Cla Dun

Arcanus Cella is a world of mystery, existing in a universe parallel to our own. Is rumored to be a land full of great treasures, powerful monsters, and wishes granted beyond one's wildest dreams.

Two young would-be heroes, Pudding and her childhood friend Souma, stumble upon this mystical place when exploring a mansion one night. Landing in an idyllic village with none to disturb them except for the sorceress Despina, they desperately search to find a way out of Arcanus Cella and back to their homeworld. Could it be through the unassuming tree in the southeast corner? Or past the creepy-looking door on the north side of town? And why are all of these other strangers gathering in this place all of a sudden?

Such is the tale behind ClaDun : This is an RPG!, a downloadable dungeon-crawling Action RPG released for the PSP in 2010 by Nippon Ichi Software. The goal of the game is to fight your way through the dungeons, avoiding traps and defeating enemies in search of the exit. You control a single character, but through the use of the game's "Magic Circle" system, other characters can join you to protect you from harm, while also giving you a boost in strength.

A sequel, Cladun X2, was released late August in the U.S., taking the editing Up to Eleven with editable weapons, armor, animations, and even background music. The sequel also introduced new characters and new classes, such as a long range archer class.

These are Tropes!

 * Abnormal Ammo: It's easily possible in the second game to modify the arrows that bows fire into virtually anything you could think of.
 * Action Girl: Pudding, Sunday
 * Advancing Boss of Doom: Immortals in Cladun x2, though they aren't bosses and can't be killed except through some obscure methods, making fights against them boil down to 'who can run the fastest?'
 * Affably Evil: Even after his reveal,  never loses that weird accent and carefree attitude.
 * The Alcatraz: Cladun x2's version of Arcanus Cella is more or less a high-security prison in the form of a pocket dimension.
 * Anachronism Stew: Arcanus Cella is a backwater dimension filled with various mythical creatures that seems suspended in medieval stasis... except there are working showers, plumbing devices, interdimensional telephones, and slang that never existed till the 1990s. One can take this one step further by adding guns and cyborgs into the game, though that relies on the player more than anything else.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Sorcery in Cladun x2 is insanely, insanely powerful magic: but, on the minus side, it has a high chance of backfiring and it almost always requires you to cast the spell up to four times before it actually does anything - and those 'dummy' shots have a chance of backfiring too. In addition, high-level Sorcery spells have an insanely high SP cost on top of this.
 * In general it's much easier to use weapons instead of spells to attack, since they tend to be much less SP-intensive, and an insanely powerful nuke spell isn't going to do much if you can't cast it.
 * Awesome Yet Practical: While a lot of skills in both games cost far too much to be able to use on a regular basis, some rare artifacts can reduce the casting level of the spell to a fraction of what it should normally be, making that previously hugely expensive ultimate skill lose a quarter of its power but cost barely anything, making it infinitely more usable. This doesn't apply to spells, however, which take into account casting level for strength and are weakened to the point of uselessness if this is attempted.
 * Back From the Dead: Don't like that a character in the story died? Remake them as a Player Mook!
 * Badass Cape: Parchmin's... rather impressive-looking cape. This is also an option to use with Player Mooks in Cladun x2.
 * Baleful Polymorph:
 * Big Bad Friend:
 * Big Boo's Haunt: The graveyard levels and to a lesser extent the Madness Pantheon in Cladun x2.
 * Blood Knight:
 * Body Surf:
 * Booby Trap: Every single dungeon in the game, period. If you manage to find even one floor with absolutely no traps that isn't a boss area, you are an incredibly lonely soul.
 * Bonus Boss: In Cladun x2 you can face different versions of the final boss with varying strength after you've beaten him, ranging from level 1000 to level 9999.
 * The Big Bad from Cladun also returns, only suddenly having surged to level 999. The game notes that they've done a "lot of preparation."
 * Cap: The level cap is 99 for each character. Stats are capped at 999, though you can break the cap in Cladun x2 by finding various titles that allow Attack and Defense to exceed that amount.
