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Stay Out of the House - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Mar 17 2019

Stay Out of the House (Video Game)

Stay Out Of The House is a Survival Horror game developed by Puppet Combo.

You Wake Up in a Room, encaged. You've been kidnapped and taken to the dilapidated home of a Serial Killer. Use your wits to escape.

It also has a 20-minute prequel game called Night Shift, which details how one of his victims ended up in his house.

Initially released in 2018 on Puppet Combo's website, Stay Out of the House were released in October 13th, 2022 on Steam, with Night Shift incorporated into it as the first chapter of the game. A console release for contemporary Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo consoles was released on June 16th, 2023.

Has a character page here.

The game provides examples of:

  • The '80s: As is usual for Puppet Combo, the game takes place in this decade (presumably in 1986, if the newspaper depicting the space shuttle Challenger disaster is of any indication).
  • Berserk Button: Killing the Night Shift Abductor's mother. While it may help you with moving around the house a bit safer, as soon as he sees her lifeless body, he will go into a furious frenzy and sprint around the house to find her murderer. He will calm down again after some time or if he knocks you out, but walking by her corpse has a chance of rekindling his fury.
  • The Brute: The killer is huge. The newspaper article about the "Night Shift Abductor" says the police estimate him as being 6'4" and 250 pounds, which is about the same size as Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
  • The Butcher: The Night Shift Abductor, he carries a cleaver, wears a blood-soaked smock, and chops up human bodies like livestock. Although as an interesting twist to the Slasher Butcher formula is that he surprisingly isn't a cannibal. He's just preparing the human meat to feed some sort of demonic entity in a bunker in his basement. Doesn't stop him from making furniture out of the spare parts, however.
  • Captain Ersatz: The killer is exactly like Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He's a gigantic serial killer who kidnaps his victims, imprisons them in his home, and prepares them for dinner like a butcher. He's also incapable of speech and wears a brown mask and a leather apron.
  • Chainsaw Good: The Butcher attacks you with a chainsaw in the finales of when you escape through the front door or start a meltdown in the bunker.
  • Checkpoint Starvation: There are no checkpoints whatsoever. If you want to preserve your progress, you have to manually save by using a VHS tape on your sole Save Point in the safe room found in the ventilation system.
  • Continuing Is Painful: If the Butcher catches you, you'll lose all the bullets and paperclips you found (and can't get them back) and will have to re-acquire your inventory items. Slightly less painful in the bunker, where you retain your bullets/paperclips and your items can be found right next to where you wake up.
  • Cutting the Knot: There are alternative routes all over the place. While there is an intended progression, you can use a hammer or the revolver to (loudly) open non-reinforced doors by breaking their doorknobs. Even the reinforced doors can be bypassed long before you are supposed to, as the key mentioned in Dungeon Bypass will open those.
  • Deadly Gas: If the killer notices you crawling into one of the vents, he will flood a gas through the vents that prevents you from breathing. You only have a limited time to get out of the vents before your Oxygen Meter runs out and you automatically lose a day. He knows this as well, of course, and will try to intercept you at the exits of whatever vent you are in. If you want to use the vents again, you have to manually deactivate the gas by pressing one of the two gas buttons next to the kitchen or in an upstairs bedroom near your starting location.
  • Decoy Protagonist: The protagonist of Night Shift isn't the protagonist of Stay Out of the House, but rather simply one of the Butcher's victims. You can even find and rescue her from one of the cages in the backyard.
  • Downer Ending: All 4 endings to Stay Out of the House end badly for the protagonist. She either gets sacrificed by the Butcher, discovers a demonic entity in the bunker in the basement and gets fed to it, manages to escape out the front door and run to a nearby trailer park only to discover that the creepy customer from Night Shift is one of the Butcher's neighbors, just as some sort of parasite implanted in her when she was captured bursts out of her, or escapes through the bunker and wakes up in a hospital, only for said parasite baby to burst out of her while she's recuperating, causing her to black out and wake up in an infested version of the hospital.
  • Dumb Muscle: A note you find from a dead survivor notes that the killer is insanely strong but not very intelligent, noting that he seems to forget things after a few hours, which accounts for why he stops searching for you after a while if you manage to evade him.
