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Video Game / Lakeview Cabin Collection

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Following the success of the original Lakeview Cabin, Lakeview Cabin Collection presents a loving tribute to the horror movies of the 70's and 80's, through the guise of a Horrorfest playing a collection of movies from the Lakeview Cabin series.

This time around, the player has four characters at their command, and may guide them through the coming terrors however they wish... Will you manage to keep everyone alive?


Four episodes Lakeview Cabin Collection are planned. The game was completed, with all four episodes and an Epilogue, on May 27th, 2016. A bonus mini-episode, "Last Christmas", was added in 2017, over a year after the game's final release.

Followed by Lakeview Valley.

Lakeview Cabin Collection generally presents the following tropes:

  • An Arm and a Leg: Characters can lose a limb if they aren't careful. These severed limbs can then be picked up and carried around. Note that this won't stop them at all from being able to do anything.
  • Anyone Can Die: Depending, of course, upon your gameplay. It's required, multiple times in fact, to complete V.
  • Arc Symbol: A red eye often appears in the various episodes inscribed on walls.
  • Booby Trap:
    • You can attempt to lure your enemies into traps in III, such as getting them to step on a bear trap.
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    • The bear traps return in IV; the mansion and slaughterhouse also feature traps that can screw over your protagonists if you bumble into them.
  • Clothing Combat: Socks and underwear are some of the items whose only real function is to throw at the bad guys, which does deal a small amount of damage.
  • Daylight Horror: The monsters can come at any time, even during daylight. In III, you can invoke this by ringing the bell.
  • Disgusting Public Toilet:
    • One of the toilets at the movie theater obviously hasn't been cleaned for a long, long time, and is backed up to the point of being completely unusable. There's also spiderwebs overhead. The Spiderwebs hold a shotgun shell, and repairing the toilet so someone can use it to acquire the shell is a necessary step to beating the hub world's Bonus Boss.
    • One of the public restrooms in III has been completely boarded up and left to rot. Averted as it's actually the toilet next door that's disgusting. Again, finding a way to break down the boards and use the toilet can lead to an item that helps in beating the boss.
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  • Driven to Suicide: "The sewers SCREAM at me"...
  • Endless Game:
    • Lake of the Dead is effectively a Last Stand scenario: see how many zombies you and your friends can take down before you're completely overwhelmed.
    • Treasure of the Vampire Rednecks has you raiding their mansion trying to collect as much gold as possible before you're all killed.
  • Everybody Lives: Tricky, but possible. Also counts as Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: A variation with motorcycles. If you drive the motorcycle into the large weight, the water, or either of the killers, it will cause a massive explosion, likely killing the rider, but certainly damaging whoever or whatever it runs into.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Father, if you kill the Son during III, will go berserk, start crying, and move a lot faster.
  • Final Death: Characters who die in Episodes III, IV, and VI die permanently, and can't be brought back until a restart. Averted for V, where dying and coming back is a major part of the game.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The end of Episode 1, III, features a photo of the family of the protagonist of the original game, showing that they had a son and daughter. Their son is the primary antagonist of Lakeview Cabin V, and the daughter plays a role in VI.
    • Episode 2, Lakeview Cabin IV: Curse of the Lake is set in a mansion. The same mansion you can see on the other side of the lake in III the whole time.
    • The Hub Level has a locked room you can peek into. Peeking becomes a major gameplay mechanic in IV for navigating the mansion and slaughterhouse.
    • Lakeview Cabin IV opens stating that the events of the game are based on real events. The Epilogue implies that the games are based on a real murder within the game's universe.
  • Full-Frontal Assault
    • In III, V, and VI, each character can strip nude, while still being able to fight and attack the killers.
    • In IV, the family members in the bathroom, the statue hall, and one of the ones in the showers, are nude and still try to kill you as normal. In addition, Piggy is completely nude aside from the pig head.
  • Genre Shift: Each installment lampoons a different variation of the slasher movie, and has different gameplay types to accommodate.
    • III is more or less a true sequel to the original, with an updated version of the original location.