 * Bleak Level: The Madness Pantheon in Cladun x2.
 * Bonus Dungeon: Rangeons, Trigeons, and Neogeons - subverted in that you can usually begin to foray into them very early on, it just gets easier later and you can go much, much deeper than you could at first.
 * Bonus Level: The Bonus Area, a special Rangeon area that only shows up on floor 77 in Cladun x2.
 * Bragging Rights Reward: The ultimate Magic Circle, God Excess, in Cladun x2. On one hand, it's on a general scale better than almost every other Magic Circle in the entire game, bar none. On the other, you have to defeat a whole Rangeon and end the dungeon level at level 9999 to get it, and that's by far one of the hardest challenges in the game anyways, making the reward more symbolic than anything.
 * Brilliant but Lazy: Mouton.
 * Double-subverted when he : he calls himself out on much of his information being completely wrong, but later on a significant chunk of his information (and the info that mattered) is vindicated and proven to be correct.
 * Breather Level: Heaven areas in Cladun x2's Trigeon. While technically possible to stay there indefinitely, you're more likely to be there for only two or three floors in a row before getting sent down to Chaos, or worse, Transitory.
 * Brutal Bonus Level: Time Attack and the later areas of the Neogeons and Trigeons in general in Cladun x2.
 * The Cameo: It's a Nippon Ichi game where anyone can be made a "main character", so of course  shows up.
 * The game is built to allow this, as well, given the incredible versatility of the editing system, meaning that you can probably put anyone vaguely human into the game if you try hard enough.
 * Canon Shadow: The very nature of the character system leads to this.
 * Chest Monster: Mimics in Cladun x2. Bonus points for them being even more populous than actual treasure chests in Transitory.
 * Clingy MacGuffin: The mask found by Pudding that just won't go away, no matter how many times Despina and others try to get rid of it. Later on, it starts talking...
 * Came Back Wrong: When Despina uses magic to raise Coco from the dead, he ends turning into a zombie. This ends up being merely a cosmetic change that has no effect on his personality or his gameplay stats.
 * Classic Video Game Screw Yous:
 * Enemies that can move through walls (Immortals)
 * Complete absence of Mercy Invincibility
 * Character Select Forcing, especially on the graveyard levels, with a Saint
 * Flying backwards after getting hit
 * Rarely, when entering a lower-level floor an Immortal will spawn directly on top of the player
 * Invisible Monsters (ghosts)
 * Spikes of Doom everywhere
 * Cosmic Plaything: Coco, by his own admission, seems to have the worst luck in the world.
 * Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Sorcery in Cladun x2. Justified in that it's Awesome but Impractical and can be very harmful to the wielder themselves.
 * Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Usually. Unless you're carrying any valuable items.
 * Death World: Doom Gates, and how. They're completely infested with high-level mobs that are only encountered in the regular storyline as bosses. There is no standard level in the dungeons, so mobs can range from anywhere between level 1 and level 9999. The area is filled with incredibly nasty traps that can easily deal thousands of HP in damage if you're unlucky enough to get hit by one. Immortals fly around. Degraded versions of the final boss run around everywhere. Even better, Doom Gates are considered traps and thus you cannot even see one unless you're standing directly in front of it.
 * Demoted to Dragon: Played with.
 * Devour the Dragon: The ultimate fate of . Luckily, due to how the game is designed you can just turn him into a Player Mook afterwards if you really liked him and want him to be around again.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The result of killing Immortals in Cladun x2. The game also rewards you with the specific Immortal's bestiary entry, which is always ended with the quote "Are they really immortal?"
 * Double Entendre: The bestiary entries in both games are absolutely packed with them.
 * Dungeon Crawling
 * Eldritch Abomination: Immortals in Cladun x2, who look like an odd combination of Beholders and massive germ cells. They're also unkillable.
 * Eldritch Location: Transitory in Cladun x2 is infested with Immortals and is crawling with various Eyefamily mobs. Doom Gates are even worse - their walls are made of eyes.