  • Dungeon Bypass: The Butcher carries a master key on his hip that can be used to skip straight to the endgame if you can manage to pickpocket it off him. Be warned however that he will notice you doing this.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: None of the endings are "good", but the one ending in which there's at least a possibility the protagonist survived is the most difficult to get, as instead of escaping out the front door, you need to escape through the bunker which is a whole additional chapter. You also need to go through a complex process to meltdown the bunker's nuclear reactor, instead of just going down the Butcher's feeding corridor to meet his master.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: The dog you meet in the Prologue will growl at the house when you get near it, clearly sensing that something is horribly wrong with the place. This doesn't stop him from charging in and getting himself stuck in a Bear Trap, then wisely bolting out of there as soon as you free him.
  • Evil Old Folks: The killer's ancient, almost corpse-like mother roams the house in a motorized wheelchair and will summon her son with a shriek if she spots you. Once you find the revolver, you can put a bullet in her head to finally get rid of her, though this may make the Butcher more aggressive in roaming the house.
  • Fetus Terrible: You might notice that inside the ventilation shafts are grates with holes in them, which you can't fit through. Once you disable the ventilation fan, a demonic infant with red, glowing eyes will start to patrol the vents and attack you if you come across it in the dark. It is also possible to see it watching you from a nearby vent if you get caught and brought into the upstairs room with the many monitors. You can even find its bedroom in the attic, though there is no practical purpose in going there.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: It's a bit difficult to see, but a closer look at the killer's mask shows that he's wearing a gas mask underneath his burlap sack.
  • Government Conspiracy: The house turns out to be built on top of an abandoned top secret government bunker where some sort of human experimentation was taking place, with the implication the Butcher is a byproduct of said experimentation. At the core of the bunker is some sort of demonic insect-like entity that the researchers apparently created. An Almost Dead Guy you meet in the bunker urges you to overload the nuclear reactor to kill the "demon" and destroy the remnants of the unethical research. Considering the broadcasts they used in their experiments, they seem to be connected to the Church of the Father's Vision as well.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The Night Shift Abductor is affiliated with the Church of the Father's Vision, which also shows up in other Puppet Combo games. There's also the demonic, parasitic entity that lives in the bunker under the house, which the killer both worships and feeds his victims to.
  • Hazmat Suit: The killer switches from his usual butcher clothing to what seems to be a white hazmat suit for some reason if you get down to your final day. Turns out he has a practical reason for it, as he wears it when going to work in the bunker under the house, which killing you also involves. Since the government experiments and the entity living down there are related to some kind of radiation, having protective gear on you is rather attentive.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: If you disable the bear traps the killer will start to leave around in the hopes of trapping you, you can set them up again yourself and use them against the killer.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The killer abducts victims to butcher their corpses and presumably eat them. Subverted however when it turns out that he's feeding some sort of demonic entity in a bunker in his basement.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle: You can only carry 5 items at a time (cut down to 3 in Hard mode), which isn't nearly enough to carry all the tools you need to navigate the house (screwdriver to open vents and disarm bear traps, hammer to open boarded up doors, wirecutters to cut trap wires, etc.) as well as defensive items needed to deal with the Butcher (i.e. the revolver, the radar, etc.). You can find a backpack in a locked cupboard which increases your inventory to 8, once you get the hex key to pick locks.
  • Made of Iron: Like most Puppet Combo slashers, bullets are only an inconvenience to the Butcher. A couple shots from a revolver will scare him off, but nothing will kill him. His mother on the other hand...
  • Medium Blending: While the entire rest of the game is rendered in Puppet Combo's signature Retraux style, the televangelist broadcasts use live-action footage.
  • Non-Standard Game Over:
    • Being caught 3 times by the Butcher results in the "Sacrifice" ending, in which player is sacrificed by the Butcher in some sort of ritual.
    • The "Rebirth" ending is essentially this; if, while in the bunker, you go to find out where the Butcher is carting all his meat, you'll end up being knocked out by him and fed to the creature he's been feeding.
