Spooky from Spookys House Of Jumpscares/Spookys Jumpscare Mansion
Spooky has a Ryu Number of 5/4/does not have a Ryu Number.
(explanation below)
Look, it's complicated. Things will be more concrete when Cross Impact hits Early Access.
Fair warning: this explanation is a bit more involved than normal, because the research hole this sent me down had me sincerely doubting my own base competence.
So, from the top: Spooky's only eligible appearance is in her own game, Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion née House of Jump Scares, as her only other appearance, period, seems to be as a trophy in Indie Pogo.
Naturally, this makes SJSM's specimens as the only connecting points. I've identified three that could work:
Unknown Specimen 1 is just White Face from IMSCARED.
This seems to be a dead end, as White Face's only other eligible appearance seems to be in the Nightmare Mode of Cooking Companions, as part of a menagerie of other horror game characters, including SJSM's own Specimen 6. But all of those also seem to be dead ends, and Specimen 6 just gets back to where we started, so that's probably no good.
How about Unknown Specimen 5?
Named Lisa. Sure looks quite a bit like Lisa from P.T. and once-prospective Silent Hills. Let's say it's that Lisa. What else has Lisa been in?
Apparently just P.T., which wouldn't be altogether unsurprising given, you know, all that happened with Silent Hills. Even the Lisa decoys for Metal Gear Solid V showcased in the Tokyo Game Show 2014 trailer didn't make it to the final game.
But there are still other P.T. references that did make it. Namely, that pleasant radio transmission, interruptions and all, can be heard from some radios in MGSV.
Now, given that audio-only appearances are broadly eligible, you could make a case that whoever's reading in this transmission is a character themself, which would in turn connect Lisa to The Phantom Pain, at which point calculating the Ryu Number is just a matter of hashing out who exactly is and is not in MGSV. The only issue I have with making this connection is that the audio is basically reused wholesale from P.T., which arguably makes it more in line with an archival recording, which is not eligible, than bespoke radio chatter, which is eligible, but hey, whatever, I've peddled dodgier. Why the hell not.
So in the search of a route with less caveats, let's consider what I've identified as the last possible eligible connection, Specimen 8. This cervine bundle of fun can be seen in Lost in Vivo as part of Lost Tape 3.
It turns out there's another character in Lost in Vivo who's been in something else: Sotiris. It also turns out that the "something else" in question is, uh,
the EEK3 2020 Virtual Show Floor. Which, to the best of my knowledge, is never referred to as a game, so if that matters to you, then we're done, and Spooky either has the aforementioned route through Lisa or nothing.
If you're willing to say that the virtual show floor is a game, which does not seem to be an unpopular opinion, then good news! There's a clear path to Ryu. You just have to go through Skully, who cameos in Toree 3D,
to the titular Toree, who's a guest character in Lunistice,
to Kit, the main character of Lunistice, who cameos in CrossCode,
to Lea, whose Ryu Number of 2 is already established, which gives Spooky a final Ryu Number of I'm sorry, I'm being handed a note.
Oh. Well fuck me, then, for not considering that the realities of game development could lead to a scenario wherein a character from an in-progress game could make cameo appearances in other games, only to be scrapped entirely before their would-be source game is released. Clearly, this is what the kids refer to as a "skill issue".
And the best part? This chain is so long that I'm genuinely expecting to have overlooked something really obvious that gives a shorter number, because the documentation I found on indie-ass indie horror game crossovers is spotty. So if you have any information that could shorten this more substantial than "White Face is graffiti in the full release of FAITH", send it my way. I'd rather be definitely wrong than dubiously correct.
Anyway, Toree's set to be playable in Cross Impact, so when that's released to the wider public most of this nonsense I just spewed at you will actually come into play. Until then, make of all of this what you will. If you'll excuse me, I need to go fucking distort.
329 notes
·
View notes