    • IV is a Hillbilly Horror with a very large house to explore.
    • V is a neighborhood slasher movie, involving moving between the houses with more puzzle-oriented gameplay.
    • VI is a Sci-Fi horror set in space, with multiple aliens breeding by killing NPCs.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: Originally, only the player characters could be damaged by corpses and body parts. The enemies in IV can be damaged this way, as well. This allows the player to fight and kill enemies with their own severed leg, or the corpses of their companions.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Can happen in several variations. The simplest version is knocking down an enemy, and using the weapon they drop against them.
    • The explosives in IV have a radius roughly the size of most of the rooms, making it difficult to kill anyone with them without also blowing the user up.
    • On a deeper level, player characters killed in III can return as zombies if their bodies end up in the lake, and will attack anyone else, including the person who killed them. Similarly, since thrown corpses deal damage in IV, it's possible to kill someone by hitting them with their victims.
  • Hub Level: Presented as a movie theater holding a Horrorfest, where you can switch between multiple characters and fool around a bit before heading into the main game by selecting which movie to see. There is, of course, a twist to this as well, with a zombie-like monster with a machete stalking the sewers.
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: It's entirely possible to accidentally (or not...) hit your companions with friendly fire.
  • Improvised Weapon: Cardboard boxes, backpacks, flyswatters, guitars, chickens... your companions... if you can pick it up, you can throw it.
  • Interface Screw: Drinking and taking hits from a bong will shake and blur the screen respectively. You'll be back to normal if you take a swig of coffee.
    • IV uses a horrifying version of this. The enemies are much more plentiful and way easier to defeat than the two killers in III, but killing them (or otherwise being covered in blood) causes the screen to get darker and redder. As the character kills more people, the screen becomes distorted and filtered, horrifying noises can be heard in the background, and jump scares can appear when entering a room. The effect can be reversed by stepping outside the mansion. VI has something similar.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: If you weren't already aware that the original Lakeview Cabin was a bit more than just a cabin simulator, well... surprise!
  • Leitmotif: The child and the father in III and the sewer monster's first and second forms in the hub world have their own tense and "Psycho" Strings-filled theme song that appears when they appear and try to kill the main characters. The monster rats in IV have one, as well.
    • The killer in V has one as well, which isn't helped by the fact that he can show up at complete random.
    • The wife has her song, which first shows up in III and recurs throughout the series. It's usually a prime indicator that some serious Mind Screw is about to happen.
  • Man on Fire: Be careful around campfires, matches, flares, flare guns, or gasoline... They can be used to burn the enemies to a crisp if they don't enter the water first, though.
  • Mind Screw: There's an overarching plot to the entire collection, and trying to make sense of it all can easily result in this.
    • The Epilogue is nothing but this. It appears to be a recreation of Lakeview Cabin I, only with a different protagonist and the wife is still alive. However, things quickly go to hell when the player jumps into the lake, leading to a long series of nightmares in which he sees his wife as various monsters, sees scenes from the other Lakeview Cabin Collection episodes, sees his wife being sacrificed, and more, with only the protagonists' expressions of terror to give any idea of what's going on; it culminates in him making that same expression of terror around his wife in the apparent waking world, before taking an axe and killing her with a gleeful expression...only for this too to appear to be a dream, with the protagonist getting a few glimpses of life with his wife still being alive before waking up for the last time on the island with his wife missing and what appear to be his children running around. The player picks up the axe again, approaches one of the kids, swings... cue Smash to Black just before the blow connects, complete with one last Scare Chord.
  • Nintendo Hard: Not knowing what you're supposed to do quickly gets you killed, and even if you know, it's still very difficult to get out of situations in a safe, clean manner.
  • No Name Given: None of the cast members seem to have anything in the way of official names. Even in the manual for Lacus Lamia, the closest to a name the Witch gets is "Saint Mother".
  • Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: You and your companions can suffer horrific injuries, such as snapping a limb clean off or having your chest and/or face torn open, and keep going.
  • Offscreen Teleportation:
    • The sewer monster basically acts on the same movement rules as Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. While on screen, he moves at a snail's pace that a one-legged character could easily outpace. When the camera's not on him, however, he has a tendency to almost instantly close the gap between him and his victims.
    • The killer in V can't walk through doorways, but instead has a chance of appearing randomly whenever the player passes through a door.
  • One-Winged Angel:
    • The slasher in the hub area's sewers will turn into a speedy rat monster when it's halfway dead.
    • The wife in Lakeview Cabin VI turns into a giant monster that's a cross between a demon and the alien queen from Aliens after you kill her first form.
  • "Psycho" Strings: Each time a character is seriously hurt is accompanied with a shrill violin noise, and each of the songs that accompany the appearance of the monsters feature these in them.
  • Rake Take: If you step on a rake, the force of the stick coming up is enough to knock you flat on your back. You can use it against the killers, too.
  • Rasputinian Death:
    • Your characters can potentially suffer through these.
    • The child in III takes a ridiculous amount of punishment before he goes down.
  • Resources Management Gameplay: Same as in the first game, but more pronounced here, as even one poor decision can mean the difference between prevailing and a Total Party Wipe.
  • Scare Chord: Plays whenever somebody is injured, whether it's one of your heroes being hurt or them fighting back against the killers. An extended one plays whenever a character is killed, and a full theme plays on a Total Party Wipe.
  • Sequel Escalation: The original game had only one playable character and a relatively small island. Collection features four for each scenario you're in, and the island of the previous game is also much bigger. Episode 2 is said to have 25 rooms in the mansion.
  • Shout-Out: The sewer monster is dressed like Jason Voorhees.
  • Show Within a Show: The Hub Level presents the various episodes as just fictional horror movies the characters in the hub level can watch. That doesn't mean that there isn't a real killer residing in the hub, though, and the epilogue implies that the films are based on a real murder in the game's universe.
  • Something Completely Different:
    • IV is about fighting cannibals in a mansion, ala The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, loosely tied into the other films aside from being near said lake.
    • V is about a group of teenagers trying to avoid and defeat a masked knife-wielding killer with seemingly-supernatural powers, akin to Halloween.
    • VI is (aesthetically, at least) Alien.
    • Beating each of the main movies unlocks access to an alternate movie mode featuring a different sort of threat and a shift in priorities.
  • Story Breadcrumbs: Once again, players must explore each area and put the pieces together. III lets you find scraps of paper containing information about the Backstory. IV's even stingier about its story, with the single note it gives (The Last Will) requiring you to do some pretty elaborate steps to get it. V gives clues that tie together the plot of the different stories, but in a very vague manner.
  • The Family That Slays Together: Featured in III and IV. The killer in V is part of the same family from III, who are also revealed to be distantly related to the cannibal family from IV.
  • The Many Deaths of You: There's lots of ways to die in these movies...
  • Toilet Humor: Characters can use the restroom, making some disturbingly loud sounds in the process. This can help knock down items above them.
  • Token Good Teammate: If the redheaded girl player character in III and VI is the sister in the Red family photo, that would make her the only member of the family who didn't end up a murderous serial killer.
  • Un-Installment: While the original game is implied to be the first entry in the Lakeview Cabin movie series, thus far, there's no signs of a Lakeview Cabin II. The first episode of Collection is III. Averted after VI's release, where beating all of the episodes will allow you to play Lakeview Cabin II as an epilogue.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Ensuring that Everyone Lives, including III's cute little dog.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...Or you can go the complete opposite route, killing off your companions by actively looking for all the ways you can die, or doing the deed yourself. In fact, the game gives a number of achievements that involve murdering your companions.
  • White Mask of Doom: Some of the killers wear these. If you can get them away from their owners, you can put them on yourself, though they appear to be purely cosmetic.

