The first thing you need to know is that ghosts are real. The rest, you can only learn on your own.
Follow three stories set in a world where the dead linger, and things far worse wait beyond the veil.
- The Phantom Ice Cream Truck: Follow a denizen of the border between life and death as he answers the call to rescue a missing child.
- Perceptions of the Dead: Tyrone has made it his business to help solve the troubles of those afflicted by the undead, but what seems like a case of a benign haunting may find him risking more than his life, but his very soul.
- Live with Jill Count: Jill has had moderate success as a streamer, and to mix things up, this Halloween she is going to live-stream a visit to a haunted hospital. The twist? It's actually haunted.
A casual adventure/visual novel game by Ithaqua Labs. The first game is available for free on Steam, and its sequel is also now available for purchase.
Perceptions of the Dead contains examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital: The main setting of the Live with Jill Count story.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Raven is dark-haired and not the most sociable of people.
- An Astral Projection, Not a Ghost: Tyrone briefly in the second game.
- Barred from the Afterlife: All the earthbound ghosts for various reasons.
- Beautiful Dreamer: A non-romantic example, but Owen seems to have a habit of watching Jill sleep in the sequel. Also, Ripley does this once too, but only to keep guard because of the incident they suffered on their way to the hotel, and she leaves as soon as Owen returns.
- Blunt "Yes": Raven is pretty blunt in general, but plays to this trope exactly in one conversation.Jill: Do you want me to leave you alone?
Raven: Yes. - But Thou Must!: While some do, not all the choices in the game make a difference. Some choices the characters will outright refuse if they disagree, or other circumstances will lead to them doing the other choice anyway.
- Cat Scare: Andy does this to Jill as a prank. She is not impressed.
- Creepy Basement: The basement is reportedly the most haunted and dangerous part of the abandoned hospital. Probably because it's where the human experiments took place.
- Cutting Off the Branches: There are two possible endings in the Live with Jill Count Story, but the sequel confirms the one you get where she insists on exploring instead of heeding the warnings to leave is the canon one.
- Deadpan Snarker: Raven.Owen: I like, never joke!
Raven: You were setting out cupcakes for a Halloween party in an abandoned hospital. If that's not a joke, I don't know what is. - Declaration of Protection: Sort of. Ripley admits she can't promise to protect Jill but requests she stay near her regardless as she will try and feels that Jill will be safer with her.
- Didn't Think This Through: Jill admits to both this and being in way over her head towards the end of the second game before begging her live stream viewers for help.
- Drives Like Crazy: Ripley, at least when she's scared.
- Driven to Suicide: One of the ghosts in the Perceptions of the Dead story.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The scissor ghost.
- Everyone Is a Tomato: In the first game, Raven, Owen, and Tulip are all ghosts. That's three out of five named supporting characters.
- Friendly Ghost: Owen and Andy qualify, as does Tulip, and also Ripley in the sequel. Raven sort of qualifies too — she isn't exactly friendly, but she isn't a malevolent ghost out to harm anyone either, and despite her irritation she still tolerates Jill's presence (if barely) and tries to warn her that the hospital is not a safe place for her and that she should go.
- Get Out!: Raven and Andy both tell Jill she should leave. Raven is particularly firm about it.
- Ghost Amnesia: In the second game Owen is revealed to have a case of this.
- Good is Not Nice: Raven is not the friendliest of people, but she does try to warn Jill to leave the hospital, and for good reason.
- Haunted Technology: The haunted ice cream van in the first game, and Jill's phone in the sequel.
- Haunted Heroine: Jill becomes this in one of the two possible endings.
- Hidden Depths: Owen is often regarded and treated as nice but dim and has a reputation for being forgetful. In the sequel, it's shown that this isn't the case and he's actually a lot smarter and more capable than he lets on.
- I See Dead People: Both protagonists are able to see the deceased.
- I Warned You:Raven: You could have walked away before, but now our world is your own!
- Jacob Marley Apparel: Most of the ghosts manifest as fairly normal looking unless you become gifted with the ability to look beneath the veneer.
- Leave Me Alone!: Not word for word, but Raven seems irritated and certainly gives off this vibe when Jill bumps into her and tries to question her for the live stream.
- Living Memory: There's one playing on a loop in the hospital's lower tiers.
- Meaningful Name: Raven, and not just because of her dark hair either...
- Missing Child: Seven of them in the Haunted Ice Cream Truck story.
- Multiple Endings: The Live With Jill Count story has two possible endings.
- Non-Human Undead: Raven tells a story about how the first thing that died in the hospital was a random bird that got trapped in cement. Her bitterly personal way of recounting the tale (and her later manifestation as a bird skeleton) implies that she is that bird.
- Oblivious to Love: Ripley and Marcus towards each other. Doesn't help that in Marcus' case he's strongly in denial about his feelings for Ripley, but both Jill and Owen notice and comment on it, and Ripley just seems unaware of Marcus' feelings for her.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Tyrone when a highly dangerous null ghost turns up and attacks.
- Jill when she brutally experiences the truth behind the Abandoned Hospital for herself, and after when a very angry Raven confronts her.
- Also Ripley in the sequel when confronted by a Null ghost. She's terrified of them.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Tyrone is simply known as "the acolyte" in the first game.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Jill is just a normal girl with a moderately popular live streaming channel until she gets herself tangled up in the world of ghosts.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: There are different types of ghosts within the setting — some are harmless, some are not, some act and look normal, others don't...
- Playing with Syringes: Part of the backstory of the haunted hospital. According to Raven, the experiments took place in the 90's.
- Psychic Link: There is one formed between Owen and Jill after the events of the first game.
- Purple Prose: The hotel manager's speech in the sequel often slides into this. Ripley even comments on it.
- Repeat What You Just Said: Ripley's shocked response when Marcus tells her Jill and Owen went after the nulls.
- Riddle for the Ages: Tyrone assumes that the scissors ghost is Tulip, a girl who killed herself with scissors in the house ten years ago. Turns out Tulip is actually the friendly neighbor girl, and the scissors ghost has been there since before she died.
- Ritual Magic: In the second game.
- Screaming Woman: There's one in the lower tiers of the hospital.
- Shout-Out: To The Cthulhu mythos and Star Trek in the first game, and in the second game to The Shining and Matrix.
- Shear Menace: The scissor ghost, although she's mostly passive.
- Sinister Silhouettes: The null ghosts.
- Surfer Dude: Owen both in the way he acts and how he speaks.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Jill is seemingly put through this in one ending.
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: The scissor ghost and Ripley.
- Takes One to Kill One: Nulls are a type of ghost and are very capable of destroying other ghosts, even very old and powerful ones. Nulls are apparently one of the reasons most ghosts prefer to keep a low profile. It's safer.
- Tears of Fear: Ripley is terrified of nulls, at one point even tearing up because she's convinced they are going to kill both her and Marcus.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: The most obvious example is Owen to Jill in the canon ending and the sequel, but Jill also seems to be this to Raven until the end of the Live With Jill Count story.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Subverted. Tyrone has extremely powerful ghost abilities, so Tulip assumes he is a ghost. He even admits that it's not uncommon for ghosts to block out the memories of their deaths and forget they are no longer alive. Ripley confirms that he is alive, but an "anomaly."
- Thrill Seeker: Jill cheerfully announces that she has become this.
- Wall Crawl: One of the ghosts can do this and spends most of her time crouching on the ceiling watching Tyrone as he moves about the house.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Why did it have to be the burn ward?
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Jill in the first game when she gets scared.