  • Resources Management Gameplay: You have a very limited number of bullets, paperclips and bandages, which are all hidden around the house usually in drawers; you need bullets to drive off the Butcher if he spots you, paperclips to open simple locks, and bandages to heal from damage. The VHS tapes that you need to save the game are also very limited.
    • Hard mode adds blood, thirst and energy to the list of things you have to worry about and cuts your starting inventory down to three slots. Thirst and energy will trickle down as time goes on, requiring you to fill a water canteen and find candy bars to keep them topped up, while you will bleed out if the killer hits you and you don't find a bandage to staunch the wound.
  • Right-Hand Attack Dog: The killer has an extremely vicious dog that patrols the backyard and guards the other captives. It will also accompany him into the bunker if you don't put it down.
  • Parasitic Horror: Roxanne becomes infected with some sort of demonic parasite after she's captured by the Night Shift Abductor. It bursts out of her in two of the four endings, one of which seems to be lethal to her. While she survives in the other, the parasite seems to spread through a hospital and causes an Apocalypse How. The killer also worships and feeds the mother parasite down in the bunker underneath the house, which you get to see in another one of the endings. Given how the journal notes of the killer deteriorate in their writing quality, it is safe to say that he's also infected.
  • Patrolling Mook: After you get caught the first time, the killer's mother will start to roam around the house as well by using her electric wheelchair. She doesn't do anything herself if she spots you, but she will scream like crazy to get her son's attention.
  • Point of No Return: The code-locked metal door in the basement. Once you unlock it, it's your last chance to search the house for any items you want to carry with you, as the door will slam shut behind you if you enter and forces you to commit to the endgame.
  • Sackhead Slasher: The killer wears a burlap sack on his head.
  • Sense-Impaired Monster: Both the mother and the dog are noted to have rather bad eyesight, though the dog makes up for it with very good hearing.
  • Shared Universe: The presence of the CFV ("Church of Father's Vision") ties the game to The Nun Massacre and Feed Me Billy. In particular, the creature in the bunker the Butcher is feeding with his victims is conceptually very similar to the creature that serial killer Billy is feeding. The preacher on the TVs is also apparently the same preacher that speaks to Billy on the phone.
  • Sinister Surveillance: The killer's house has a camera security system, which will alert him to your position if you enter their field of view. Getting caught will result in the killer setting up even more of them, making traversal a lot more difficult. Thankfully, you can permanently disable them by shooting them with the revolver or with a wire clipper you will find later on, which is much quieter and doesn't waste a bullet.
  • Smarter Than You Look: The killer fluctuates between this and Dumb Muscle. On the one hand, something is clearly wrong with him mentally, as he seems to have some kind of memory handicap and also the only speech he's capable of is incoherent screaming. His diary shows his mental state gradually degenerating to a simpler and more incoherent level, but said diary also shows he's smart enough to target people who are isolated from society and thus easier to grab (such as gas station attendants), and he's also rigged his house with a variety of effective traps and security measures. The fact he's apparently got a parasite nestled in his brain may account for his degenerated mental state.
  • Tap on the Head: The Abductor never actually tries to kill the player, simply knocking them out with a hammer so they can be re-captured. Although this changes if you get caught at least three times.
  • Uncertain Doom:
    • It's unclear whether the protagonist of Night Shift is one of the 4 hostages you can rescue, or has already been killed and eaten or is one of the many corpses laying around. Leading the hostages to the safe room will cause them to tell you their names. Debra is indeed one of them, the blonde girl in the red shirt.
    • "Saving" the hostages just involves leading them to the safe room. There's no indication what happens to them afterwards, especially in the "Mother" ending in which you set off a nuclear meltdown in the bunker underneath the house.
  • The Unfought: The creature that the Abductor serves (both figuratively and literally) is never actually encountered in regular gameplay. You only get to see it in one of the endings and it is Killed Offscreen when the bunker's nuclear reactor explodes.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: There are five hostages you can find in cages in the backyard. It is possible for you to save four of themnote  by leading them back to your safe room in the vents, where they will thank you for the rescue, give some additional dialogue (along with hints on how to get the endings) and some bandages. However, the Night Shift Abductor will kill them one by one the longer you wait and the more often you get caught. Of course, there's also nothing stopping you from killing them yourself, which even nets you an achievement.