You’re hidden behind the lines. I reach out, deafened by silence. As we mourn the Grasshopper’s passing, Heaven’s gate opens. Key Fetures:Heaven’s Gate is a quiet kinetic novel by etheraneAverage reading time: 40 minGenre: slice of life, coming-of-age, dramaThis is a story set in a parallel universe with a focus on True Realm characters from Hello Charlotte series. Or don't.Have fun dying!DescriptionHello Charlotte is an episodic game, where each episode can be considered a separate story, as they differ in storytelling style, themes and illustrations, but the characters stay the same.This game, Hello Charlotte: Requiem Aeternam Deo, is the second installment of the Hello Charlotte series.
Jan 04, 2018 Hello Charlotte is a sci-fi psychological thriller series where you, a Puppeteer, take care of your Puppet, Charlotte, in a world of false gods, magcats, obnoxious romance novels, conspiracies and TV commercials. Hello Charlotte EP3: Childhood's End is the third installment of the Hello Charlotte series, and the final episode in the main story.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/HelloCharlotte
Hello Charlotte Game
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Won't you join them for dream-seeing?*
'Inside a dream, I laugh, and the world laughs with me. Inside a dream, I forget, and the world forgets with me. Inside a dream, I am the world. Hello, world! Hello, Charlotte!'
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Hello, new Puppeteer! You have been assigned a young puppet named Charlotte Wiltshire: a twelve-year-old girl with a... peculiar home life, living among aliens, demons, a cat turned into a maggot, and sometimes, the mysterious 'Umbrella Man'. One day, Charlotte herself is tasked with taking care of her gasmasked alien surgeon housemate Huxley's nephew, a disagreeable ten-year-old named Felix. After Charlotte decides to take a small nap, Felix disappears, and the living room's TV screen looks a little different than it did before...
After that day, things change for Charlotte and her household.
Hello Charlotte is an Estonian episodic Adventure Game series made in RPG Maker VX by etherane. Episode 1 is described by Word of God as 'a surreal horror RPG parody with an Alice-like character in the main role', and Episode 2 as 'initially a visual novel parody, made in mostly modernist/post-modern style with Memphis aesthetic'. The game has earned a small following due to etherane's surreal Signature Style, its extremely complicated and metaphorical plot, and memorable characters that border on Gray and Gray Morality.
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Episode 1:Junk Food, Gods and Teddy Bears was released on June 17th, 2015 and can be downloaded for free here, or as a demo in the game's official Steam page.
Episode 2:Requiem Aeternam Deo was released on October 8th, 2016 and can be bought here, or as the full game on Steam.
Episode 3:Childhood's End was released on January 5, 2018 and can be bought here, or on Steam.
Hello Charlotte: Delirium, a very short Spin-Off puzzle game, was released on June 24th, 2017. It can be downloaded here.
Heaven's Gate, a very short Spin-Off kinetic novel, was released on September 28th, 2017 and can be downloaded here, and was released on Steam on October 4th, 2018, with a bonus story.
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Hello Charlotte provides examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdism: The first episode wanders into this territory at times, especially in the House and in the bear level.
- Abusive Parents: Anri's parents are stated to be putting enormous academic pressure on her. Also, Charles' parents are neglectful at best.
- Adult Fear: As Charlotte's caretaker, part of the games' focus involves making you feel responsible every time Charlotte dies. The second episode's secret ending builds itself on making you feel really bad. In addition, the second episode, in particular, involves a number of unpleasant things happening to what are essentially children, from more mundane cases like bullying and emotional abuse, to surreal situations which are in themselves startlingly bleak metaphors for social integration and disintegration.
- Advert-Overloaded Future: The televisions appear to show only commercials on most channels.
- In Episode 3, the Player is treated to commercials from an 'ether solutions', selling various health and lifestyle products.
- A God Am I: C introduces himself this way.
- Alien Geometries: Everywhere, from the House to Charlotte's School.
- Art Shift: Depending on who The Player is controlling, the art style varies in Episode 3.
- Behavioral Conditioning: Charlotte's classmates at school.
- Beneath the Mask: Most human characters have something to hide.
