodies and pig heads. However, they're not huge and boorish as this trope typically depicts.
• Portal Painting: A painting of a red flower in the abstract art gallery transports the protagonist to the red art gallery.
• The Reveal: While the protagonist appears to be a regular human, they are actually an human-alien hybrid. The protagonist and their mother lived happily in the sewers until Fantastic Racism made Carrie murder the full-alien mother.
• Sanctuary of Solitude: At one point of the game the protagonist will rediscover one of these within the space station. Given all the emotional stress the protagonist had experienced up to this point, they have the option to pray at the sanctuary's alter again despite having become an atheist years ago. Incidentally, this sanctuary is one of the most serene areas of the game.
• Sanity Slippage: Apparently, the protagonist's sanity has been slipping long before this game even started. And considering this is a Surreal Horror game, their sanity will continue to slip as game progresses. As a dream denizen remarks to the protagonist, "You're really starting to lose it. When was the last time you woke up not feeling depressed?"
• Scenery Gorn: Many of the game's areas are very reminiscent of those in Silent Hill, being severely dilapidated and covered with blood and rust.
• Scenery Porn: The graphics in this game are much more detailed than most other Yume Nikki fangames. Particularly beautiful areas of mention are the mossy statues area, the red planet area, and the sky bridge area.
• Shout-Out: Certain denizens of the dream world recite an outside entity's quote or paraphrase of a quote relating to Miserere's theme of dream exploration:
  • King Kud: "There is a time for departure even when there is no certain place to go."
  • T'ok: "Everything you can imagine is real."
  • Hak: "Reality continues to ruin my life."
  • Lh'rye: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."
  • Mossy Old Man: "You better watch out, you better not cry. Your time is limited, so don't waste it."
  • Mr. Moon: "A road twice traveled is never as long."
• Slasher Smile: The creepy statue in the "MORE SACRIFICES" room bears this.
• Sleepyhead: As the protagonist puts it,
  Protagonist: I have found that sleeping has become my one and only enjoyable past time. So I sleep. And sleep. And then sleep some more. Occasionally I make a few rounds and check instruments. Then I sleep.
• Small, Secluded World: The small space station the protagonist occupies in real life
• Snow Means Death: During a certain event, the protagonist explores a yeti's snow den. The yeti bloodily decapitates the protagonist in response.
• Solemn Ending Theme: Naturally, considering the game's ending
• Space Madness: The protagonist resorts to constant sleeping and dreaming to cope with the isolation and boredom from spending years living alone in a remote space station.
• Space Station: The protagonist is the lone occupant of the space station Harmony, which is located on a barren planet near the center of a galaxy.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion: If the protagonist touches a disembodied bishop head, this how they die in-dream.
• Starfish Aliens: Many of the dream world creatures look like this, particularly the veiny mushroom creatures with eyes in the fungus cave area or the floating organic-dirigible things from the red gallery area.
• Surreal Horror
• Teleporters and Transporters: There is a teleporting maze where giant grinning worms teleport you throughout a filthy, abandoned locker room.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Were the objects that begin to appear in the space station always there without recognition from the protagonist, or is the protagonist simply beginning to hallucinate them due to the intensive dream exploration?
• Troubled Fetal Position: Later in the game the protagonist kneels down to inspect a sewer hole. Once they remember their past living in the sewer with their mother, they clutch their head in pain as they struggle to remember their deceased mother's appearance, entering the troubled fetal position in full.
• Video Game Caring Potential: At one point the protagonist has the option of returning a dream denizen's lost black box. This does nothing to progress the game and doesn't reward the protagonist any useful skills or items. However, the item's owner is "thankful. Greatly, deeply thankful."
• Who Forgot The Lights?: Many of the game's areas have dark filters around them, making it difficult to see.
• You Killed My Mother: The protagonist fights against their mother's murderer as the final boss.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Averted. Even if the protagonist gets grisly killed off in a traumatizing dream, the health scanner in the space station will always detect the protagonist's body to be without any injuries or diseases.

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