Closed Game

A 2015 H Game, written by Izumi Bany'a (of Kuroinu fame) and art by Sei Shoujo (of STARLESS and Bible Black fame). As you can expect of the first, it's brutal. Of the second, it is both erotic sometimes and twisted and erotic in other moments.

In a futuristic, post-apocalyptical earth, most of the humans now live in a Earth depleted of natural resources, and are denominated Earthlings, while a small minority lives on a space station floating above the planet called Caelum Urbs, and are denominated Heaveners. Tougo Magnarten is an orphan Earthling living a humble life as mechanic. His best friend is Celicia, a fellow orphan who became a bounty hunter after the local sheriff, George Mitchell, saw her shooting abilities on a contest. Tougo is constantly arguing with Celicia over the dangers of her profession, and is oblivious to the fact she is romantically interested on him.

Tougo's life changes suddenly when the three are attacked inside a restaurant. Tougo is gravely injured but wakes up completely healed, but finds himself inside some kind of isolated complex. Soon he meets Celicia, George, and three other people who were also kidnapped to this strange place, all of these women.

Not long after, Celicia's sister Celine, which had been adopted by Heaveners and have not be seen by Tougo and Celicia for years, appears through a hologram, and explains why they are there: a contest known as Closed Game is about to begin and they are the participants, the ultimate prize the reward of living in Caelum Urbs, in luxury. But, as it turns out, losing the game has lethal consequences, and certainly the odds are not in favour of the Earthlings.

Developed and published by Empress in Japan. Published in English by JAST USA.

Tropes used in Closed Game include:

Absurdly Youthful Mother: Justifed since Celine is adopted and Caelum Orbs is said to have advanced medicine able to do basically anything.
Action Girl: Cocona. She is the one female character shown with any combat capabilities without guns, being actually able to kill Celine's giant hornet with an tree branch.
A Date with Rosie Palms: Celine masturbates while watching other women being raped.
And Now for Someone Completely Different: You get to pick Celine's choices in who she is going watch be raped. Unlike what you would expect, this has consequences for Tougo.
Anti Hero: The Resistance, which includes Kokone is perfectly willing to injure innocent people and help in their kidnapping as long it get them paid.
After the End: Though is never said what happened, aside of resources becoming scarce.
Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Sort of. One of Celine and Michiko's pets is a giant insect of an unspecified species, though characters resort to call it a hornet.
Babies Ever After: In the true ending, both Celine and Michiko are very happy and pregnant, and there's an implication the kid Michiko carries is from Tougo.
Big Bad: As the short scene from the beginning implies, the idea of bringing Celicia, Tougo and George in the game is all Celine's idea, making her the primary source of conflict.
Big Brother Bully: Celicia makes a big confession where she reveals to Tougo and, well, everyone watching Closed Game, that there were several times where she wronged Celine in some way when they were children, directly or indirectly, making her out to be a female version of these.
Bi the Way:
- Celine openly pleasures herself from watching other women being raped, and has sex with Tougo too in her route.
- Michiko does it mostly with men but have one scene with one woman too.
Bittersweet Ending:
- Celica's route good ending. Tougo is fatally wounded by Celine, which thinks he motivates Celica to try to kill her. Celica begs for Celine to save him, that she does, but Celica is turned into Celine's Sex Slave and never sees Tougo again.
- Celine's route. Celica is fatally wounded by Celine by the duel the first asked for, and Tougo makes his wish to save her from death. Celica is saved but Tougo is now Celine's consort, and never sees Celica. To his luck, Celine is a masochist and actually wants him to sexually torture her, so at worst he feels tired.
- The true ending. Marielle is pretty much sentenced to death since there is no cure for her on Earth, Celine and Michiko face no real punishment other than exile since the immortality treatment of Caelum Urbs can't be reversed, but at least the cast got back to their peaceful lives and now all the sex those two will have is consensual.
Blatant Lies: The hornet poison Cocona says it's affecting her on the poison stage to convince the protagonist into sex is obviously false, but Tougo falls for it, with an extra motivation he has already sexual desire for her anyway.
Cleavage Window: All female uniforms for participants in the Closed Game feature this.
Covers Always Lie: In the game's cover, Celine is seen playfully touching Celicia's left breast, and Celicia seems pretty okay with that. When you play the game however, Celicia talks of her sister pretty aggressively before meeting her again and when the game starts the anger turns into wrath as Celine commits more and more horrible deeds for the sake of the game's ratings.
Crap Saccharine World: For all the good things on Caelum Orbs, the inhabitants are disgusted by sex and it is forbidden. Then again, except for Michiko, which is no angel, they are said to be living pretty happily like that.
Daddy's Little Villain: Michiko is a cruel woman who puts several women and men under the risk of rape before, and Celine was raised to her to be exactly like hr mother, to the point their only notable difference at first seems to be the appearance.
Deadly Game: The titular game show. In the true ending and in Cocona's route, however, there is an aversion. As it turns out, deaths did not happen in previous editions and in fact the Heaveners never intended to kill anybody: Celine edited out the footage of George's death.
Dissonant Serenity: In all routes, Cocona seems unusually cheery after being raped in the second stage. The other characters barely seem to notice, with only Lacey reacting to her by saying they're not "okay".
Downer Ending:
- If you do not get locked in any route, the girl with who Tougo had sex for the last time gets kidnapped by Celine's giant insect and Tougo don't reaches her in time before the game stage ends. Tougo and the others all die.
- Michiko's route. In the post-credits scene, Tougo gets turned into the female-type gimp after Michiko gets bored of him and his personality is overwrote so he shall obey all of Celine and Michiko's commands. And there is no proof that the others were indeed saved.
- In the choice in the very end, choosing the right door will invariably end in Tougo's death, and in Celica's route an special bad ending proceeds where she is raped.
Evil Twin: A trope which is zig-zagged between Celine and Celica. In the past when they were children Celica was definitely abusive, but in the present Celine is definitely the more evil of the two, taking pleasure on the rape of people and willing to murder to achieve their objectives.
Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Celine takes wicked pleasure in watching people suffer, and is also incredibly beautiful.
Foreshadowing: In several points of her route, Michiko talks about how Tougo moans "femininely". Turns out she was planning to turn him into a female gimp once she got bored of him.
For the Evulz: Celine gets outright annoyed when Celicia brings up several reasons of why she would want the latter raped, and insists in saying it's because she finds it funny. That doesn't exactly goes against Tougo's following deduction that the rape in Closed Game is done for ratings, because Celine still chose Celicia to be one of the participants. It turns out to be a lie; later on her own route, Celine confesses she did it out of envy of the fact she was close to Tougo.
Genre Blindness: It takes several stages until the participants realize Closed Game is a show, after being told their suffering is being broadcast all over Caelum Orbs. It's like they never heard of reality shows before.
Green-Eyed Monster: In Celine's route. She eventually reveals she was motivated to torture Celicia between the second and third stages because she dislikes how close she is to Tougo.
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: By the time of the forest stage, Tougo concludes that the game is actually no game at all, and Celine had been cheating all the time. The girls had not been losing by being attacked and raped, their suffering was the attraction all along.