 * Elite Mooks: Mooks colored yellow, green, white, blue, or red all have their strengths and weaknesses, but black-colored mooks have higher stats in every category and often have better types of attacks than their lesser counterparts.
 * Emotion Eater: Death Glutton. It's in the name.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Hilariously (and tragically) spoofed in Cladun x2., an act so evil it causes the main characters to defend the previously Affably Evil villain.
 * Evil All Along:
 * Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Spoofed in Cladun x2: the reason why  lost is because he couldn't understand the power of friendship or why life was important. He's a good sport about it, though.
 * Eye Scream: The monsters with one huge eye that constitutes most of their body are weak to Piercing damage. You do the math.
 * Eyes Do Not Belong There: Immortals most certainly should not have eyes in the areas that they do.
 * Fake Difficulty (and once again, Tropes Are Not Bad):
 * Some Dexterity Required
 * Check Point Starvation in the Rangeons
 * Randomly Drops, especially Widens
 * Some minor cases of Hitbox Dissonance, especially with skeletons
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change from a tried-and-true RPG to a Roguelike in the Rangeons
 * Failure Is the Only Option: An inherent weakness in the plot of the second game is that while your character is technically unique, you cannot influence their decisions. In spite of this, the "mistakes" they do make are eventually vindicated and turn out for the best.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: in their bad endings.
 * Faux Action Girl: Pekora and Lamb in Cladun x2.
 * Five-Man Band: The player and the four characters who eventually join you in Cladun x2.
 * The Hero: The player
 * The Lancer:
 * The Big Guy: Lamb
 * The Smart Guy: Mouton
 * The Chick: Pekora
 * The Sixth Ranger:
 * Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Averted with Heaven in Cladun x2, which looks more like an endless string of opulent halls and shimmering architecture than anything else.
 * Freaky Friday Flip:  in Cladun x2. A rare villainous example that isn't Played for Laughs.
 * Funny Afro: Bob the stylist.
 * Gag Dub: The games usually avert this, but a quick look at the bestiary in Cladun x2 confirms that there is no way all of it could have been translated exactly.
 * Gang Plank Galleon: The aptly-named Pirate Ship from Cladun x2.
 * Genki Girl: Pudding
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: In Cladun X2: "The bed's really messy. Used tissues are laying around everywhere."
 * Graceful Loser: Surprisingly enough,  in Cladun x2. Once you defeat him the first time, he promptly asks you to leave him alone so that he can end up reflecting on why exactly it was that he lost. The second time you beat him and after your main character explains the concept of Magic Circles to him, he begins to laugh uncontrollably and says that it's no wonder he lost, if he didn't even know the process that you were able to grow stronger.
 * Hailfire Peaks: Constantly in Perfect World and Purgatory in Cladun x2, specifically of the fire/ice variety. The Various Area near the end of the Neogeons and the boss floor of the Neogeon also draws upon this.
 * Hub Level: Arcanus Cella proper.
 * Human Shield: Anyone in the Magic Circle takes damage ahead of the main character. Once they are all defeated, the player will take damage directly.
 * I Will Protect Her: Souma's motivation for staying with Pudding, despite his misgivings for them venturing into Arcanus Cella in the first place.
 * Idiot Hero: Battleblo
 * Ill Girl: Pudding has the incurable "Die Laughing" disease that is guaranteed to kill her in about six months, but she has absolutely none of the personality traits or physical frailty usually associated with the trope. Instead, she's hyperactive and acts as though she has carte blanche to do whatever she wants, and her bucket list's biggest item right now is "explore dungeon, get treasure."
 * I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Many of the later areas in the randomly generated dungeons could qualify. Imminent Area? Immortal Area? Curse Area? Fierce Area? Sorcery Area? Worst Area? Massacre Area?
 * Incendiary Exponent: If you happen to jump into a fire, your main character will, of course, take damage, but your weapon will also now do fire damage!
 * Ditto with ice damage, by jumping into a stream of frozen water. In fact, this can actually be weaponized against monsters that are usually immune to normal damage, like Ghosts.