- Beneficial Disease: In Episode 3, Scarlett Eyler catches word flu after entering the fourth floor, which allows her to understand what it's residents are saying.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Anri.
- Blackmail: One of Anri's Skills is this, hinting that things may not be what they appear.
- Even better, said Skill is a guaranteed One-Hit Kill.
- Blood from the Mouth: Subverted. It's ink.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Examining Charlotte's dresser in the second episode results in the description, 'Clothes, hairpins, microchips, cockroaches... one of these items is not like the others.'
- Break the Cutie: Episode 2 does this to the relatively cheerful Charlotte.
- Broken Ace: Scarlett Eyler is the ideal student rep, boasting good looks, good grades, and an assertive, charismatic personality. She also takes it upon herself to brutalize Charlotte Q84 a number of times to prevent her from destroying the House.
- Body Horror: And how. Especially circumstances involving the Oracle.
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Felix and Charlotte in Episode 1, C and Charlotte (again) in Episode 2. etherane has joked that Charlotte might 'have a type'.
- Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Charlotte.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Episode 2 is especially this.
- Chaos Architecture: The House appearance is different in each game.
- Chuunibyou: C is this in Episode 2.
- Or so it seemed.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Anri.
- Cloud Cuckooland: Charlotte is rather odd, and some of the places she ends up in are even more so.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Charlotte and C.
- Also use their own Cloud Cuckoo Language, although, from the Player's perspective, it's difficult to pick up on at first.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Charlotte from Episode 1 and 2 is a Nice Girl who doesn't want to trouble anyone, while Q84 wants to kill anyone she sees as a threat and runs a society that serves to reduce the population of the school and scare anyone who thinks about harming her.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Implied to have happened to most of the Charlottes in Episode 3.
- Crapsack World: And how.
- From Charlottes point of view it comes of as a Crapsaccharine World, with students at school calling her a princess or a goddess, or either wanting to be her friend or thinking they aren't worthy of being her friend. After she finds out that she accidentally poisoned some Magcats, she sees the school for what it really is, and students she tries to talk to tell her to get lost and/or insulting her.
- Creepy Cleanliness: The House is by and large a disturbingly featureless locale, consisting of sparsely decorated white rooms.
- By the time the House is seen without it, the amount of filth that is actually present is somehow more disturbing.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Oracles, to the Pythias. It doesn't last.
- Cute and Psycho: Q84, for sure.
- Death Is Cheap: Charlotte Q84 goes through this. Every time she dies her memories are merely copied onto a new body. She abuses this frequently.
- Death Seeker: C is searching for a way to leave his mortal body, but cannot simply kill himself due to heavy surveillance and his own fear.
- OSIRIS is revealed to be contemplating the idea after he forcefully attempts to pointlessly sacrifice himself to help Charlotte save Anri in Delirium. Charlotte robs him of the opportunity by saving her without his help, much to his dismay.
- Vincent plans his suicide months in advance, and Episode 3 also heavily implies Scarlett/Charlotte became suicidal after killing the Pythia in Episode 1, hence the viciously cruel environment of Episode 2.
- Deity of Human Origin: Charlotte becomes one after she melds with the Oracle.
- Delirium's Charlotte is this as well, but she has melded perfectly with the Oracle, so have no visible mutations and is able to use it's powers at will.
- Dissonant Laughter: Q84 often laughs and smiles at extremely inappropriate moments.
- Doublethink: Anri compels Charlotte to engage in this after C's suspension.
- Early Installment Weirdness: Episode 1 is vastly different from Episode 2, both in design and in writing. etherane herself has admitted that the idea for the actual plot of Hello Charlotte as a whole came to her mid-development in Episode 1.
- Easily Impressed: Charlotte comes off as this at times.
- Eldritch Abomination: A few, but the Oracles true form is the main one.
- Eldritch Location: Most, if not all the areas that appear in Episode 1 are this, as are several areas that appear in Episode 2 and the Land of Meat and Machinery in Delirium.
- Empty Shell: The fate of students who fail The Trial.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: There are a lot of things that want Charlotte dead after she enters the TV World in Episode 1.
- Evil Feels Good: Delirium's Charlotte has no motive for killing others that her own entertainment, and she is the happiest out of all the Charlottes.
