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Cemetery Mary is a visual novel by arcadekitten taking place in the same universe as It's Not Me, It's My Basement, Crowscare, and Tricks N Treats.

The titular Mary Anta, nicknamed "Cemetery Mary" because she loves to visit the cemetery and hang around funerals, is a sweet girl who likes to comfort those who've lost their loved ones. Rumors of a Serial Killer known as the "Blackwood Butcher" begin circulating around town, and soon her parents vanish out of sight. Moving in with her cousin Crowven Corvuson — whose parents themselves mysteriously died- she finds on her phone a Mystery Number who tells her that her parents are okay, but the mystery number cannot say where they or her parents are, or much of anything.

Mary, in her search to find her parents, comes across two more people; Twila Sophio, an anti-social Amateur Sleuth who's taken it upon herself to find the Butcher; and Reginald Tetra, a bespectacled bookworm who takes a liking to Mary. She also soon discovers a hidden ability of hers- the power to talk to ghosts.

The visual novel consists of three routes following one of the three major characters- Crowven, Twila, and Reginald- each with their own storyline and ties to the mystery, plus a True Ending route unlocked upon reaching any ending. There are many choices, each affecting the ultimate outcome. Will Mary solve the mysteries of Blackwood? Or will she join the spirits and meet an untimely end?

Also has a short prequel, Holiday Shopping, where the Mystery Number is called upon to help a friend with holiday shopping.


This work contains examples of:

