The You Testament

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All the crosses are marked I.N.R.I. It's Latin for 'Did Not Do the Research' —PC Gamer

The You Testament is a speculative what-if game by the indie developer Mat Dickie, better know among his fans and Hatedom as MDickie. In it, you take the role of a disciple of Jesus Christ, who follows his teacher through the stories of Jesus found in the Bible; incredibly loose versions of the stories, that barely resemble any extant edition of the Bible.

Although The You Testament was meant to be MDickie's last game, he eventually changed his mind and made a sequel (actually a mod of the first game), Making of a Prophet, about Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

Tropes used in The You Testament include:

• Aerith and Bob: Oooooh, so much. Characters in The Making Of A Prophet can go from being named Muhammad to Plato to Buddha to Wendy.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI for most of the people on the map can only be described as random, with a penchant for acting like complete jerks. Characters will wander to one corner of the map, stand there for a while, walk to the center of the map, sit down for a few seconds, get back up, walk over to another character and start violently beating them for no reason until they fall over, then walk over to you, steal whatever it is you're holding and run for it (and if course, if you try to take it back, they'll claim it's theirs and threaten you to give it back.)
• Artistic License History: MDickie just generally played fast and loose with both history and religion in both games, but the real crowner would have to be the crucifixions in the second game. In his Let's Play, Daeren acknowledges that it's just barely plausible that they might have still been carrying out crucifixions, but then he takes a closer look at the crosses: every one of them bears a sign that reads "INRI". INRI is short for a phrase which translates in English to "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews". In other words, this should only have appeared on one cross in the first game (guess). In the Let's Play, this discovery causes a massive freakout in both Daeren and his character.
• Author Tract: Both it and its sequel delve into Dickie's views on religion, using both religious figures as a mouthpiece.
• Awesome but Impractical: The Strength Miracle, which grants you Super Strength and the ability to curbstomp your enemies. The downside? Well, the miracle requires your Soul Meter. Punching people reduces that meter. When you kill someone, the meter completely drains, and when the meter drains, your miracle goes bye bye. Not to mention that it's on the very top of your Miracle Tree, which means you have to be patient in order to select it, which by that point you'd probably be interrupted by someone.
• Blind Idiot Translation: By a guy who speaks English, even! Almost none of the dialog actually appears in any edition of the Bible. The stuff that comes anywhere close is either badly paraphrased, or a Frankensteinian mishmash of several verses.
• Book Ends: You meet your first disciple at the end of the story in the same spot you met Jesus in at the beginning.
  • Also, in The Making Of A Prophet, you meet Arjuna, your protege in the same spot you met Muhammad in the beginning. He also seems to look exactly like Muhammad if he were a kid.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall/Painting the Fourth Wall: If you hang around with Jesus long enough, He will eventually teach you the skill that lets you see the world as it really is. This translates to playing the game in wireframe mode.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: In The Making Of A Prophet, in order to make the Muslims and Quraysh stand out, MDickie made their robes white and black respectively, save for Muhammad, who wears green.
• Composite Character: Word of God states that the main character in The Making Of A Prophet takes the place of both Abu Bakr and Muhammad's son-in-law Ali in order to drive the story along.
• Controllable Helplessness: Getting imprisoned or crucified. If you've learned to meditate, you may be able to use it to escape from a cross. For jail, there's really nothing to do but wait it out. That or cheat your way out.
• Did Not Do the Research: In the first few minutes of his Let's Play of the game, General Ironicus discovers a citation claiming the dialog is from Matthew 17:28--a Bible verse that doesn't even exist. This pretty much sets the tone for the entire game.
• Going Through the Motions: Especially noticeable as there are only a half-dozen different poses, and all of them look rather awkward.
• Interface Screw: If your character gets blinded, you as the player can still see normally but your movement controls get inverted.
• Let's Play: General Ironicus (with some help from Chip Cheezum) LP'd The You Testament: Fuck MDickie Edition (a mod he made replacing most of the textures with random ones from various sources for a completely absurd experience). This would inspire fellow goon Daeren to go on to Let's Play the sequel.
• Made of Plasticine: with the "Gore" option set to Extreme (which it defaults to), it's not uncommon for the frequent brawls to result in people hobbling around with missing body parts.
• Medium Awareness: Bizarrely, both Muhammed and Jesus seem to be aware that they're in a video game, because they're able to see their own subtitles, they can turn on wireframe mode to make you "see the world as it really is!" and make allusions to the words of Heaven being the very text the game is coded upon.
  • And for Muhammed, in combination with Word of God, he mentions how Allah would read from the records of each and every person on Judgement Day. Those records? The Data-File for the characters.
• Obvious Beta: Of the late beta sort - playable, but clearly wonky, and never receiving proper quality assurance testing. The creator himself said he rarely plays his own games when he's "done" with them; it's pretty obvious this includes not doing any playtesting.
• Only One Female Mold: There are several male body types, but only one female. In fact, you make a character female by assigning it a female body - you're still free to give "her" a face with a 5 o'clock shadow or Snidely Whiplash moustache.
• Refuge in Audacity: His justification for ignoring the taboo against depictions of the prophet Muhammad in the sequel basically amounts to, "Not only is what I'm doing not blasphemous or offensive, but actually, when you think about it, the taboo is the real blasphemy because that way I'm totally actually a hero for doing this."
  • And then he straight-up Bowdlerized Muhammed's life as every devout Muslim learns it, explaining that he edited out parts that didn't meet with his approval so he could portray the prophet respectfully. "Audacity" doesn't begin to describe it.
• Religion Is Magic: You get a whole bunch of strange abilities for following Jesus or Muhammad, including healing hands, the ability to alter the terrain, and if you're evil, fireballs!
• Ridiculously Average Guy/Composite Character: Your character is basically every incidental person from the Bible who encounters Jesus and learns a lesson without necessarily becoming a dedicated follower. This occasionally requires that the story be mangled out of shape so that some random guy fits.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Abu Jahl in The Making Of A Prophet survived the Battle of Badr, and because of this is combined with Abu Sufyan. He still gets killed off, just not when he was supposed to die.
• Title Drop: A particularly clumsy one, too. "And when they write down their unique version of the experience, it will be called The You Testament."
• Visual Novel: It might not seem like it, but this has enough of the requirements fulfilled to be considered one.
• Weirdness Censor: People regularly beat each other up, hopping around on one leg, walking without legs, knock others down, hug people and then start beating up the person they hugged, steal items from others...boy.