Screaming Castle

***Screaming Castle: Night Prowler*** (絶叫城 ナイト・プローラ, *Zekkyō-jō Naito Purōra*), also known simply as ***Screaming Castle*** (絶叫城, *Zekkyō-jō*) and stylised as ***Screaming Castle: NIGHT PROWLER*** (絶叫城 *NIGHT PROWLER*, *Zekkyō-jō Night Prowler*), is a horror slasher video game developed and produced by Simbalinx based in Kyoto. It is set inside a place known as Screaming Castle (also called *Castle Scream*) and stars four characters with an antagonist known as the Night Prowler.

## Gameplay

The game is a third-person single-player horror-adventure game with the player using any of the four playable characters, namely Remi, Alisa, Maya, or Yuka. The objective of the game is to defeat the Night Prowler before getting himself slain, but it may be assumed that the character must escape Screaming Castle before time runs out, after which would probably be when the Night Prowler appears. It is unknown whether the other three players are playable and how the player's character can "defeat" the Night Prowler. Given the overall theme and genre of the game, it was generally meant for mature and mostly adult players.

Alice Arisugawa once played this game on his game console, where his character, Maya, got repetitively killed by the Night Prowler. He spent an entire day finishing the game, which may assume its relative difficulty to achieve its aim.

### Characters

The game features four female characters as well as their opponent:

* **Remi** (HP: 2681554 — Exp: 5154629)
Remi wears a white collared blouse underneath a black blazer that is partially buttoned. She has her hair tied in a bun with a portion of her bangs hanging in the middle of her forehead.
* **Alisa** (HP: 3559665 — Exp: 2158423)
Alisa wears a white long-sleeved blouse and has black hair with her bangs swept to her right and some of her hair seemingly tucked inside her blouse behind.
* **Maya** (HP: 2655146 — Exp: 6522657)
Maya wears a blue shirt dress that reaches her knees and has black hair that reaches her shoulders, with a lock of hair framing her left face and bangs swept to her left. She is the character that Alice used when he played the game.
* **Yuka** (HP: 2463651 — Exp: 3699548)
Yuka wears a white sleeveless blouse with navy blue collars and trimmings on the shoulder area. She also has short black hair and bangs that cover most of her forehead.
* The **Night Prowler**
It is the monster lurking inside Screaming Castle and the primary antagonist in the game. Generally, it is the role of the people who had possibly previously ventured in the castle and slain the monster, getting revived over and over using the soul of the person who defeated it.

### Plot

Four characters namely Remi, Alisa, Maya, and Yuka arrive at Screaming Castle, a fictional and mysterious castle apparently to solve its haunting case. Inside, a figure known as the Night Prowler lurks, waiting for the moment to attack its prey. Once it finds one of the characters, it kills her using a knife, ending that specific gameplay.

#### Bad Ending

Throughout the game, the player evades the Night Prowler from killing the character. When the Night Prowler does so, the character dies and the game resets. However, when the player manages to defeat the Night Prowler, the alleged soul of the monster transfers from its now-deceased host body to the character who defeated it. Apparently possessing her, the character now turns into the new Night Prowler in the Screaming Castle. When this happens, the game is finally completed, albeit having a bad ending.

## Public Reception

*See also: Night Prowler Assaults*
According to a producer from Simbalinx, *Screaming Castle* had sold to 300,000 people, which made it rather popular among gamers. However, after the media and the police connected the game to the serial killings sometime in early 2016, the game's sales and stocks plummeted.

## Trivia

* When Alice was playing the game, it was seen that his character, Maya (indicated on the upper left portion of the screen), had a remaining HP of 63976 out of its possible maximum HP of 2655146. Moreover, from this specific gameplay:
	+ It featured time counting backwards, hinting that the game may be time-based. Alice had a remaining time of roughly 5 minutes and 36 seconds.
	+ There seems to be a sort of a map on the lower left portion, depicting the castle with a circular architectural design.
	+ There are what appear to be two gauges on the lower right portion of the screen: one with a distinct (and apparently not moving at that specific time) neon green colour and another one that resembles a speedometer.
* Throughout several screengrabs of the game, Maya can be seen wearing her blue outfit, albeit with slightly-puff sleeves reaching her elbows. However, in the game manual, she had short sleeves in her outfit as seen in her character image.