"We don't take kindly to strangers."
Opossum Country is a free Game Boy Horror game. It was released on itch.io on December 14, 2020 by Ben Jelter.
It follows a pizza delivery guy who delivers a pizza to a trailer park in the woods. While he's there, he gets wrapped up in something bigger than himself and discovers the secrets of the residents of the village.
You can play it here
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Opossum Country contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Who really ordered the pizza? It becomes the lesser issue over the course of the story, but why was the pizza guy sent there if nobody ordered the pizza?
- Who's in the right? The pizza guy seems the obvious answer at first, as he's painted as the Only Sane Man in the Cult-y town. But from the townsfolk's perspective, the pizza guy came and harassed the residents, stole from them, then shot and killed many of their fellow citizens.
- Arc Symbol: The opossums. They fill the woods, and you can see their beady eyes in many shots through the game. Then it's revealed that the opossums are the true forms of the transformed citizens.
- Ax-Crazy: The woman with the gun who threatens to kill you as soon as you approach her.
- Body Horror: The transformation from human to opossum is pretty brutal. Your body splits in half vertically, and the opossum crawls out of what's left of it. It's put on full display in the back room of the church/radio station.
- Cult: Deconstructed. What seems horrific to the pizza delivery guy is, to the townsfolk, the transforming into their true forms. And when you kill one of the recently transformed citizens, the town is horrified.
- Deep South: The residents live in Trashy Trailer Homes and speak with a southern dialect, and are... certainly colorful characters.
- Don't Go in the Woods: You might be met with a hostile Cult who transform into opossums.
- Downer Ending: You shoot and kill one of the recently-transformed citizens and Bill anguishes over her dead body while screaming "All we wanted was to be left alone...".
- Grey-and-Grey Morality: The townsfolk certainly aren't kind to you. One threatens you with a gun, another wrecks your car, and they generally have an unfriendly attitude towards outside visitors. At the end, though, after you kill one of their citizens, it's hard not to feel bad for them.
- Nice Guy: The unusually tall man in the forest is the one of the only citizens who helps you out, and he gives you advice while you're going through the forest.
- Only Sane Man: The pizza delivery guy is set up to be this before The Reveal at the end.
- Retraux: The game is in the style of a Game Boy game, complete with the pixelated graphics, limited color scheme, and 4 audio channels.
- The Reveal: The townsfolk are or are transforming into opossums.
- Small, Secluded World: The trailer park is largely secluded from the rest of the world and only accessible by a long road through a creepy forest. Its only connection to the outside world is a radio station, but the few phones there are in the town don't work.
- Town with a Dark Secret: All of the residents are standoffish at best and murderous at worst, to you at least. They want to keep out outsiders because they don't understand the transformation of the residents into opossums.
- Trashy Trailer Home: All of the citizens live in tiny trailer homes.
- Wham Shot: The back room of the church/radio station, with the bodies of the transformed citizens up on hooks is the turning point in the story and the moment you decide to get the hell out of there.
- Workplace Horror: Technically. You play as a pizza delivery guy delivering to a trailer park in the middle of nowhere.
All we wanted was to be left alone...
