Video Game / RATUZ

Ratuz is a platform-based Survival Horror game, inspired by INSIDE, Another World, Blackthorne and Prince of Persia and developed by Bad Coffee Games. It was released 22nd April 2022, on Steam.

The game follows Five, an inmate at an unspecified prison where strange medical experiments are being conducted. After an experiment goes terribly wrong and transforms another prisoner into a massive, Ax-Crazy humanoid rat, Five and another two inmates must make their way through the prison while avoiding murderous guards, strange mutants, and deadly traps so that they can find a way off the island — all while the transformed inmate stalks them, hungry for their flesh and blood.

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The game provides examples of:

• All for Nothing: It's entirely possible to make it to the end with one surviving character. If it's Five or Pamela, however, Three will promptly ambush them and either drag them to a watery grave (Pamela) or kill them with the boat's propeller, then steal the boat and ride to the mainland.
• Animate Body Parts: Two's head sprouts legs, tears itself off his body, and runs off during the prologue after his body rejects the serum. The head is actually fairly helpful, and repeatedly appears throughout the game as a guide or observer.
• Anyone Can Die: All the main characters barring Five can die if you fail to solve certain puzzles in time. And even then, Five isn't safe in the endings.
• Ax-Crazy: Three is utterly psychotic and hell-bent on killing every last person on the island in exceptionally violent ways, starting with the people who transformed him into a rat man. Even before he transformed, he doesn't seem the most stable ^note his reaction to witnessing two instances of back-to-back Body Horror, knowing he's next? Insane laughter.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • When the mutated James corners Five in a narrow room, Six (or Four if Six didn't survive the electric chair earlier) charges it from behind and pins it to the wall with a sharp length of pipe.
  • The Golden Ending features Pamela cooking up a serum that can reverse the effects of Three's transformation, which she can use to return him to human form and prevent the death of Five in the ending.
• Black Dude Dies First: Zigzagged. Dwight dies to Three in short order, but Four (a black man) can survive all the way to the end of the story if the right puzzles are completed. Alternatively, he can be the first main character to die if you save Six from the electric chair then fail the gates puzzle.
• Body Horror:
  • James's transformation into a beefed up parasite-monster involves this, with his eyes bulging out of their sockets and his skin ripping apart. It manages to be disturbing even with the relatively low-end graphics.
  • If Four or Six get hit with the de-transformation serum during the final battle, their entire body swells up like a balloon before exploding and showering everything nearby in gore.
• Brought Down to Normal: In the Golden Ending, Pamela uses a serum to reverse Three's mutations and turn him human again.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Five's immediate response to Three after the latter murders two scientists and a guard is to remark on how massive a barbeque they could have if they took the rat down.
• Death Trap: Present in several areas of the game, especially the catacomb-like areas. Getting caught in one is of course, an instant death. These also affect enemies, and one of the skeletons needs to be taken down in this manner. If timed right, it's possible to lure the Puppeteer Parasite enemies into the lab's laser wall traps, which will permanently remove them.
• Damsel in Distress: Pamela is caught by Three and stuck in a Drowning Pit, requiring Five to save her before she drowns.
• Dem Bones: Cursed, black-boned skeletons are found around the catacomb-like areas. If they manage to catch Five, they grab onto him and turn him into a similar skeleton. One of them is almost unavoidable as it's encountered in a small corridor, so Five needs to lure it onto the pressure plate of an earlier Death Trap to take care of it.
• Distressed Dude:
  • Six needs to be rescued from an electric chair by pressing the right button out of a choice of two.
  • Five ends up being cornered by the mutated James at a dead end in the laboratory, with either Six or Four stepping in to take down the mutant and save him.
  • Four runs into Three and needs to be rescued before the latter can meatpaste him against a grated gate.
• Dramatic Thunder: The introductory scene features bursts of lightning and thunder outside the prison, presumably to underscore the ominous setup.
• Evil Laugh: Three usually lets out a deep "WA HA HA HA HAH!" moments before beginning a pursuit or violently killing someone. Notably, he even had this laugh (albeit at a higher pitch) before he was turned into an Ax-Crazy rat man.
• Final Girl: Subverted. If Pamela is the only one to escape the island, Three catches up with her in short order to drown her. This does not happen if Four or Six are the only ones to survive.
• Fold-Spindle Mutilation: At one point, Three will start pushing Four up against a portcullis-like grate. If Five can't solve the needed puzzle in time, the poor bastard ends up being reduced to a pile of meat giblets.
• Forgot About His Powers: Despite being able to swim in toxic waters and easily overpower humans, Three seemingly just lets the group go during the "two/three survivors saved" endings. Particularly egregious in light of the Downer Endings, where it's proven he can swim at speeds matching the escape boat and attack the person on it.
