The Mansion
The Mansion is a Clock Tower fan game created by Alicia Jewel in RPG Maker XP. You play as 10-year-old Bobby, who is dared by his friends Tiffany and Billy to enter an abandoned mansion with his little sister, Nina. Unfortunately, Nina quickly gets lost, and Bobby finds himself being pursued by an animated doll appropriately named Dollie. In traditional Clock Tower fashion, you have very few weapons against Dollie and must rely on various hiding places (some of which are fake) scattered about the mansion.
The game was in development for about a year and a half before Version 1.0 was finally released. The game is currently at Version 1.2, and 1.3 is currently in public beta; the latest download can be found on the official website.
Tropes used in The Mansion include:
- Ax Crazy: Dollie, Dollie, Dollie...
- Bittersweet Ending
- Brainwashed: Nina
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Nina in Ending D.
- Captain Obvious: "It's a clock."
- Creepy Basement: If you enter the basement without the lantern and matches, it's extremely dark.
- Deadpan Snarker: Bobby when examining certain objects. Especially the clocks.
- Diabolus Ex Machina
- Downer Ending: Depending on how you view it, any ending not A or S. Even A can be a bit depressing if you know what happens in S.
- Fate Worse Than Death: Robert's fate before Bobby came along, arguably.
- Golden Ending: Ending S.
- Haunted Mansion
- Haunted Mansion Historian: Robert
- Kill It with Fire: You can throw candles at Dollie or stab her with a hot poker.
- Leitmotif: Tiffany and Billy's theme, Dollie's chase theme, and the mansion's general theme
- Mad Scientist: Depending on how you believe Robert created Dollie, he could qualify. Word of God says that it was an "unholy cross between science and magic."
- Multiple Endings: A total of 6 (7 if you count both ways to get Ending C).
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Word of God says that Dollie has never left the mansion before, but Endings E and C both show that Bobby has managed to unleash her on the world.
- Notice This: "Item sparklies" were added to the final version to make the items scattered around the mansion easier to find. Items that are in plain view do not have these, however.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Most of the game is spent wandering around an empty mansion with only the quiet background music to keep you company...
- Offscreen Teleportation: Dollie has set places to appear in each hallway, regardless of where you left her. The developer has stated that it was easier to do that way and is also a callback to the original Clock Tower.
- Perverse Puppet: Dollie
- Running Gag: The clocks in almost every room, including the cage in the basement. They were originally meant to make the back wall of a room seem less empty but then became a joke when the developer realized how many she was adding.
- Overused Running Gag: "There's a clock in here, too? ... Somehow, that doesn't surprise me."
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here
- Serial Killer: Word of God says that Dollie has claimed other victims in the past.
- White-Haired Pretty Girl: Delilah