Video Game / Leftovers

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Leftovers is a freeware horror game created for the SCREAM JAM 2021. It was programmed by Realmpact, with the art, script and design being done by Skekarin.

A shy young boy's mother has overdone it a little while cooking and now there's too much for just the two of them to eat. She asks the boy to deliver the leftovers to their neighbors and not come back until he's gotten rid of absolutely everything. The neighbors won't bite! Hopefully...

The game is available for free on itch.io.

Contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: The mother acts nice enough at first, but she's incredibly pushy and demanding with her son. Worse, if her son returns prematurely due to having been scared (or worse) by the neighbors, she doesn't care about his very obvious distress and snaps at him to finish what he started. In the Game Over you get if you return home too often without having delivered all the leftovers, she full-on screams at him and calls him "fucking useless". Conversely, progressing far enough in the game reveals that the "leftovers" she makes him deliver were made from his father.
• Apartment Complex of Horrors: A mother asks her young son to deliver some leftovers to their neighbours in the levels below. Some of their neighbours are creepy, one is implied to be outright pedophilic, a little girl bullies the player character and hides the food box from another neighbor to starve their dog, and to top it all off, one of the neighbours is his (unseen) father's mistress—and when he delivers the mistress her box of leftovers after a series of increasingly heavy implications, it's confirmed outright that the mother killed the father and cooked his remains. The mistress learns of this during a phone call with the boy's mother, then snaps and runs into her apartment for a knife to try and murder the child with.
• The Bully: The school girl on Level 5 is one, with the boy remarking that she regularly torments him at school. She's also this to the adults, as an optional side quest revolves around her hiding another tenant's food, knowing that his dog will probably starve to death. Why does she do this? Because the man's dog licked her once and she thought it was disgusting.
• But Thou Must!:
  • You can shake your head 'no' when mum asks you to deliver the leftovers, but it won't change the story apart from some alternate dialogue.
  • Similarly, you can decline the old man from Level 2's invitation for a chat. The old man will merely provide you a closer look at his box cutter and insist you stay.
• Disappeared Dad: The boy's father is conspicuously missing at the start of the game, merely being alluded to by the mother and the other neighbors. It's all but stated that Hillary killed him and turned his remains into the very leftovers the boy is currently delivering.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The school girl's response to a dog licking her once? Trying to make the animal starve to death. Also, the player character's dad Kenneth cheated on Hillary, so she killed him, cut his body up and had her own son deliver his remains to the neighbors as "leftovers".
• Foreshadowing:
  • If you tell the old lady next door you haven't been a good boy, she warns you that being honest to a fault isn't always a good thing. This hints that reacting incorrectly to the neighbors when delivering food may result in the boy being scared enough to return home. If you answer the old man from Level 2's questions 'honestly', you get a Game Over in which the boy is kidnapped and his mother is murdered—to survive the encounter, you must answer yes to all but the last question.
  • The mother tells the boy not to come home before all the leftovers have been delivered. Returning prematurely too often leads to a Game Over.
  • Once only one leftover package is left, the boy mentions a "friend" of his father's that lives on Level 7. Said "friend" is Laura, his father's mistress.
• Featureless Protagonist: The protagonist doesn't have a sprite, unlike every other character. You see his hand when he knocks on doors and he can be seen on some of the photos in his apartment, but that's it.
• Harmful to Minors:
  • The woman from Level 6, who is far too interested in the child delivering her food.
  • The mother sees nothing wrong with having her child deliver his father's dismembered corpse to the neighbors as leftovers. Or telling her husband's mistress exactly what it is she just had delivered to her, knowing the revelation would drive Laura into a revenge-fueled, murderous rampage—all while presumably aware that her son was still at her door (and sure enough, she starts right after him).
• Implied Rape: The creepy woman from Level 6 repeatedly states how cute she finds the boy and makes some rather concerning comments about his looks. If the boy accepts her invitation to take a quick rest at her apartment, she tells him she'll "be gentle" as he enters. After a cut to black, the boy exits the apartment again, horrified and crying for his mother.
• Jerkass: The school girl bully, who's willing to make someone's dog starve for licking her once among other things.
• Kick the Dog:
  • The woman from Level 8 calls the boy an idiot if he tells her the food he's handing her is free. If he tells her it isn't, she gets mad and throws a cockroach at him for "payment".
  • The school girl from Level 5 hides another tenant's food so he'll be forced to put down his dog to survive. If the boy helps the man get his food back, she'll block his way while he's trying to escape from Laura later, which can end up getting him killed.
• Lazy Bum: The woman on Level 8 calls the boy an idiot for offering her food for free, when it never cost anything to begin with—but if the boy tells her it isn't, she "pays" him with a single cockroach instead.
• Nice Guy: Some of the neighbors are genuinely nice, thanking the boy for the food and not doing anything to scare or bully him.