- Extra Eyes: The Pythians, Bennett and all of the Charlottes (with the excepton of Delirium's Charlotte) who merge with the Oracle.
- Fake Memories: It's implied most of the childhood memories from Episode 2 may be these, as they appear to be shared by all Charlottes.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Q84 started out as a normal Charlotte, but when C told her that she was meant to be abused without fighting back for entertainment, she snapped and fought back, infecting people she saw as a threat, and founded White Society, which exists to reduce the population of the school and act as a deterrent against anyone who might want to harm her.
- V19 is implied to be this, although the first time we see her she's already killed everyone at school.
- Gone Horribly Right: In the White End of Episode 2, Charlotte merges with the Oracle and wishes for 'all the painful things to end' and everyone's happiness. This happens, as everyone's mind and soul, with the exception of the Umbrella Man, is consumed by Charlotte. Umbrella Man lampshades this, saying that as long as free will exists, people will hurt others, so everyone must be stripped of their free will to stop anyone from getting hurt.
- Hallucinations: All of Charlotte's alien friends. Also, possibly Charlotte's physical appearance.
- Heel–Face Brainwashing: Apparently what was done to Aiden.
- Heroic BSoD: Charlotte has a severe panic attack after the teacher reveals that she accidentally poisoned a bunch of stray cats, killing them.
- Hive Mind: The Oracle is essentially this.
- Imaginary Friend: In the first two episodes, all the tenants of the House except Charlotte and the Umbrella Man.
- Subverted in the other games.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: V19 does this to everyone at the School except Scarlett Eyler using her powers at an Oracle.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: etherane suggests this may be the case for Anri.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Felix, for all his grouching and snark, does seem to genuinely care about Charlotte's well-being, really deep down. Lampshaded by Felix himself, when Charlotte expresses surprise at his worry for her.
- Loners Are Freaks: One of the premises of the Trial. Someone who has SOCIALIZED often is more likely to get votes than someone who has no friends, like C.
- Loon with a Heart of Gold: Charlotte is easily the nicest character in the game, but she's...odd, to say the least.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The House.
- Mad Scientist: Huxley
- To a lesser extent, Felix, as he is trying to create ice-9, a planet-destroying weapon of mass destruction taken from the pages of Cats Cradle
- Malevolent Masked Men: The Executioners, Pythias who turned against the Oracle.
- Mind Screw: Things can get very strange at times.
- Mind Virus: The plot of the game, and the Player.
- Played a little more literally with references to Toxoplasma gondhii, an alveolate parasite that is carried by cats in real life, and which has been linked to adverse behavioral changes in both humans and mice.
- Never Be Hurt Again: Q84 vows this after a week of bullying, and it's implied that V19 came to a similar revelation.
- Never My Fault: Charlotte, for most of Episode 2. YOU are the one making her do everything, after all, right? Anri also falls under this category, culminating in forcing Charlotte to repeatedly say, 'It's not my fault.'
- Anri repeats this exercise with Charles in Episode 3.
- White Society. Its members vote for people who they blame for the problems, and Q84 murders these scapegoats. She lampshades this.
Q84: These people only need new scapegoats to blame for their inability to change. - Nightmare Fetishist: Charlotte Q84, the player character for the first part of Episode 3, runs a deeply unsettling television show where she gruesomely executes her classmates with a grin plastered on her face.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: In Delirium, Charlotte plays this role. It's played for laughs.
- No Medication for Me: Charlotte stops taking her medication between Episodes 1 and 2.
- Omnicidal Maniac: V19 to an extent.
- Our Souls Are Different: Everyone has their own soul cube, which contains their soul data. As data, it can be formatted and debugged, which is the purpose of the trial. The trial is suppose to help people deemed defective, but it actually just destroys the souls of people who don't conform to social norms. note
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Near the end of Episode 1, several Executioners block Charlotte and Felix's path, and will kill them if the see them. They disguise themselves by simply wearing Executioner masks.
- Player and Protagonist Integration: Of the Advisor and Controller variants. At the same time.
- Psychic Link: The drug Linq is used in Episode 3 as a means for lonely and paranoid people to share memories, sometimes forcibly.
