YMMV / Turtle Head

• Ass Pull: The reveal that Mason Camdenburg is a cop comes out of nowhere in the original game's true ending, with only a single line of dialogue vaguely hinting at this. Thankfully, Unmasked handles it better, giving small hints like him having the same surname as a cop mentioned in a newspaper.
• Awesome Art: Unmasked's most obvious improvement compared to the original is the better character art, backgrounds, and the all new event CGs.
• Complete Monster: The titular Turtle Head—named Simon Dale in Unmasked—is the principal's son and a murderous, misogynistic man haunting Smithlane High School. Simon got his start abducting and butchering pets from over 24 families before moving on to human victims. Seeking to win the love of art teacher Marina Lily, Simon abducted a particularly disruptive student of hers, Blair Gardener, and her friend Kay Brown. Imprisoning them in an old, abandoned school building, he would starve and torture them for several months, eventually killing Blair when she tried to escape, then doing the same to Marina when she learned the truth and rejected him. He later murdered custodian Tian Henderson to stop him from investigating his crimes. In the present day, Simon desires to ruin Marina's beloved cousin Harriet as further revenge, and so lures her and her two friends, Emma Hawkins and Mason Camdenburg, to the school at night, tormenting and attempting to kill them repeatedly and potentially succeeding in some endings. In Emma's Story, Simon kidnaps and brutalizes Harriet, throwing her in the school's pool to drown her.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The eponymous Turtle Head mask? It was a gift Marina was planning to give Harriet.
• Les Yay: Blair and Kay. Both admit they love the other and generally spent the bulk of their time with each other. Blair even sacrificed herself in an attempt to take down Turtle Head just to save Kay's life. The only thing keeping them in this territory instead of being official is a lack of confirmation that they were more than just friends.
• Moe: Emma in Unmasked with her cute design and new personality.
• Moral Event Horizon: As if kidnapping Blair and Kay and killing Marina for rejecting his feelings wasn't enough, Simon admitting that he wore the Turtle Head mask (actually the head of a stuffed toy Marina was planning to give Harriet) to mess with Harriet and make things more fun for himself is what does it.
• Nausea Fuel: Finding Marina's corpse in the old school building.
• Nightmare Fuel: Plenty, since it's a horror game, but the most obvious is the titular Turtle Head's mask, though mostly in Unmasked.
• Nightmare Retardant: Turtle Head's mask in the original is a bit too goofy to be scared of. It does still carry a sense of unease with it, but not nearly as much as the revamped design from Unmasked.
• Paranoia Fuel: The way Turtle Head messes with Harriet and Emma in her story can downright terrify some players. That damned hallway in the old school building especially.
• Remade and Improved: The Fan Remake Turtle Head: Unmasked is considered to be vastly superior to the original game, with improved graphics and artwork, an expanded storyline, and more characterization. Players have particularly noted that the redesigned art and graphics help make the game and the main antagonist genuinely creepy (the original art for Turtle Head made him unintentionally goofy at times), expanding Emma's character and turning her into a hint provider made her far more likable and sympathetic (she was generally hated in the original for being a useless coward) and the improved foreshadowing makes plot twists such as Mason being an undercover cop less out-of-nowhere. Pikasprey, the creator of the original, assisted with Team Meatpie's development of Unmasked and played the finished product, and he himself declared it was better in every way.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Emma in the original game was hated and mocked for being useless and hiding in a room while Harriet did all the hard work. Unmasked fixed this by making her a Hint System, fleshing out her personality, and giving her an entire story mode of her own with her own inner conflicts and emotional struggles and has her be the one to risk her life and save the day.
• The Scrappy: Emma in the original game, since she basically did nothing but hide in one of the rooms while Harriet was out exploring the school, endangering herself, making Emma come across as a self-absorbed coward.
• The Woobie: Harriet Lily, Emma Hawkins, and Kay Brown go through a lot during the game.
  • Harriet's already had it rough beforehand since it's implied Marina was her Living Emotional Crutch and previously attempted suicide after she went missing. And this is after she was bullied by Blair and Stood Up by Emma after looking forward to going to the Spring dance with her, only to end up sitting alone in the gym for an hour. On top of that, the titular Serial Killer has made it his mission to psychologically torment her.
  • Unmasked reveals that Emma, deep down, hates herself for what she did to Harriet and hears voices of herself mocking her, saying awful things about her and telling her that nobody would be sad if she killed herself. She also dearly misses Kay and Blair, two of her closest friends who were abducted by Turtle Head (with Blair dying by his hand). Even in her best ending, the voice is still there mocking her, though she thankfully ignores it and decides to go to therapy.
  • Kay spent an entire year abducted by Turtle Head, who tortured her and her best friend Blair by doing things like starving them and hurting them with mousetraps. The killer eventually murdered Blair, leaving Kay to suffer all alone. By the time we see her in both modes of Unmasked, she's visibly emaciated, her eyes look empty, and she has difficulty standing, much less walking. The poor girl breaks down crying and calls herself weak upon recounting her experience to Mason.

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