  • Alone with the Psycho: Mary finds herself in this situation at a few points, most significantly in Reginald's route when he holds her captive in his apartment building after she found his Stalker Shrine to her and tried to escape.
  • Ambiguous Situation: The death of an unnamed woman in all routes and the death of Theodore in Crowven's route were supposedly because the deceased, respectively, was already sick but got worse and died, and perished of alcohol poisoning. However, the Blackwood Butcher is well-known for killing their victims in ways that are easy to pass off as natural causes and accidents, making it ambiguous if the two really did just die, or if they became victims of the killer. It's ultimately never confirmed either way.
  • Big Bad: The Blackwood Butcher haunts the town of Blackwood and is who Twyla is trying to catch, as well as being responsible for the disappearance of her parents. It turns out to be Reginald Tetra, who has been killing people so that Mary will show up at their funerals and he can get closer to her... however, he actually is not responsible for her parents vanishing. The culprit of that is Twila Sophio, the Amateur Sleuth on the Butcher case, who is the secret leader of the Parliament, a rival gang of her family (who run the Congress gang).
  • Creepy Cemetery: Utterly averted; the cemetery where Mary often hangs out is mostly seen by daylight, and seems to be a generally nice, quiet place with well-cared-for graves and fresh flowers. Though there is a creepy gravestone that pops up in Reginald's route.
  • Cryptic Conversation: Mary's nightly texts with the Mystery Number often entail this, which does not help her sleep at night.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: A theme of both the game and Mary as a character. Despite her Perky Goth appearance and sketchy reputation within Blackwood for attending strangers' funerals, Mary is nothing but a kind girl who honors the deceased and comforts their loved ones. Being derided for her unusual interests has caused her considerable misery into the present day.
  • Downer Ending: All the bad endings qualify.
    • In Twyla's bad ending, Mary dissolves their partnership and Twyla opts to take out torching the Corvuson cabin with Mary and Crowven still inside it. Mary makes it out alive, but Crowven doesn't. Even worse, Twyla uses the entire incident to blackmail Mary into working for the Parliament gang indefinitely.
    • In Reginald's bad ending, Mary goes to save a panicked Twyla from danger and tries to get Reginald to help, only to catch him with bloody scissors, run away and stumble upon Twyla's dead body. On catching up to Mary, Reginald then decides to cut out her tongue and hands to keep her from talking... though luckily, this party is not shown in detail.
    • In Crowven's bad ending, he disappears after saving Mary from Twyla and is presumed dead. Mary's fledgling friendship with Zapara dissolves by consequence, and she never hears from her parents again, leaving her alone in the world.
  • Driving Question: The game as a whole centers on the question of who the Mystery Man that Mary texts each night is, and by extension, what happened to her parents, which the true route reveals is Ovidius, The Dragon to Crowven's The Don tasked with protecting Mary and guarding her family. Some of the individual routes have their own little mysteries, such as the supernatural goings-on of Reginald's route.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: The reaction Crowven and Theodore have when Zapara decides to prank Mary by faking a suicide to scare her. The aftermath causes a temporary rift to form between Mary and Crowven.
  • Evil vs. Evil: In light of her being the head of Parliament, Twyla's determination to take down the Serial Killer Reginald becomes this in hindsight... especially seeing as she shows no reluctance to commit murder in several other routes. And while Reginald meets Twyla's hostile attitude toward him with politeness and denial, he's also ostensibly willing to murder her for hurting Mary's feelings in his bad end.
  • Gangster Land: Although it only really comes up in the true route, Crowven's hometown of Halincity is noted as an unclean place that's dominated by two rival gangs, the Congress and the Parliament, both competing for control. Gang warfare has also trickled into Blackwood itself: Twyla and her family lead the Parliament, while the Corvusons control the Congress.
  • Genre Roulette: Each of the four routes plays out like a different genre:
    • Crowven's route is a family and friendship dramedy where Mary bonds with her cousin and tries to get along with his friends, resulting in a rocky relationship. It is by far the most lighthearted of the routes, with only some dark elements.
    • Twyla's route is a murder mystery where Mary teams up with an Amateur Sleuth to track down the identity of the Blackwood Butcher, a Serial Killer running amok in their town.
    • Reginald's route is a supernatural and psychological thriller where Mary struggles with bizarre and unsettling visions and feelings, odd happenings, and eventually has to escape the clutches of the killer.
    • The True Ending route switches to a gangster/mafia film where Mary and her family, who run the Congress gang, fight against a rival gang, the Parliament.
  • Grave-Marking Scene: Two of these happen in Twyla's route. In the first, Mary visits the grave of Ed Wraithwood, an old man she befriended/distracted at the nursing home while Twyla snooped around there and who then fell victim to the Blackwood Butcher. The second comes in the bad end, when Mary visits the wreckage of her and Crowven's home to pay her respects.
  • Haunted House: Invoked and subverted in Crowven's route, when he and his friends take Mary along to a bedraggled home that looks like a textbook case, though Mary disputes whether or not there are actually ghosts there. In fact, the only odd encounter Mary has there is product of a prank by Zapara.
  • Lame Pun Reaction: Discussed Trope with Mary and Crowven, in reference to their parents:
    Mary Anta: So, would you consider it a successful date?
    Crowven: Oh yeah, totally! I mean, they looked ready to kill me by the end of it, but in the fun way, you know?
    Mary: Kinda like how my Mom looks at Dad whenever he makes a bad pun?
    Crowven: EX-ACT-LY!
  • Morton's Fork: Holiday Shopping opens with Mystery Number/Ovidius about to kill a rival gang member. You can choose whether to finish the job or let them live- but no matter what you pick, Twyla will be out for revenge, either because you killed one of her men or because you convinced him to leave the gang by sparing him, leading to the events of Cemetery Mary.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: From the presence of strange Evil Eye-like symbols in library books to Mary's unexplained bouts of crippling vertigo and seeing things that aren't there, *something* supernatural is implied to be going on in Reginald's route... but exactly what it is is never made apparent, and some events could just as easily be put down to mundane causes such as petty vandalism or Mary's instincts getting the better of her. Although Reginald himself admits responsibility for the symbols if prompted to, but tells Mary they have nothing to do with her and she shouldn't involve herself with things like that, implying there may be some sinister Black Magic going on.
  • Multiple Endings: The game has seven endings; a good and bad ending for each of the three initial routes, and a true ending with its own route. Which end you get depends on the choices you make, specifically making at least 70% of the "right" choices to get the good and true end.
  • Mundane Afterlife: The various afterlives that Mary visits take the form of mundane locations that the deceased was associated with. For example, the violinist is in a concert hall, while a boy and girl that Mary can meet in one route appear in the places they died (a road and a restaurant, respectively).
  • Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: An interesting case. Most characters in the game have designs inspired in part by certain animals (such as Mary Anta, based on the Manta ray, and the owl-inspired Twyla Sophio) and fall somewhere between Little Bit Beastly and just evoking Animal Motifs. Yet Mary and Reginald's trip to the aquarium shows that there are also regular animals in the setting, including the aforementioned Manta ray.
  • Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: God is referred to by the priest with they/them pronouns, which is in a sense Biblical canon as male pronouns were used because of a historical lack of gendered pronouns, and are still used because its tradition.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: In Holiday Shopping, you are supposed to kill the Target as ordered to by your boss, but you can spare him. Doing so has no real drawbacks as the story will still proceed mostly the same, so it's up to you whether you want to take a life or not.

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