 * Ineffectual Loner: Played with and zigzagged in Cladun x2. While the other named characters accuse your character of this due to him/her going off on his/her own to fight monsters, he/she is also supported by the members of the Magic Circle... which more or less means that they stay in the tavern while he/she goes off and fights.
 * Infinity+1 Element: Mind has some elements of this: it's very rare to have on equipment or spells and generally ends up affecting nearly everything in the game either normally or deals greater damage (in fact, some monsters have Mind as their only weakness). All player characters have abysmal Mind resistance as well, apart from Ninjas and Saints. On the other hand, enemies who are more spiritual in nature (such as Ghosts) are often heavily resistant to it.
 * Infinity Plus One Equipment: They exist, but are incredibly hard to find and require you to be facing enemies in the mid-thousands of levels. Happy hunting!
 * Insistent Terminology: Crosstine isn't a stray cat. He's a familiar and comes from a noble bloodline!
 * Insufferable Genius: Mouton comes across as very arrogant. Pekora even makes a small aside to the player character that the only thing he doesn't know a lot about is humility.
 * Invincible Minor Mook: Immortals in Cladun x2, though calling them minor is slightly underestimating them, as they deal extremely high amounts of damage.
 * Jive Turkey: Parchmin, though he's a milder example than most and usually refrains from using incredibly outdated terms. Justified in that he's incredibly eccentric to begin with.
 * Jungle Japes: The Jungle Area in the earlier areas of the Neogeons.
 * Kaizo Trap: Doom Gates have a very bad tendency to pop up just before you reach an exit. Bonus points if it's in the middle of a tiny hallway, making it truly unavoidable. It's also the only gate which still forces you to enter if you jump over it.
 * Kick the Dog:
 * Killed Off for Real: Impossible to do in the games. Even if an NPC or PC is completely killed off, the editing function is sufficient enough for the player to remake them and give them their old name, even if they lose all of their progress.
 * Kill It with Fire: Actually a dialog option in the game. As previously suspected, at least one of the localizers is One of Us.
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia: The prisoners of the Arcanus Cella in Cladun x2 have all had their memories wiped clean of the crimes they have done.
 * Level Grinding: This is a Nippon Ichi game. Want to do the postgame? Prepare to do a lot of this.
 * Lord British Postulate: While Immortals are supposed to only be killable through the Punish title in Cladun x2, they can also be defeated by reflecting their own damage back at them.
 * Luck-Based Mission: Widens in Cladun x2 have about a 1 in 1000 chance of dropping from a single enemy in the game, Hiyokkis. In order to max out your characters' stats, you are going to need at least four of them. You get two freebies, no more; and if you find one in a dungeon, you have to survive long enough to get out. Good luck.
 * The Lucky Seven Magic Circle also qualifies. You have to finish a Rangeon with the level on the final floor being exactly level 777, and you have no control over exactly what level any particular floor will be at, meaning that you may have to go through hundreds of runs before you can obtain it. And it isn't even that great anyways, once you get powerful enough to take on a level 777 dungeon.
 * Luke, I Am Your Father:
 * Macross Missile Massacre: The result of constantly spamming Arrow Rain in Cladun x2, except with arrows instead of ballistics.
 * Marathon Level: The randomly-generated 99-floor dungeons, though luckily you can (and probably will) exit out early if you find an exit.
 * The Maze: Labyrinth Gardens.
 * Mercy Invincibility: Averted on the player's side. What mercy?
 * Metal Slime: Hiyokkis are birdlike creatures that are generally non-combatant and will run if attacked. Killing them nets you an enormous amount of gold, a guranteed item drop, and tons of experience, but they have enormous amounts of health and run away extremely fast. This is saved from Video Game Cruelty Potential by the fact that according to the flavor text they're all insufferable jerks and taunt you about the items as they're running from you.
 * Million-to-One Chance: Apparently, the "Die Laughing" disease has a one-in-a-million chance of transferring from one person to another. Coco has the worst luck in the world. Guess what happens?