- Punished for Sympathy: Charlotte may well already be a social outcast, but associating with C certainly doesn't help her any.
- Public Execution: Execution Hour, a show where Q84 executes people who White Society has voted to kill.
- Puppeteer Parasite: YOU.
- Rage Against the Heavens: Half of Pythia race strongly disagrees with the Oracles' Assimilation Plot. They win.
- After Q84 learns that her fate is to be abused without fighting back, she immediately fought back by killing anyone she saw as a threat.
- Sociopathic Hero: An interesting subversion: Q84 appears to understand her actions cause distress, and so does not lack empathy, but ultimately does not care.
- Played straight in Delirium.
- Stress Vomit: Charlotte coughs up ink when she's under extreme duress in Episode 2.
- Stylistic Suck: The graphic design in the commercials from Episode 3 is intentionally horrendous, complete with tacky fonts, eye-searingly bright colors, poor photomanipulation (at one point, a Shutterstock watermark appears on an image), and heavy artifacting.
- Arguably, Charlotte's art can be seen as this, as her drawings in Episode 2 are very childish.
- Super OCD: Aiden's room is always perfectly symmetrical, which Charlotte comments on.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: Umbrella Man, C, Charlottes (except Deliriums Charlotte) who've merged with the Oracle have these. All of them are special in some way.
- Talking to Themself: Since nobody can see Seth, Charlotte appears to be talking to herself whenever she interacts with him. Charlotte also narrates her own actions aloud in Episode 1.
- Terrified of Germs: C is severely mysophobic.
- The Bully: Episode 2 is filled with these, taking place mostly at Charlotte's school.
- The Unfavorite: Word of God suggests that this is the reason that Anri is the way she is.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The entirety of Episode 1, and about half of Episode 2. etherane has revealed that at least some part of Charlotte's life in the latter really is that strange, and that she isn't hallucinating all of it.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Pretty much everyone in Episode 3, but especially Charlotte, who is highly misanthropic throughout.
- Subverted in that the Charlotte in most of Episode 3 (unit Q84) isn't the Charlotte we're familiar with, and is said to have been this way from quite early in her existence.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Most of the residents of the House (including Charlotte) seem to have done this in Episode 2, compared to the previous episode.
- Except for Felix, who has grown aggressive and distant, especially towards Charlotte. After The Reveal of what truly happened to Charlotte at the end of Episode 1, one cannot blame him for flipping out.
- The entire plot of Hello Charlotte is arguably this for Scarlett Eyler.
- Trauma Conga Line: One can argue that most of the cast, especially Charlotte herself as of Episode 2 has suffered or is suffering one.
- In an optional section of Episode 2, Bennett is revealed to have basically been born to live one, but unlike most of the other cases, is mostly over it.
- Uncanny Valley Girl: See anything regarding Q84, above.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Subverted. Charlotte is the nicest person in the Hello Charlotte.
- Played straight with Delirium's Charlotte, Q84 and V19. They are all murderers, although each have their own reasons for doing so.
- White Mask of Doom: Worn by the Executioners, Pythias who turned against the Oracle.
- Charlotte and Felix don these temporarily to sneak past some exuctioners.
Felix: How do I look? - Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Anri, revealing her orchestration of Charlotte's abuse over the course of Episode 2, implies it was to teach her 'a lesson'.
- Windmill Crusader: It's implied the entirety of the first episode might have been this.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Averted. Some of her classmates have no problem with beating up or manhandling Charlotte.
- Your Head A-Splode: Some students in Charlotte's school do this if she interacts with them. Nobody bats an eye at it.
Tropes exclusive to Heaven's Gate
- Alternate Universe: The Heaven's Gate universe is a lot nicer all round, mainly due to the absence of Scarlett Eyler, the fact Charles and Vincent meet when they are children and that Anri doesn't move away, each having a positive effect on Charles.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: There are five interludes in the game, the first featuring Charlotte and Frei, the second, third and fifth featuring Bennett and Felix and the fourth is Aether Almanac, a story Vincent wrote.
- After-School Cleaning Duty: This is how Anri and Charles meet in this universe.