Alter Ego (video game): Difference between revisions

 

Not to be confused with [[Beneath the Mask|tropes]] [[A Darker Me|pertaining to]] [[Evil Twin|an alter ego]], nor with a different game of the same name released for the PC and [[Wii]].

 

* [[Abandon Ware]]: Both the female and male versions are now distributed for easy download as this. There's even [http://www.playalterego.com/alterego/ a version playable online].

* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: {{spoiler|In the Middle Age chapter, a scenario involves your spouse trying to impose a specific diet on you to keep you healthy. If you cheat on your diet with too many things on the side, you'll die. What adds more insult to injury, however, was at the time your spouse isn't home and thus didn't receive the call from the police about your death, and she had to learn of your death and cause of death from her neighbors. Afterward, your spouse was so broken that she needed to be rehabilitated and medicated to move on.}}

* [[Died Happily Ever After]]: {{spoiler|You at the last scenario in the Old Age chapter.}}

** In some scenarios where you make yourself suicidal, you are given the option of either going through with it, or changing your mind and getting help. No matter which you choose, the narrator informs you that suicide is an act of anger and revenge. [[Sarcasm Mode|Because, you know, mental illness and depression totally don't play a part at all.]] Granted, the game ''was'' written in the eighties when the psychology behind the reasons for suicide wasn't as widely understood as it is today, but it still comes off as ''very'' ignorant of what survivors of depression and suicide actually go through.

* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: In some instances where some NPC screws you over, you have the option of getting back at him. However, sometimes what the character did to you (such as a girl giving you "the look" because she's secretly having a crush on you yet shows it in a way a 5-year-old [[Tsundere]] would) and what you do to them (such as shoving said girl so hard from behind that she injures her face when she fell), well...

* [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]]: Mr. Black

* [[Final Exam Boss]]: Some of the intelligence scenarios in the Childhood and Adolescence chapters are tests that raise or lower your intelligence stat if you get the answers correct or incorrect.

* [[For the Lulz]]: Some of the instances you want to do something stupid or bad can lead to this.

* [[Gay Option]]: So far averted, but the online version may add it in. Eventually.

* [[Gratuitous Foreign Language]]: When visiting the fortune teller, (who has a vaguely Eastern European Accent),you are not prompted with the usual responces of "Yes or "No", but instead, "Da" or "Nyet".

* [[High School Sweethearts]]: In the male version, if you dated with or went steady with a girl during your Adolescence years.

* [[Infant Immortality]]: Can get [[Averted Trope|averted hard]] several times throughout the Infancy and Adolescence years.

* [[Mood Whiplash]]: It is possible for you to play a character who is very happy and upbeat about life, and yet still encounter scenarios portraying you as clinically depressed. You can also have the inverse, as there are no penalties for playing a suicidal character who is extremely happy or responds happily during a specific scenario.

* [[Never Got to Say Goodbye]]: If you died prematurely, the narrator sometimes remarks that your family and friends felt this way (especially during the more sudden deaths).

* [[Playing Doctor]]: As a boy in the childhood stage, you can do this with a girl {{spoiler|it goes bad for you if you go with it}}.

* [[Please Wake Up]]: In the Childhood stage, you own a pet goldfish named Gabriella, whom you find one morning to have stopped moving. You can choose to tell your mother about it who will explain to you that she died, but you can also choose to keep her where you will hide her body in your drawers, occasionally put her back in the tank to see if she moves, and even try to forcefeed food in her mouth before you eventually understand she'll never move.

* [[Pop Quiz]]: The game begins with one made entirely of true/false questions.

* [[Rape As Backstory]]: Only in the male version, but {{spoiler|you can apply for a job that involves you starring in adult movies, actively engaging in sex in Adolescence. However, it turns out the studio owner is a crook and you are constantly raped and humiliated while he rolls the tape, ending with your boss kicking you out without pay while telling you you're lucky he's letting you live, followed by him disappearing without a trace if you tell your parents or the police.}} How straight this trope plays, however, varies because [[Canon Dis Continuity|it is never brought up again after the scenario ends]].

* [[Rated M for Money]]: The game didn't sell well as most parents had raised eyebrows of the game's very visible warning that it has strong sexual themes. It's right, but the game immediately gives you a heads up if you try to trigger a scenario with said sexual themes (and won't penalize you if you skip them), and the content you see isn't anything worse or any more explicit than you can find in a sex-ed class (besides sexual encounters with your spouse or someone else, for instance, a lot of these events involved you just beginning to learn about sexuality as you're growing up).

* [[Shotgun Wedding]]: If you play as a female, in your Adolescent years you will have a friend who will get pregnant, marry her boyfriend, and invite you to the wedding. It's never really stated as to whether the wedding was the couple's decision together, or if was a totally straight shotgun wedding decided by their parents.

* [[Supreme Chef]]: You can potentially be one in Adulthood where you try to think of the right ingredient to add to make a dish your family and friends rave about. {{spoiler|If the [[Random Number God]] agrees with you, you can become an overnight fast food sensation as well.}}

* [[Take That]]: Sometimes, if you try to go against something the narrator really, ''really'' tries hard to make you go for, the narrator will pull this on you to either [[But Thou Must|make your path null or to make you go to their path anyways.]] {{spoiler|An example is in Childhood, where you can choose to watch a new ''Superduck'' epsiode or help your dad with yard work. Insist on doing the former instead of bonding with your dad with the latter, and the narrator will say, "The episode was a ''repeat'', so there!"}}

* [[Tempting Fate]]: So many, ''many'' times you can do so that some choices are outright labeled "push your luck".

* [[Tsundere]]: You have certain scenarios where you can first make hostile responses and then follow up with more gentle ones, or you can choose to be hostile to some and gentle to others.

* [[Womb Level]]: The very first scenario you play involves your birth {{spoiler|and whether you want to be born peacefully, to be born as painfully as possible, or to stay inside your mother for so long that you force her to have a C-section}}.

* [[You Would Make a Great Model]]