 * The Mole:, though he is who he says he is. Sort of. It gets complicated.
 * Money Spider: Every single monster in the game except, for some odd reason, mushrooms. The bestiary entry in Cladun x2 lampshades this with the description of Poles (turrets), saying that monsters "must use them as piggy banks."
 * Mordor: Chaos in Cladun x2.
 * Multiple Endings: Each story character has a "bad ending" that can be viewed by going to the door in the tree. Also, once you've beaten the final boss once, you can see the "good ending" for each character (other than "secret character" ) by going back and beating it again using that character as your main. (You get the secret character's "good ending" by beating a Bonus Boss.) Some of the endings can even be accessed as early as the first few minutes after leaving the first dungeon.
 * Mysterious Protector: Sherbet, for Dotache the bartender.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Does Death Glutton sound like a demon you would want to have as a friend?
 * New Game+: The second game has this, but it's virtually useless apart from being able to revisit the tutorial  as well as respawning all of the old red treasure chests that were present in the dungeons.
 * Noble Demon:
 * No Hero Discount: Even Coco the shopkeeper has to pay full price for his equipment. Who's he buying it from?
 * Number Two for Brains:
 * One-Time Dungeon: Strangely enough, in Cladun x2 the tutorial dungeon is the only one you can't revisit.
 * Our Dragons Are Different:
 * Overrated and Underleveled: Every character that joins the Magic Circle starts out at level 1, even those that join very late in the game.
 * Make sure to create all of the characters you can near the beginning of the game, lest you spend an even longer time later on catching up.
 * Palmtree Panic: The very first two areas of the Neogeon, the Initiation Area and the Tropical Area.
 * Planet Heck: Chaos, filled with ninjas, demons, demon lords, liches, golems, insectoid spellcasters, and dragons, to name a few. Surprisingly, it's relatively devoid of lava, preferring to instead coat the scenery with an impenetrable coat of gray, barren rock.
 * Player Mooks: You can create them once Dotache appears in town.
 * In the second game, you don't have access to any named characters until very late in the game, at which point Player Mooks will make up the entirety of your party.
 * Pocket Dimension: The Arcanus Cella of Cladun x2, which functions as a maximum-security prison for notorious criminals. Also the Chaos, Heaven, and Transitory areas in Cladun x2's Trigeon. The Doom World may also qualify.
 * Poison Mushroom: While not a broad example, trying to tell Hiyokki and Immortal Traps apart from each other in a grassy area or when sight is otherwise obscured. While both traps look identical on the edges, one trap summons a Metal Slime that you can kill for a load of gold and a guranteed item drop, while the other summons an Invincible Minor Minion that chases you around for a good twenty seconds before it disappears.
 * The Power of Friendship: Join the Magic Circle and become strong!
 * Spoofed: Magic Circles are more or less magical enchantments that give a physical form to the power of friendship that powers up the "main character." It's even Lampshaded in the second game, where
 * Too Kinky to Torture: Lamb is explicitly stated ingame to be a masochist, in compensation for the crimes she has  committed.
 * Trap Door: Doom Gates in Cladun x2 have the dubious honor of being the only type of gate to the next floor that cannot be seen unless standing nearly on top of it. Suffice to say that going into one usually does not end well.
 * Prophecy Twist: Pudding had a dream that if she went to Arcanus Cella, she wouldn't die from her incurable illness. She assumes that it means if she keeps exploring the dungeons, she'll find a cure. That's not quite what happens...
 * Random Drop: Widens in Cladun x2. 1/1000 chance of dropping from only a single enemy in the game (which happens to be a Metal Slime), that you need to carry out of the dungeon alive to be able to use, and that you need at least two of to be able to perfect a character? Yes, they're that bad.
 * That being said, you can buy them from the Black Market... it's just that they're hideously expensive.
 * Randomly Generated Levels
 * Rebellious Princess:
 * Lamb in Cladun x2 was a princess who started and led a rebellion against her home country, throwing the kingdom into disaster.
