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From the game's website
Close Your Eyes is a 2018 freeware puzzle horror game by Gamagami, where the only defense against enemies is to close your eyes.
Set in the year 2057, a person named Cecily Newman wakes up in a mysterious laboratory owned by a company called V.I.E.W, where they are hunted by strange beings called "Husks" as they try to find their way out. On the way, a mysterious entity leaves them messages and clues.
Tropes used in Close Your Eyes include:
- Abandoned Hospital Awakening: It's not a hospital but a laboratory. However, it does look like a hospital.
- After the End: Implied, considering that it's in the year 2057 and the fact that it's after or during WWV.
- Ambiguous Gender: Cecily Newman (the player), though the name implies the character is female (or meant to be). According to the "Recollection Ending", Cecily is female.
- And I Must Scream: The Husks. They do a lot of screaming but it's not like they don't have a reason to as they're what's left of humans after the cognitive transfer procedure and were mutilated.
- Awful Truth: The outside world is ruined
- Brain Uploading: V.I.E.W was attempting some variant of this, either that or Transferable Memory.
- Bilingual Bonus: The strings of binary and wingdings.
- Bittersweet Ending: The "Best Ending" is the closest to this
- Subtitle: Everyone closed their eyes.
- Downer Ending: All of the endings in some way or another, as in the "Husk Ending," you free the Husks from the facility but you free them to a post-nuclear wasteland, and in the "Recollection Ending" you find out that you're the Witch and you're implied to kill yourself.
- Dying as Yourself: The Recollection Ending can be interpreted as this.
- Evil Inc..: V.I.E.W seems to be playing this role and, from what's implied (especially by the protest signs and clues left by the Witch), the participants (or many of them) in the Cognitive Transfer program were not entirely willing.
- Failure Is the Only Option: When your eyes are stolen, there's a hint that says give up and the other one says, "Don't run away from me."
- Fun with Acronyms:
- V.I.E.W stands for "Vitality and Identity Extraction for WWV"
- "E.Y.E.S" stands for "Entity's Yielded Essence Storage".
- Go Mad from the Revelation: The random glitching when you come across a clue and the lab exploding can be interpreted as this.
- Hell Is That Noise: That odd muffled screech/yell the Husks make.
- Ignorance Is Bliss: From what's implied by the storyline, at least in the case of the endings, especially the "Best Ending".
- Jump Scare: The Husks and the Witch do that throughout different points of the game.
- Mind Screw: Some elements of the setting, especially when the player has their eyes closed or opened (with the dream sequences)
- Nightmare Face: The Husks, with the empty eyes and the mouth made into a Glasgow Smile with more teeth.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The Witch and the Husks, as they're trying to reclaim the part of their humanity that was lost.
- No Name Given: That dress-wearing entity that leaves you clues isn't named (besides MatPat calling her the "Witch")
- Noodle Incident:
- Besides that the year is 2057 and the events are implied to set after World War V and, so far, that's about it, as we don't really know what happened. However, we get a clue as to what may have happened to the V.I.E.W employees, with the signs warning about the Husks (specifically that they can kill).
- How the Witch came to be. We do know that she came to be through the Cognitive Transfer program but we don't know if she came to be as a variant or if her cognitive transference was botched, somehow, considering that she doesn't look too much like Husks (but speaks for them) and the other half of her consciousness is stored in Cecily Newman. However, Cecily's chart at the beginning of the game seems to imply that it was the latter but how that happened isn't clear, either.
- Our Souls Are Different: As we find out, the titular eyes are this, as they house the other half of human consciousness.
- Take a Third Option: This leads to the "Best Ending".
- Tomato Surprise: The "Recollection Ending"
- Tragic Dream: From what we find out, the Witch was trying to escape to some sort of beautiful meadow setting. This doesn't come true, as the world is a nuclear wasteland.
- World War Three: World War V.
- Wham! Line: More than a few of them, as can be read here
- You Can't Go Home Again: As is emphasized in the Husk Ending and the Recollection Endings, the world is a nuclear wasteland, thus escaping the V.I.E.W facility means escaping to nothing.
- Younger Than They Look: Cecily is about four hours old, however, this is justified, as they're a robot host body.