Lakeview Cabin III also holds examples of:

  • The Alcoholic: There is a lot of booze, in the forms of both cheap 1-use beer and infinite use whiskey, laying around the Cabin in III.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: If you want to summon the monsters in III, all you need to do is ring the bell.
  • Apocalyptic Log: The scraps of paper you find around the camp hint at past tragedies.
  • Bag of Holding: A backpack in III can hold a seemingly infinite amount of items.
  • Booze-Based Buff: Drinking booze or taking a hit from the bong will cause Interface Screw, but will also prevent the character from taking fall damage.
  • Carpet of Virility: Both of the male leads in III have plenty of chest hair, much like the original protag.
  • Came Back Wrong: If a corpse is thrown into the lake, it will later come back as a ravenous zombie.
  • Death from Above: Using the zipline in III will cause the weather vane on the next house to fall down. If anyone is standing beneath it when it falls, whether enemy or friend, they will take massive damage. This requires such precise timing that it's impractical to use in actual gameplay, though...unless you use the guitar to stun the first killer long enough to switch to another character who's already ready to use the zipline.
  • The Load: Nearly all of the items have some unique function, or can at the very least be thrown or swung at the killers to deter them. Word of God confirms that the dog in III really only exists to screw everything up and look cute. There's an achievement tied to beating the game with the dog still alive, discouraging the players from shooting it.
  • Nemean Skinning: A somewhat gruesome example, as the child will wear the dog as a hat if he kills it offscreen.
  • Papa Wolf/Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The father in III will burst into tears if he sees that his child has been killed, and promptly becomes faster and tougher to kill.
  • Psychopathic Man Child: One of the main villains in III is a serial killer who is about the size of an adult, but with a child-like cry, a mask of a child, and is shown to both be very simple-minded (his tactics mainly include just rushing at anyone he sees, even if it involves going straight into fire), and also seems to have a love for teddy bears, as giving one to him will allow the player to get a free hit in on him.
  • Rogue Protagonist: The father in III appears to be a balding version of the protagonist of the original game, indicating he's joined his wife and children.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Mainly to the Friday the 13th series. The first killer is, much like Jason Voorhees, an undead Manchild who possesses low intelligence and an uncontrollable urge to kill.
    • If you throw the dead bodies of your fellow camp councilors into the lakes, they will eventually return as zombies, similar to the All Just a Dream ending of the first Friday the 13th (1980) where an undead Jason jumps out of the water to grab the Final Girl.
  • Summer Campy: III is set at a summer camp. It's unclear whether the four protagonists are counselors sent to clean up the place, or if the camp's been abandoned following recent unfortunate events.
  • Title of the Dead: Lake of the Dead, III's alternate movie mode, turns it into a black and white zombie flick.
  • Turns Red: If the Psychopathic Manchild's father finds him dead, he starts running faster, crying so hard that his face gets flushed red.
  • Would Hurt a Child: While there's no children present at the moment, some of the documents you find imply some of the younger campers met horrible ends.

Lakeview Cabin IV shows instances of:

  • Anti-Frustration Features: Like other gas cans, the gasoline needed to escape from the mansion can explode. However, they respawn when this happens, preventing the game from being unwinnable.
  • Based on a Great Big Lie: IV opens with a spiel of this nature:
    The game you're about to play is an account of the tragedy that befell a group of four youths. Names have been changed to respect what was left of the survivors.
  • Bizarrchitecture: The layout of IV's mansion and slaughterhouse are randomly generated. To make matters more bizarre, there is always at least one door in the Slaughter House that somehow leads into the mansion without it also leading back (the 2D nature of the game makes it unclear, but it's hinted that the slaughterhouse and mansion are connected via a common basement).
  • Body Horror: Killing or throwing the Poor Soul against a wall will result in a small rat creature coming out of her, revealing just what she was pregnant with, and where the Rat Monsters are coming from.
  • Chainsaw Good: The chainsaw in IV is probably the deadliest weapon in the game so far. It shreds through targets effortlessly, and because it can be held down, there's no need to time it like most other weapons. Acquiring it requires killing the pig man or reaching the attic, however.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: The various Cannibal Clan family members are much weaker than the killers from III and can generally be beaten in a straight fight, but there are a whole lot more of them. Then there's the chainsaw-wielding pigheaded killer, who is very much the equal of the killers from III.
  • Death by Materialism: In Treasure of the Redneck Vampires, escape isn't an option: the heroes are too busy raiding the manor for as much gold as they can find.
  • Four-Girl Ensemble: IV features an all-female band.
  • Fan Disservice: The Bathroom of the mansion is occupied by two naked women, at least one of which is bathing... in a tub filled with filthy brown water and a decrepit corpse. Many of the cannibals are nude, and you can find two of them engaging in, uh...recreation in one of the rooms. Of course, they're all psychopathic cannibals and the rooms themselves are often covered in gore or other horrific imagery.
  • Harmless Villain: The elderly cannibal in the rocking chair will trigger the alarm like anyone else, but they have very low health, and their attacks will not damage or even knock down the player characters. They're key to a major puzzle, however.
  • Jump Scare: Low sanity will cause these to appear randomly.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: In IV, you can find a rat mask. Wearing it makes the monster rats ignore the player.
  • Pig Man: There is a family member who lives inside the slaughter house and he wears the severed head of a pig. You can lead him to the house where he will massacre the family but he will still try to kill you.
  • Precision F-Strike: Used in IV for The Last Will.
  • Pregnant Hostage: You can find a pregnant woman and try to save her.
  • Red Alert: Several rooms in IV's mansion feature an alarm switch that the cannibals can flip in order to alert their fellow residents that something's up.
  • Sanity Slippage: Implied by IV's Interface Screwage, when your heroines get covered in blood — whether it's their own or someone else's.
  • Schmuck Bait: Following the screaming girl at the beginning (or just going right instead of towards the mansion) will lead to the player falling into a filthy dungeon. Just being in this room will cause Interface Screw, there's no way out until/unless someone can reach the door in the mansion's basement, and cannibals and the rat monsters can enter the room at random, guaranteeing death for anyone inside.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: When the episode opens with a screaming, naked, mutilated woman running at you before falling into a deathtrap, you know this is going to be more intense than the last episode.
    • The mansion and especially the slaughterhouse are FILLED with deathtraps. Failing to peek before entering rooms can lead to an unavoidable death.
    • The killers are far weaker, but there are also far more of them; again, failing to peek before entering rooms can lead to a swift end.
    • There are freaky mutant rats that lurk in the vents, and can appear in a room with very little warning. They're far faster and deadlier than the killers. There are a few safe places where they won't appear (any room without a vent) but as they're nearly impossible to kill, they effectively mean you can't feel safe in a room with a vent, EVER.
    • Enemies once alerted to the player will set off alarms that will put all of the other killers on alert, making progressing FAR more difficult.
    • The final gas can in the hidden room of the slaughterhouse is guarded by "Pigsy", a nude masked killer wielding a chainsaw; once awakened, he'll relentlessly pursue the player from room to room until killed. He's as hardy as the killers in III, can kill you in just a couple of hits, and can break down locked doors and destroy traps. The only upsides is that he'll fight the cannibals and rat monsters, and that he can lose sight of the player forcing him to wander randomly until he catches wind of them again.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The whole thing is a big one to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, mainly through the use of a Hillbilly Horror mansion full of cannibalistic murderers, presented through a grainy exploitation-style filter. A chainsaw is even a usable weapon in the game.
    • One of the killers is a naked man with a pigs head as a mask, possibly a reference to Jigsaw's henchmen in the Saw films, or perhaps even Piggsy from Manhunt. Most likely (since the game is inspired by '70s and '80s horror movies), he's a reference to the chainsaw wielding pig-headed killer in Motel Hell.

Lakeview Cabin V shows instances of:

