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Video Game / Reincarnation (2008)
aka: Reincarnation

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Reincarnation is a series of online point-and-click adventure games made by B-group Productions. The story is about Hell, which is slightly different than you would expect in that there is a built-in way to escape: portals to the mortal realm are scattered throughout Hell, and any soul who finds one is reincarnated and given a chance to atone for their sins, thus moving on to Heaven. When enough souls have escaped, God can shut down Hell for good. To prevent this from happening, Lucifer ("Luke" for short) sends his demons to the human realm to catch the "Reincarnies" before they can turn good and send them back to Hell.

There are three full-length games in the series:

  • A Demon's Day Out - This game introduces the premise of the series, lays down the ground rules and sends the Demon after his first Reincarny, who has murdered someone.
  • Riley's Out Again - The Demon goes after Riley, a repeat Reincarny, who has become a teacher at a local school.
  • Let the Evil Times Roll - The Demon goes after a voodoo lady and her band, who have escaped from Hell and are back to their old ways.

And eleven "mini" adventures:

  • Out to Sea You Die - The Demon goes after a Reincarny who has commandeered a ship and is using people as fish bait.
  • A Hillbilly Holiday - The Demon goes after a hillbilly Reincarny on holiday from Hell who likes to engage in kidnapping.
  • In the Name of Evil - The Demon goes after a Middle Eastern Terrorist by the name of Naja, who is up to his old tricks.
  • The Clergy of Unholy - The Demon goes after Saul, a Reincarny who has become a priest spreading the Good Word, but likes to get up to ugly things with his altar boys.
  • The Backfire of Hell - The Demon catches a ride with a Reincarny who is responsible for a family murder.
  • All Hallow's Evil - The Demon pays a visit to a Reincarny who lives alone on Halloween and who likes to murder kids who come visit him.
  • A Taste of Evil - The Demon goes after a Reincarny who works at a fast-food joint and likes to leave his own...special ingredient...in the food.
  • The Evil Next Door - The Demon goes after a Reincarny running a drug lab in an apartment building.
  • The Final Happy Hour - The Demon goes after a Reincarny who has become a bartender.
  • Bloody Bayou - The Demon goes after a Reincarny who lives in the bayou and likes to beat on his wife.
  • Loving Every Evil Triumph - The Demon goes after a Reincarny who spends all his time gaming online to the neglect of everything else.

The games can be found on the creators' blog, as well as on gaming sites such as Newgrounds and Kongregate. A commercial game titled The Root Of All Evil is in the works.

Not to be confused with the trope of the same name.


Series Tropes Include:

  • Air Vent Passage Way: ROA requires navigating through The Maze twice, once to the classroom where you learn about him trafficking children as slaves, then to the break room. There's a skip button for those who find it tedious and unfun.
  • All Crimes Are Equal: Although many installments do feature murder as the vice of choice of the Reincarnies, it's not actually necessary; as long as the demon finds evidence that the Reincarny still bears ill will towards their fellow man, he'll call it good. Taking a dump in the deep fryer at work: gross, but more importantly, evil enough for the demon to engineer a gruesome "accidental" death. Selling school children into slavery in the black market is also evil enough for the demon, as is drugging up an altar boy for unsavory purposes. Neglecting your cat to starvation isn't even evil per se but enough to prove the Reincarny didn't make amends.
  • All There in the Manual: A digital comic, first available for the iPhone then included for free with The Clergy of Unholy, explains why the Reincarnies would return to their evil ways after having experienced Hell: they lose all memories of Hell when they leave.
  • Anti Poopsocking: The minis. The regular games aren't much longer.
    • Also the Aesop of LEET: the Reincarny spent so much time engrossed in video games he didn't notice his cat starving to death.
  • Art Evolution: Characters, animations, and backgrounds become more detailed as the series goes on.
  • Asshole Victim: None of the Reincarnies change their ways upon returning to Earth. Unless you get the bad ending for the first Reincarny in Let the Evil Times Roll, of course, but whether that's a change in character or a lack of motive is debatable.
  • Back from the Dead: How reincarnation works in the series, damned souls can come back from the dead if they find a secret Reincarny portal in Hell. The demon's job is to send these souls back to Hell if they're still doing their former evil.
  • Bears Are Bad News: Bad news for the hillbilly, at any rate.
  • Born-Again Immortality: Subverted; in The Root of All Evil, demons who die undergo a reincarnation of their own into a fetus. While this means they get another shot at life, they not only forget everything they knew as a full-grown demon but are far less likely to make it back to adulthood since they're reborn in the exact space they died the first time.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Seen in Riley's Day Out, The Backfire of Hell and All Hallow's Evil.
  • Crapsack World: A world where people are escaping from hell in adult bodies and killing people probably isn't the safest world to live in for the average human.
  • Date Rape Averted: The demon in Final Happy Hour intentionally tempts the Reincarny into drugging a woman at the bar and then freezes him to death. It's just what he needed to do his job.
  • Destination Defenestration: This is how the demon takes out Saul from The Clergy of Unholy, by way of a stained glass window.
  • Didn't See That Coming: The scene at the end of ROAE's first chapter demo. A strong man abuses a chicken, pushing over its likely owner... then gets crushed by a falling light. The owner looks up expecting to see an angel as the deliverer of justice... but just catches Vile saluting him and leaving.
  • Domestic Abuse: One Reincarny beats his wife for cooking him opossum for dinner. That's all the proof the demon needs to send him back to Hell.
  • Drop the Washtub: The end of In The Name of Evil has the demon dropping a bathtub on the Reincarny.
  • Eats Babies: When examining a Demon Fetus in Riley's Out Again, the protagonist casually quips that they're quite tasty.
  • Escaped from Hell: Escaping hell is surprisingly easy. Staying out of it, on the other hand...
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • There are two main rules to the demon's actions: they have to Make It Look Like an Accident, and they have to witness proof that the Reincarny has gone back to his evil ways.
    • Vile likes to think of himself as a cocky demon, but putting a picture of yourself in your own room (as the Pedophile Priest does) is downright arrogant. He also doesn't want to cause any physical harm on people who are innocent, although animals are fair game. Even with animals he'll only harm them as much as needed to get further in his quest, and stops short of killing them; one Reincarny even earns his ticket back to Hell by neglecting his cat to the point it starved to death.
  • 555: Standard 555 number appears in The Backfire of Hell during the radio announcement for the murderer.
  • Fire-Breathing Diner: The dog in A Demon's Day Out breathes fire after being given food with Tabasco, which lures him into a bowl of water and to the oven.
  • For the Evulz: The demons are technically doing good things by killing unrepentant Reincarnies, but they do cruel things during the course of it for fun and make it clear that they do it in the name of evil, not good.
  • Fun with Acronyms: The game regarding a video game-addicted Reincarny is titled "Loving Every Evil Triumph", or LEET.
  • Guide Dang It!: Out to Sea You Die, if you don't know Morse Code.
  • Hell Gate: Inverted: Reincarnies escape Hell by going through Reincarny portals, requiring the demons to go after them.
  • Holiday Motif: All Hallow's Evil takes place on Halloween, and gives a Newgrounds medal if played on that day.
  • Holy Burns Evil: Played with. The demon can go inside churches just fine, he just doesn't like it. He does, however, refuse to go anywhere near something with the word "holy" in it if you try to make him interact with holy water.
  • Holy Ground: One takes place in a church, and the demon tells you that there's no problem being in a church, he just doesn't like it. Then again, you are chasing a Pedophile Priest...
  • Infernal Fugitives: The Reincarnies as a whole, who have Escaped from Hell and which our demon is charged with killing so they can be returned to Hell.
  • Informing the Fourth Wall: "This door seems to be locked."
  • Invisible to Normals: Averted. Vile must go to great lengths to avoid being seen. Fortunately, humans apparently don't seem to have any peripheral vision.
  • Karmic Death: Some deaths echo the crime that earned the Reincarny a place back in Hell. The victim of Loving Every Evil Triumph didn't notice his cat starving to death, and so has a shelf fall on him to await the same fate.