• Genetic Abomination: Implied to be the end goal of Project RATUZ, going by the sheer number of parasitic mutants, anthropomorphic Rat Men lurking in the sewers, and the experiments on prisoners shown in the prologue.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Government. While they're only alluded to as a background element, they're painted as the ones who created Project RATUZ and consequentially set off all the horrors of the game.
• Handicapped Badass: Five seems to have lost an eye sometime before the game; at the very least, he can't see out of it due to the bandages covering it. It doesn't stop him from surviving every death trap and mutant horror the prison can throw at him.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Several endings feature this.
  • If only Five survived, Master (the old rat man in the sewers) will intervene and distract Three at the cost of his own life. Quickly becomes a Senseless Sacrifice, as Three swiftly catches up to Five and kills him.
  • If all three of the main characters survived, but Pamela didn't, Two will distract Three and swiftly get eaten while the main trio flee.
• High-Voltage Death: At one point, Six is captured by a guard and put in an electric chair. If Five presses the wrong button, it activates and Six eats several thousand volts to the head.
• I Have Your Wife: Pamela and Dwight indicate that The Government is holding their families hostage to ensure their compliance.
• Invincible Boogeymen: Three. There's absolutely no way you can harm him (outside of scripted events), while he can effortlessly kill you or any other threat in one shot. Unsurprisingly, all the main characters are either afraid or at least wary of him. The only time he is ever decisively beaten is in the Golden Ending, where he's distracted by Four, and Five and Six then inject him with an antidote by Pamela to turn him human again.
• Karmic Death: The scientists experimenting on the prisoners by injecting them with Psycho Serums are immediately killed by Three after it transforms him.
• Killed Offscreen: Shortly after the game begins, you'll end up walking past a second cell block with prisoners still in their cells. Returning here later reveals Three butchered the lot of them at some point, with their corpses being found impaled or torn to tatters.
• Living Motion Detector: Near the end of the game, Five has to go through a labyrinth that's home to a mole rat-like monster. When it eventually finds Five, it will immediately eat him whole if he makes a movement, but if Five stays still, it will sniff the area around him before leaving. An NPC that you helped earlier even warns Five to stay still if he comes across a creature in the labyrinth.
• The Many Deaths of You: There are many nasty ways for Five to get killed, and not just by Three. These can include being melted in acid, being taken over by an organic parasite, rotted down to a skeleton by a living skeleton, and more.
• The Maze: The labyrinth under the sewers is a very dark maze where Five needs to navigate around to obtain medallions that open door switches. Meanwhile, he's perpetually stalked by a blind, humanoid mole rat-like monster which can sense movement very well.
• Multiple Endings: There are eight or so endings, falling into four broad categories:
  • No one saved: Five and the mutated Three fight, only for an elderly mouseman (Master) to appear and sacrifice himself to distract the giant rat monster to let Five reach the boat. As Five tries to escape, Three catches up, kills Five with the boat's motor, and begins the ride to the mainland.
  • One person saved: Five and the other survivor try to fight off Three but fail. Five is killed while the other flees on the boat. If Four or Six was the survivor, they escape; if it was Pamela, Three catches up to her and drags her to a watery grave, leaving the empty boat to speed toward the mainland.
  • Two people saved: The trio try to fight Three, but are forced to escape to the boat. If Pamela is among the group, she attempts to use a reversal formula on Three but fails — either way, one of the prisoners dies. Otherwise, Two holds off Three long enough for the whole group to escape at the cost of his own life.
  • Everyone saved: The three prisoners attack Three, distracting him long enough for Pamela to use the reversal formula to make him human again. Two meets up with the group, and they all escape off of the island. Not to mention Five and Pamela will have a Smooch of Victory.
• Nice Mice: In contrast to the Ax-Crazy Three, the mouse men in the sewers are far nicer to Five, and even help him and his surviving allies escape the island.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Three is practically indestructible to the point where he can swim in flesh-melting acid with no problem, or even get rammed into the wall by a car and be no worse for wear later. The only thing that can permanently put him down is being injected with an antidote serum that turns him back into a human.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Making contact with anything hostile or dangerous will instantly kill Five. Some enemies can also be killed via strangling them from behind.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Three normally makes no hesitation to instantly butcher any human or monster he comes across, but he decides to put Pamela in a rising water Death Trap instead of killing her immediately, allowing Five to have a chance at rescuing her and possibly leading to Three's downfall.
• Playing with Syringes: Project RATUZ involves splicing genetic code from various rodents into unwilling human test subjects.
• The Power of Friendship: If Four, Five, Six, and Pamela survive to the end, they will manage to take down Three by having the prisoners tag-team Three to distract him for long enough for Pamela to safely administer the antidote, turning Three back to a human.
• Prehensile Tail: One of Three's most dangerous abilities is his very prehensile rat tail, which he can use to impale people with.
• Psycho Serum: The serum central to Project RATUZ. Notable effects include instant death (One), Body Horror (Two and Three's transformations), and either violent insanity or an amplification of violent tendencies (Three, all the way).
• Puppeteer Parasite: The main enemies of the lab sections are one-eyed headcrab-like creatures. They can be found both latched onto human corpses and controlling them like a puppet, or crawling around on the ground; dying to them causes the parasite to use Five's body as its newest host.
• Rat Men: The main antagonist is a huge anthropomorphic rat created when some scientists decided to play around with genetic splicing. Much later, you also encounter some mice men in the sewers, who are much nicer and outright helpful to you.
• Riddle for the Ages: What is the ultimate goal of Project RATUZ and The Government? While the "what" of the project is fairly clear (Scientists experimenting with splicing rat DNA into humans), the game never gives a concrete answer on why the project is taking place, or the government's reasons for backing it.
• Run or Die: You cannot fight Three. If he shows up, run like hell and hope he hits a wall he can't bypass. The only time you do get an advantage over him is near the end, where you must ram him into a wall with a car, and even that doesn't stick. The same applies to the mutated James, who will immediately pursue you and can't be harmed outside of scripted events.
• Senseless Sacrifice: In the ending where Five escapes alone, Master's sacrifice turns out to be in vain — Three quickly catches up and shoves Five's head into the boat's propellers, then hijacks it to travel toward the mainland.
• Shout-Out:
  • The guard who catches Six drops Dracula's "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!" line before hauling him off for execution.
  • The mouse man who you help out in the sewers (and who helps you out after that) is named Mickey.
  • During one chase scene with three, he will peak through a door and say Here's Johnny!
• Smooch of Victory: If everyone is saved, including where Three reverts back to human, Five and Pamela will have one on the motorboat. Averted when only Five and Pamela escape, they just simply hug on the motorboat.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Once Three's got your scent, he will not give up until he catches you or you get somewhere he can't follow. A large part of the story centres around him pursuing the surviving prisoners and their efforts to flee from him.
• Tail Slap: Three's tail serves as a lethally powerful whip, capable of impaling Five outright and shattering an unfortunate scientist's skull with repeated blows.
• Tears of Blood: One's reaction to the serum causes blood to pour from his eyes before he dies.
• Timed Mission: Saving Four and Pamela are both these, with the former being pushed slowly backwards towards a grate by Three that will meatpaste him, and the latter tied up in a Drowning Pit that will drown them if all four water switches aren't turned off before it fills up.
• Title Drop: A scientist, James, refers to the genetic experiments being performed on the prisoners as "Project RATUZ".
• Trapped in Villainy: If Dwight and Pamela's words are anything to go by, they're only working for Project RATUZ because The Government has their families hostage and will kill them if they try to flee or expose it.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: A lot of the puzzles and Death Traps will likely kill the player the first time until they figure out how to solve it, often the hard way:
  • The very first puzzle requires you to hide in either the third or fourth locker, the former of which will get you killed by Three when he chooses to open it.
  • To free Six from the electric chair, you need to press one of two buttons where the wrong button will electrocute him to death, and there's no prior indication of what each will do. It's the red button that will free him, the blue one kills him.
• Turbine Blender: A rare nautical example — if Five escapes alone, Three will catch him and shove Five's head into the boat's propeller, reducing his head to a crimson mist in short order.
• Villain Ball: Three decides to stick Pamela in a Drowning Pit Death Trap instead of murdering her immediately. This allows Five to have a chance at saving her, and she's integral to defeating Three in the best ending.
• Wardens Are Evil: The Guards patrolling the prison will happily shoot the Player Characters on sight, even if there's a giant evil ratman bearing down on you. They're also at least somewhat complicit in the prison's horrible experiments, and unlike Pamela or Dwight, there's nothing to suggest they're being coerced into it.
• Wire Dilemma: The electric chair rigged to kill Six gives you a choice between a red button and a blue button. One of them will kill Six, and neither is labelled. It's the red one — the blue will subject Six to a High-Voltage Death.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Implied with Three. Instead of violently killing Pamela like he does with everyone else he comes across, he instead chains her up in a Drowning Pit. Even in the ending where Pamela is the only one to escape, he decides to drown her underwater instead of using the propeller to blend her head like he does with Five in the worst ending.
• You Are Number 6: The prisoners are never referred to by name, only by the number printed on their suits.