 * Retraux: The graphics are blocky, but still surprisingly detailed and nuanced. The Retraux also applies to the music; you can listen to the honestly beautiful soundtrack, or you can listen to an 8-bit chiptune version of it.
 * The Rival: Sunday and Battleblo. Sunday wound up in Arcanus Cella so that she could find the "ultimate sword", while Battleblo followed her there in search of the "ultimate shield".
 * Roguelike: While an RPG, if dungeon-delving, the Cladun also borrows many elements of roguelike games with all of the randomly-generated environments.
 * Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Souma and Pudding
 * Sealed Evil in a Can: The reason why Arcanus Cella
 * Sex Face Turn: Mouton tries to instill one of these in the player in the second game so that he can stop raiding dungeons  by telling Pekora and Lamb to try and seduce him, saying that it can't possibly fail. He promptly throws a fit when the player walks away due to anticipating the motive behind the action.
 * Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Invoked by  as part of his Xanatos Gambit: while he's a natural shapeshifter, inducing a Freaky Friday Flip in one of his weakest forms would leave the victim stuck in a particularly weak body that poses little threat.
 * Shifting Sand Land: The desert levels, naturally.
 * Shmuck Bait: Some players swear by going into Doom Gates when possible due to the prospect of overleveled loot and overleveled equipment. The success of this... varies.
 * Shop Keeper: Coco
 * Shout-Out: The bestiary entries in both games are full of these.
 * Shrinking Violet: In spite of her Action Girl appearance, Sunday actually suffers from crippling shyness; she can't talk to men without using her sword as a Security Blanket.
 * Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The inevitable result of any ice-themed level in either game, and there are a lot.
 * Smart People Wear Glasses: Mouton is notably one of the only characters in either game to wear a very noticeable pair of Nerd Glasses. He's also a (self-proclaimed) genius.
 * Smash Mook: Golems in both games. Their attacks are smashing the ground, smashing the ground twice in a row, and (if you get too far away) to drop rocks on you.
 * Sophisticated As Hell: Parchmin. Say what you want about his intelligence or tact, he's certainly fashion-conscious with that cape and his dialogue is dripping with "youth slang."
 * Speed Run: Finishing levels under the allotted time will give you access to higher-quality items in Coco's shop.
 * Stalker Without a Crush: Sherbert is repeatedly described as Dotache's "stalker" until the characters learn why she's been acting like one.
 * Theme Naming: Lots of desserts, in case you couldn't tell.
 * The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body:
 * Throw the Dog a Bone:
 * Yank the Dog's Chain:
 * Upgrade Artifact: There are a whole bunch of artifacts which increase different parameters for your main character. Special mention goes to Widens in Cladun x2, which can be attacked to an Ability slot to drastically power up a character's attacks. Enemies can get them too, which can lead to effects as mild as their projectiles going faster, or as drastic as the resident Peons suddenly gaining the ability to fire massive explosive lasers out of their attacks.
 * Vain Sorceress: Despina. She's also a lazy one, as she eventually gives up on trying to dispose of the mask.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Perfect World in Cladun x2 is a meta-example, with Purgatory being a straighter one due to the fact that the plot is oddly divided to before the final boss and after. It doesn't help that the game has a very self-referential definition of a final boss, and that altogether there are a good three bosses who can be considered the 'final' one.
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting: A particularly scary example in Cladun x2 with, naturally a dragon, and who on top of this can also Body Surf. Due to this, it gets incredibly difficult in the middle of the game to figure out what the heck is going on, and who's who.
 * Wake Up Call Boss: The boss of the Monster House. Simply hacking and slashing away won't beat him, as his shield guards against all attacks from the front, significantly reducing damage.
 * The Walls Have Eyes: The Doom Area. Justified in that it's apparently in some way connected to Immortals, considering that murals of Immortals occasionally appear on the floors inside and Immortals have an annoying tendency to spawn everywhere in there.
 * We Have Reserves: Played with in Cladun x2. Killing the evil minions in Arcanus Cella
 * Xanatos Gambit:
 * Xanatos Gambit: