Video Game / Gregory Horror Show

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Gregory Horror Show: Soul Collector, (also known as just 'Gregory Horror Show' in Europe) is a single-player Survival Horror game based on the computer-generated anime series of the same name. The game was developed and published by Capcom in Japan and Europe in 2003 for Sony PlayStation 2.

The game begins with the protagonist, a disembodied lost soul, wandering through a forest in a deep fog. Having no memory of how they ended up in the forest, they eventually they find their way to a Hell Hotel. The manager, Gregory, a creepy old anthropomorphic mouse welcomes them in and shows them to their room for a much-needed rest. In their dreams the protagonist meets Death. Unable to find their way back to reality, Death makes a deal with them that if they help him free all the lost souls in Gregory House, he will show them the way home. The Player Character awakens now inhabiting the body of a child the Grim Reaper "loaned them" in order to accomplish this task.

Players must navigate the spooky hotel, retrieving the bottled souls which the hotel guests have been carrying. However, the insane guests have stolen these souls and they aren't going to give them back willingly. To rescue the lost souls, you need to be cunning and plan your every next move. By following the guest's daily routine and eavesdropping on them, you may learn their weaknesses and use it against them to win the souls. Can you save the lost souls before Gregory steals yours?

The game provides examples of:

• Always Night: Like the anime series it is never daytime. You could go outside at 3:00 PM and it would look the same as the middle of the night.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In the PS2 game, to prevent the possibility of accidentally softlocking your game, if the player tries to enter Frog Fortune-Teller's room while they are being chased by other guests, she will refuse to allow the player to enter and the door will be locked shut.
  Frog Fortune-Teller: I refuse to get involved, ribbit.
• Ax-Crazy: All the hotel guests are exhibiting varying degrees of madness and especially so where taking the bottled soul of a guest causes them to become hostile and chase you. If they catch you they will attack you, and if carrying their lost soul they will take it back.
• Boss Subtitles: Each resident gets one during their introduction cutscene.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": The game's health bar is a measure of mental health. When it runs out, you go insane, causing the guest to become one of the lost souls wandering the hotel, which means a Game Over.
• Determinator: Gregory Mama becomes increasingly angry with her son, and the eventually the player, for meddling with their acquisition of the lost souls, whom she desires to consume to maintain her youth. At the end she's howling with rage as the player escapes the hotel vowing she'll get their soul if its the last thing she ever does.
• Downer Ending: The game effectively combines the climax of the anime's second season's ending with the resolution of the first; Neko Zombie burns the hotel down like before. The Player Character escapes back to reality, but finds reality too harsh and longing for the "warming comfort" Gregory's chaotic hotel brought them. They return for good immediately after the credits.
• Kill It with Fire: At the end of the game, Neko Zombie sets the whole hotel ablaze in the hopes of finally destroying Gregory's world. Unfortunately for him, the choice to truly leave Gregory House remained with the lost soul Player Character, and they choose to return willingly.
• Newbie Immunity: The game is kinder to the player as the sanity meter doesn't even kick in until they are familiarized with the controls, and the first night is a cakewalk. This is as nice as Soul Collector ever gets though, as the nights progress and more souls are collected, more guests check-in to prowl the corridors of the hotel, looking for the player, making it increasingly difficult to travel from one location to another without being seen and chased.
• Oh, Crap!: Humorously if the player finds one of Gregory's dirty porn magazines he'll freak out and forcibly confiscate it, telling them to read something more tasteful from the library.
• One-Winged Angel: In the ending, Gregory becomes a huge ghost, like in the climax of the anime's season 1, and chases you, trying to keep you from escaping to reality.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: You control either a young boy or a young girl. The only thing that's different (besides your appearance) is Cactus Gunman's horror show: shooting you if you're a boy, smacking you with a rose bouquet if you're a girl.
• Practical Currency: The hotel shop runs on a bartering system where to get an item you have to trade Gregory another item with equal or greater value to it. There are times when you need to trade several items to be able to exchange them for important items such as the doll or TV remote batteries.
• Room 101: Inverted. Your guest room is your only true safe haven in the hotel with mad guests prowling and also has an item box.
• Run or Die: The player has very few means to fight back against the Guests who will chase and attack you once deprived of their coveted bottled soul, reclaiming the soul should the player still be holding it. The guests can all run faster than the player's character, making stealth an important aspect of play. Hiding in wardrobes in other rooms is almost impractical, because it can only be achieved while any pursuing guests are out of sight.
• Sanity Meter: From the first night you have a Mental Gauge that slowly decreases from just being in the Hell Hotel. When it empties, you become another resident of Gregory House and its game over. You can replenish it by sleeping or reading books. Carrying around a lost soul instead of handing them over to Death does slow the rate your gauge decreases at, however, this is a very risky strategy as if the hostile guests catch you, they'll take the soul away, leaving you in a much worse situation when negative status ailments kick in.
• Sanity Slippage: The videogame uses a Sanity Meter in place of a regular health bar. It slowly but constantly decreases just by being inside the Hotel, although sleeping in your bed completely refills it given you give yourself time between rests.
• Short Cuts Make Long Delays: In the game, if you open the locked security door in the basement, you have a useful shortcut to the 1st floor corridor near Catherine's office. Unfortunately, doing so now allows the residents to wander into the basement making exploration much harder.
• Shout-Out:
  • The most common healing items found throughout the hotel are green healing herbs, referencing another survival horror by the same developer.
  • The Guest stays in Room 101, a reference to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four which Room 101 is a torture chamber that manifests a prisoners' worst fears. For protagonist Winston Smith, he is afraid of being trapped with rats, just as the player is imprisoned in the game's hotel by Gregory.
• Standard RPG Items: Several status ailments can only be cured by items. 'Darkness' can be cured with eyedrops but it's not a status effect that gets worse over time so it usually can be ignored. Only antacid can cure 'Nervousness' which is normally only bought from the shop. 'Melancholy' can only be cured by Laughing Shrooms, and finally you need a sedative to treat 'Confusion' (or hold the controller upside down until you can find some sedatives).
• Status Effects: There are many status ailments your Player Character can experience in this game. Being up at night between 12AM-6AM or spending too long in the basement can inflict the protagonist with 'Darkness', a condition which hinders your sight so you can't see distant objects or guests clearly. Staying up too long causes "Tiredness" which isn't a problem initially and easy to remedy by sleeping, but if left untreated becomes a 'Headache" which leads to all sorts of negative effects. Getting caught by a hostile guest and forced into a Horror Show can make you come down with a case of 'Nervousness' which renders healing items only half as effective. Not treating 'Nervousness' causes 'Confusion' which is a horrible aliment to get as it inverts your controls. If the guest steals a soul back from you, the player gets 'Melancholy' where they are too depressed to run, leaving you completely vulnerable if another guest shows up. Mercifully, all status ailments are healed by Death whenever you deliver at least one lost soul to him (in Normal mode).
• Terms of Endangerment: Gregory Mama briefly calls the player-character "Dearie."