  • Large Ham: Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for evil! Notably, while the protagonist has always been pretty hammy, his voice acting was far hammier in the first game than it was in later games in the series. He seems to have mellowed out some.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: You kill the Reincarny in A Taste of Evil by arranging for him to fall into the fry vat while he's in the middle of doing his business in it.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "How could anyone enjoy sitting around all day controlling a video game character!?"
  • Lethal Negligence: The reason the nameless Reincarny of Loving Every Evil Triumph needs to be sent back to Hell. He's gotten so engrossed in his gaming that he neglected to feed his cat Meowxis, resulting in him starving to death.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: Once the demon finds the sin that will justify sending the Reincarny back to Hell, their next task is to kill them in a way that looks like an accident.
  • Middle Eastern Terrorists: Naja, the Reincarny of "In the Name of Evil", is a terrorist who has set up a bomb to explode his apartment building. His place of origin isn't confirmed but his character design is stereotypically middle-eastern.
  • Mind over Matter: The demons are telekinetic, but can only manipulate small objects.
  • Never Hurt an Innocent: The demons aren't allowed to kill any other humans than Reincarnies. This doesn't apply to animals, as shown by some poor frog.
    • However, they are allowed to let Reincarnies harm innocents in order to prove that they're still evil.
  • Never Smile at a Crocodile: How the Reincarny of Bloody Bayou meets his end.
  • No Name Given: At the beginning of the series, the demon protagonist had no name, saying in A Demon's Day Out that If I had a name, it would be EVIL! But after the release of The Final Happy Hour the series creator said the demon's name is Vile (so, y'know, at least it's an anagram of evil).
    • Also, several of the Reincarnies.
  • Number of the Beast: Inputting 666 on the keypad in The Clergy of Unholy and dialing 666666 on the phone in A Taste of Evil lead to some Easter Eggs.
  • One-Gender Race: All the demons seem to be male. "Demon fetuses" have appeared (and explicitly grow up to become demons), but where they come from is unclear.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Just not from each other.
    • And in The Clergy of Unholy, the demon reveals, "Of course I can enter churches! I just hate it."
  • Pedophile Priest: Saul, the Reincarny in The Clergy of Unholy. The drugged-up and unconscious altar boy in Saul's bedroom proves to be all the evidence the demon needs to send him back to Hell.
  • Power-Up Food: The coffee mug in TEND causes a termite to become hyperactive, chewing through wood rapidly. It's to a degree where it allows using the termite in the short period of time the reincarny is manipulated into the relevant room.
  • Punch-Clock Hero: Vile makes it very clear that he enjoys performing evil actions (though not necessarily the jobs of catching the Reincarnies). However, his job is to make sure there's less evil in the world.
  • Quick Time Event: Used in Riley's Out Again to avoid being spotted by a schoolboy. Catching the plague locusts in Let the Evil Times Roll counts as well. Also used in The Evil Next Door
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The series is very far toward the cynical side. Even if the average people are much better than the damned characters the player deals with, the games still suggest that redemption can be a dangerous false hope and that bad people tend to never change. Recidivism is very high in a world where escaped damned souls can't seem to go a single week after their escape without killing, abusing, or raping a random person.
  • Slipping a Mickey: This is done twice in All Hallow's Evil, where sleeping pills are put into a mug of water, and and into raw meat.
  • Silly Walk: Vile always walks with his arms in a mantis-like pose, as if he's sneaking past something, regardless of the presence of danger.
  • Take That, Audience!: In Loving Every Evil Triumph, the demon wonders why anyone would enjoy sitting around controlling a video game character...which is exactly what the player does.
  • Tampering with Food and Drink: A lethal example in Riley's Out Again involves poisoning a reincarny one method to kill them. A non-lethal example in A Taste of Evil is the reincarny adding a "special ingredient" in the fast-food restaurant. All Hallow's Evil has two instances of Slipping a Mickey involving sleeping pills.
  • Toilet Humor: Riley's fate in Riley's Out Again has him jabbed in the ass by the Devil, allowing demons to shit in his mouth.
  • 20 Bear Asses: Let the Evil Times Roll has a sidequest where you have to collect fifteen plague locusts for Death.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: To get the "good" ending in Let the Evil Times Roll, you have to trick Stubbs, a recovering alcoholic trying to get his life back together, into taking up drinking again, then doctor his sign so that it gets him beat up, possibly to death, just so you can prove that Amos is still evil.
    • In A Demon's Day Out you have to fill a poor frog with water to bursting point.
    • In Let the Evil Times Roll to get to the portal, you end up killing a baby demon just so you can feed it to a hell hound. Even worse it's described as only being unconscious.
    • In All Hallow's Evil, you have to fling stones at one of the children. There's an achievement if you keep doing so without turning on the house lights.
  • Villain Protagonist: Vile is a demon, he kills Reincarnies who didn't atone for their sins but his way of doing it isn't necessarily savory and if it wasn't for the rules he wouldn't mind killing innocents too (he might have indirectly killed one in the series).
  • Verbal Tic: The demons really love to put emphasis on the word EVIL!
  • Vocal Evolution: The protagonist begins sounding more calm after a certain point in the series.
  • Waiting Puzzle: In The Name of Evil requires waiting 1 hour 30 minutes if the player wants an optional Newgrounds medal. It's otherwise skipped by setting the time directly.
  • Weirdness Censor: The bartender in Final Happy Hour somehow fails to notice the prices on the chalkboard going from $2 to $0 to $2000. However, he is a Reincarny, so he might be aware of the potential to scam the guy he's serving.
  • We Need to Get Proof: The first step in every game is to find proof that the Reincarny is still evil, with the second step being to find a way to send him back to Hell.
  • Would Hurt a Child: The Reincarny in All Hallow's Evil is not above killing a pair of child trick-or-treaters. Finding their bodies in his basement is the proof you need to conclude that he must die again.

Alternative Title(s): Reincarnation

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