Heroes Want Redheads: In Michiko's route, Tougo ends up falling for her.
Honey Trap: Kokone alludes to have done this several times before after she and Tougo have sex to cure her of the "poison", but Tougo seems Genre Blind to how it works, and she has to properly explain how she can blackmail him with it: by hiding it happened from Celica.
Hot Mom: Justified in Michiko's case since her daughter Celine is adopted.
Ironic Name: In Cocona's route, the Resistance turns out to even work for the government, though they are still trying to steal from them.
Ill Girl: Marielle, which has an unspecified degenerative, and incurable disease, at least for doctors from Earth.
Karma Houdini: In the true ending. Michiko and Celine's punishment is exile to Earth. But Michiko was growing tired of the Heaveners' chastity already, and though Celine is initially annoyed she soon embraces having endless sex with the hordes of men desiring her beautiful body, without mentioning they are both still immortal. In the end they are all happy and pregnant.
La Resistance: A subversion. Despite being called the Resistance, all the Resistance Unit wants is to obtain Heaveners' technology so Earth gets it too, and they even works with the Heaveners. What feeds their conflict is that the Heaveners will not hand them over the technology which makes their society so advanced.
Like Brother and Sister: In-universe, is how Tougo sees his relationship with Celica. The reverse is revealed to not be true quite early in the game, but Tougo only stops treating it like that in her route.
Love Confession: Celine's route. She confesses to Tougo she liked him since they were children. This don't would be a spoiler if it was not for the fact it's a huge twist about Celine's character: she previously only seemed to have sadistic reasons to do what she does.
Man Child: Celicia is a female version, liking merry go-rounds and often being pretty bratty. That is implied to be caused by her poor childhood where she could not have that much fun, creating an emotional hole.
Malevolent Masked Men: The gimps, who use gas masks and physically attack the participants in order of raping them.
Meganekko: Marielle fits it to a T, being shy and fragile and the only female character with glasses.
Murder the Hypotenuse: In Celine's route, that is just one of several reasons in Celica's head to want to kill Celine. Celina actually don't feels that way towards Celica, and goes into battle more to satisfy Celica's willingness to duel. No matter the route, Celica fails, either by Celina shooting her or by Celine taking a third option and shooting Tougo.
Naughty Tentacles: The pig men have tentacles for penises. Invariably the female character that Tougo decides to search with in the theme park gets raped by them.
No Sense of Direction: At the beginning of the forest stage, Tougo reveals Celicia have no sense of direction, resulting in a lot of embarrassment for her
Not So Different: In his own internal narration, Tougo begins to think she and Michiko may not be so different as her route goes, since they both live under hardship. Though he also remarks that hers is of a very different nature.
Oblivious to Love: Tougo's internal narration makes it as obvious as possible that Celicia wants him. Sadly he seems to not be able to deduce what her behaviour around her means.
Parental Incest: Michiko and Celine engage in sex with each other.
Rape by Proxy:
- Any rape involving monsters/gimps is done under orders of Michiko/Celine. The monsters/gimps are not malicious by themselves, they are just too mindless to be that way.
- With the exception of Michiko's route, where he searches alone for the Safe Zone, Tougo is eventually forced to rape the girl who is with during the second stage.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Celicia is headstrong and hot-headed and Lacey is open to argument and cool-headed.
Rule of Three: In the forest stage, Tougo asks if Celica is really going to wander on her own. She answers positively. "In this maze of a forest?" She answers positively. With her nonexistent sense of direction? She almost says "that's right" a third time before going with a Flat What.
Sacrificial Lamb: Celine's giant, ahn, critter kills George early in the game, showing how unmatched the Earthlings are against the enemies of the game.
Scars Are Forever: In her own route, Celine reveals the scar on her arm she got from a shop owner who caught her stealing from his shop. Despite all the superior, almost magical technology Caelum Orbs have, she refuses to heal it, saying it does not matter either way. This proves the lingering question Tougo asks himself about she being an impostor or not.
Sex Sells: Inverted and played straight. Heaveners are generally repulsed by sex, and Closed Game is advertised as a violent competition. However, once the game starts, after some time it revolves more and more about rape, and according with Michiko that increased their interest, though not the point that the act has ceased to be forbidden.
Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes: Type III. The Resistance is perfectly willing to injure innocent people and kidnap them so they go take part on the Closed Game.
Take A Third Option: In Celica's route, Celine can be shot or shoot Celica. She ends up shooting Tougo, seeing his as motivation for the conflict, which she is partially right about.
The Last of These Is Not Like the Others: Michiko's route, since she is not a participant of the game or is her route a sub-route of another heroine(Celine is of Celicia's route). It mostly involves her sexually dominating Tougo, with no monsters/gimps involved aside of the initial scene.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: Celicia and Celine grew up in different environments and it shows: Celicia is very tomboyish and aggressive, and Celine is extremely feminine and tries to be graceful most of the time.
Utopia Justifies the Means: In her route, Michiko explains that the purpose of the Closed Game is show how wonderful sex is to Heaveners, who are generally disgusted by the idea of it.
Villainous Crush:
- In her route, Michiko seems to develop one for Tougo, and Tougo goes back and forth in thinking if it's just sexual interest or she really likes him. The post-credits scene reveals all female gimps were pretty likely Michiko's discarded lovers, so the final answer is no.
- In Celine's route, Celine has an honest and straight crush towards Tougo.
Villainous Incest: Michiko and Celine are mother and daughter, pretty evil and incestuous.