Space Yandere is a story-driven RPG with some psychological horror elements. It was created by Horror Shop, the creators of Mother and Kiki And Ana - The Child.
On a space ship headed to humanity's new home planet, the scientist Luna creates herself a little robot buddy and names him Digit. You play as Digit, assisting your creator with everyday life aboard the ship and helping deliver treats to her crush, Alex.
However, things get a little out of hand when Luna discovers that Alex is already dating someone else, fellow scientist Eden. The next day, Luna prepares a devious plot to have Alex all to herself, roping in the ship engineer Melvin, and Digit gets caught in the middle of it.
The game is available for a small price on Steam
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Space Yandere contains examples of the following tropes:
- Antepiece: In the tutorial, Luna asks Digit to use his spark generator on an unpowered robot to turn it on, but he winds up blowing it up instead. This shows that Digit can attack the basic robots with his sparks. Once Luna and Melvin hijack the robots and turn them into Mecha-Mooks, then Digit has to escape from Luna and the robots, and you will already know that you can destroy them with your spark attack.
- Big Bad: Luna is the titular Space Yandere who, after seeing her crush Alex kissing Eden, masterminds a plot to kill Eden and everyone else on the ship to get Alex to herself, until Melvin, the engineer who she manipulated, turns on her for using him and tries to kill her and everyone else for not returning his love.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The evacuation rooms on the ship each contain a button that, when pressed, will get Digit Thrown Out the Airlock, though he will be brought back unharmed. In the best ending, doing this is how you need to defeat Melvin and his robot army for good, with Digit making a Heroic Sacrifice in the process.
- There are 10 parts of an invention Luna is working on lying around, and if Digit collects them all, she gives him a heart sensor that beeps whenever she is around. Later on, it can help Digit avoid Luna when she pursues him, and in the best ending, the sensor allows Luna and Sparks to find Digit in a bush, and they then repair him.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Luna gets ripped to shreds by the robots in the neutral ending.
- Melvin gets Thrown Out the Airlock and sucked out into space in the Perfect Blue ending.
- Earth That Was: The game takes place on a spaceship trying to find a new planet to call home after some unspecified event left Earth unlivable.
- Foreshadowing:
- Two of the rooms in the ship are largely blocked off by crates and seem to serve no real purpose. They are actually where Digit has to run during the robot rampage.
- One robot on the third day has its eye red and has a red searchlight. When the rampage happens, all the robots gain red eyes, and the red tiles signify their line-of-sight in the subsequent Stealth-Based Mission.
- Multiple Endings:
- Corrupted: Digit doesn't let Sparks examine the mysterious new chip. As a result, he is reprogrammed like all the other bots once Luna and Melvin start their plan.
- Neutral: Digit doesn't save Luna after Melvin turns on her and instead lets her get killed by the robots. Digit and the survivors board an Evac and flee the ship. Alternatively, Digit saves Luna but doesn't get the rest of the main crew to convince her to board the Evac and she stays behind on the ship.
- Perfect Blue: Digit saves Luna from Melvin, then fries Mainframe so they can both get to Evac. When Melvin hacks the shuttle and tries to kill the remaining main crew with his robots, Digit makes a Heroic Sacrifice and ejects both himself, the robots and Melvin out into space. The main crew forgive Luna for what she's done, with Sparks even confessing his love for her as they fly towards their new planet. Sometime later, Luna mourns Digit while on a hike with Sparks - only to notice her Digit Charms is pulsing. They search the area to discover Digit, dented but whole, in a nearby bush. Sparks repairs him and Digit reactivates to see Luna and Sparks smiling down at him and welcoming him to the new planet.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: After seeing her and Alex kiss, Luna tries to assassinate Eden via a poisoned cake. Whether she succeeds is up to Digit.
- Stealth-Based Mission: If Digit is saved from the corruption by Sparks, then Luna and the corrupted robots will chase him down, and you will have to go through three hallways while avoiding their line of sight represented with red tiles.
- Video Game Caring Potential:
- You can befriend Sparks through regular interactions and encourage him to act on his crush on Luna.
- You can choose to not give Eden the poisoned cake and throw it into the trashcan instead.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- You have the option of chucking every treat Luna makes you buy for Alex into the trash.
- Digit can give Eden the obviously poisoned cake to eat and even encourage her to eat it when she comments that it looks odd.