• Nightmare Face: Several of the neighbors have grotesquely deformed faces and creepy expressions, not at all helped by the fact that some of them get really up in your grill while you talk to them. The school girl bully can surprise you with a nasty one: during the escape from Laura, if you ruined her "prank" earlier she'll get in your way while having empty eye sockets with her eyeballs inside her deformed mouth (which is never quite explained).
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: You can ruin the school girl's "prank" of hiding another tenant's food by bringing it back to him. If you do, the girl waits for you on the next stairwell and ominously tells you you'll regret this. When you're forced to flee from a knife-wielding Laura later on, she shows up to block the last set of stairs to your apartment, potentially leading to you getting caught and killed.
• No Name Given: Very few of the characters in the game are named, including the protagonist. The boy's mother is eventually revealed to be Hillary, the woman the boy's father cheated on her with is Laura, and the boy's father is named Kenneth.
• Only Sane Woman: The woman who discovers the eyeball in her leftovers simply asks if giving out leftovers in this apartment is a tradition or something (she's new), cheerfully accepts the leftovers, and acts weirded-out when she sees how strange they look. This solidly places her as one of the few normal neighbors, and is yet another clue on top of several as to what those leftovers actually are.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Discussed with the old man on Level 2. He asks the boy if he thinks murderers should be punished and, if the boy says yes, if the same should apply even if the murderer he's alluding to is the boy's mother. If the boy agrees again, the old man muses about his innocence, then locks him inside the apartment with a heavy implication that he will kill the boy's mother as payback for her killing his wife.
  • Laura attempts to do this when she goes insane, chasing the boy all the way to his apartment to kill both him and his mother for the murder of the boy's father. It turns out that Hillary intended to kill her from the beginning, and is already waiting behind the door with a knife when the boy makes it back home.
• Pet the Dog: If the boy agrees with everything the old man on Level 2 says, the old man compliments him on his innocence, muses how all may not be lost and is implied to lock the boy away and go to kill his monster of a mother.
• Psycho Knife Nut:
  • The old man on Level 2 carries a box cutter when he opens the door, which he uses to force the boy to chat with him if the boy says he doesn't want to talk. If you don't get his questions right, he'll either stab the boy to death or lock the boy in the apartment and imply that he'll kill his mother.
  • The woman from Level 7 snaps after the boy's mother reveals to her what the "leftovers" she just got handed really are, then grabs a knife from her apartment and chases after the boy.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Downplayed. The woman from Level 6 is clearly a pedophile, and is heavily implied to assault the boy sexually if he lets himself be lured into her apartment. She is by far one of the creepiest tenants, getting even more monstrous in appearance if she gets what she wants. However, she's not portrayed as much more evil than the tenants who flat-out try to kill the boy.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Laura snaps when she's told what the leftovers really are, gets a knife from her apartment and screams about how she's going to kill everyone in the apartment building.
• Run or Die: Laura goes violently insane after the protagonist's mother reveals to her that she killed Laura's lover (your father) for cheating, forcing the boy to run or be killed.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: It's all but stated that the leftovers the boy is delivering to the neighbors are the cut-up remains of his father who his mother killed.
• Serial Killer: It's implied that the mother is one. Not only did she kill her own husband for cheating on her, an old man from Level 2 also claims she killed his wife.
• So Proud of You: A darker-than-usual example. The mother tells her son she's proud of him if he manages to deliver all the leftovers (which were really parts of her husband's corpse) and lure Laura to her (implied to be so she can kill her).
• Sultry Bangs: Played for Horror with the woman on Level 6. She has a fringe over one of her eyes, and she does act sultry, but her advances are towards a young boy, which makes her even creepier.
• Stalker with a Crush: The man from Level 8 is one for the boy's mother. He at first rejects the leftovers, until he recognizes the scent of "the beautiful chick from Level 9". After that, he eagerly sniffs the container to get more of said scent, and practically salivates over it while imagining how he'll savor every bite.
• Stylistic Suck: The game combines a barren 3D environment with 2D character models that use limited animation to create a tense and creepy atmosphere.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: It's eventually revealed the mother killed her husband when he cheated on her.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can help the man on Level 2 get his stolen food back so he won't have to eat his dog, though doing so will make the bully an obstacle in the coming chase scene.
• Villainous Breakdown: If the Player Character doesn't carry out the mother's Evil Plan, she snaps and calls him "fucking useless".
• Wham Line: The woman from Level 1 says one upon further inspecting the leftovers, revealing what they truly are.
  Woman: Wait- Is that an eyeba-
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The old man on Level 2 will kill the boy if the boy says he doesn't think killing an innocent person is wrong or that murderers shouldn't be punished. Averted if the boy says that killing is wrong and further agrees that murderers should be punished, even if the murderer were a loved one of his (for example, his mother).
  • Laura is fully willing to murder the boy as part of her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.