  • Adults Are Useless/Invisible Parents: The 4 teenagers' parents are nowhere to be seen (one of the collectible notes indicates that the blonde's parents are out for the evening), and the only adult that shows up, the cop that appears if you dial 911, will be startled and shoot the first kid that approaches him, becoming so shocked he is utterly useless against the actual knife-wielding killer.
  • All There in the Manual: The manual for Lakeview Cabin is actually the manual for Lacus Lamia, which gives hints to the obtuse puzzles and even explains the game's story, which is said to be a reenactment of a church's founding, and gives some backstory to the lake of the series itself.
  • Bottomless Magazines: The pistol you can acquire by stealing it from the cop has infinite ammo; probably because it plays a key role in one of the puzzles.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Two of the four teenagers are siblings, according to the painting, and can strip their clothes and have sex on beds. In order to fulfill the ritual to defeat the maske killer, this action is needed for the clown doll aspect of the ritual based on a newspaper segment that involved this topic.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: When a character dies in V, they get sent to the underworld where they remain controllable, and can even escape back to the world of the living. A number of puzzles involve dying in a specific way or exploring the underworld for key objects. There's no way to "lose" the game, unlike in III and IV.
  • Foreshadowing: The game within a game played in the first part of the episode has a killer doll, a demon with a tall head, and a witch, who all can damage the player character. Ultimately, these three are required to defeat the killer.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • The solution to some of the puzzles can be very obscure and unintuitive. A literal example with the Lacus Lamia puzzle, which can only be solved by finding hidden hints in the game manual (as in the actual manual that comes with Lakeview Cabin Collection) as well as being able to recognize and translate Morse Code.
    • There is no indication in the game on how to get Ending B, other than reading about it on the internet.
    • The lockbox puzzle in the attic can only be solved if you've found the Last Will secret room from IV, which itself can only be unlocked by encountering a character who spawns at random (1 in every 5 or 6 playthroughs at most).
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: If you call 911, the cop that shows up will instinctively blow away the first person that approaches him. Realizing he's just gunned down a random teenager, he'll freak out and take no further action for the rest of the game. He's so shocked he'll even ignore the actual knife-wielding killer if he gets attacked by him.
  • The Most Dangerous Video Game: Playing the Lacus Lamia NES game will summon the Witch from the game into the real world. Subverted in the sense that she's non-hostile to the teens and is necessary to help defeat the killer.
  • New Media Are Evil: Parodied. The game has certain elements evocative of the "video games turn people into psycho killers" argument, but they're clearly used in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. The killer begins his killing spree after losing at a video game (though, given his messed up family history, the video game was less a cause and more of an excuse), and one of the trolling messages that appears when you die and are sent to the underworld is "video games are rotting your brain".
  • Offscreen Teleportation: The masked killer gets around by doing this, sometimes chasing you from screen to screen with this method. If you damage him, he'll also teleport away right in front of you.
  • Permanently Missable Content: Once the killer is defeated, it is no longer possible to unlock the "best" ending, Ending A, without resetting the game, if you have not already taken the steps needed to unlock the item required to get it.
  • Puzzle Boss: Unlike the enemies in III and IV, the killer is easily driven off (even throwing a small object at him will do), but can't be defeated by normal means. The game involves solving a series of puzzles to find a means of permanently getting rid of him.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: Unlike in previous episodes, dying does not result in Final Death, although the episode is much more puzzle-centric (some to the point they're difficult to decipher) than the previous two.
  • Summon Bigger Fish: You're unable to defeat the killer on your own, as he has infinite health and can teleport away every time he takes damage. In order to defeat him, you need to solve a series of puzzles to summon a Demon, a Killer Doll, and a Witch to defeat him for you.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: Solving the Witch puzzle requires the player to be able to recognize and translate Morse Code. Likely, the developer expected only a handful of players to be able to do so, with those players sharing their findings on the internet.

Lakeview Cabin VI shows instances of:

  • Almighty Janitor: Quite literally. The player characters (or at least one of them) are just janitors charged with cleaning up after a party, who then go to save what's left of humanity.
  • Apocalypse How: Something caused the Earth to explode, and you're given the message "Humanity is Doomed" upon getting a game over.
  • Body Horror: The result of the alien infections are pretty grisly. It starts with the alien bursting out of the host's face and briefly using their body as a meat puppet, then growing to a tooth-filled man-size blob dragging the dead body of the human host behind it. The blob also gives birth to a baby roaming alien that infects more humans before maturing into a gross, man-shaped amalgam of flesh and tentacles.
  • Continuity Nod: The redheaded girl player character from Lakeview Cabin III returns, having been kept stored in cryogenic freezer by The Company. This seems to lend credence to the theory that she's the daughter in the Red family photo, which means the entire family is now accounted for.
  • Dungeon Bypass: You can explore and make evacuating much easier for everyone in the station by simply locking the infected in the VIP Lounge in the Bar before they display the symptoms.
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Security guards (Red Shirts) will start picking up and using weapons once they see an alien and realize the station is under attack. Problem is they have atrocious firearms discipline and will often mow down their fellow station personnel as well as your own characters while shooting at the aliens. Fortunately, the game starts with most weapons safely stored away where the redshirts can't get at them unless you decide to start handing them out.
  • Kill It with Fire: Flamethrowers are available as weapons.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: If you have any number of the characters evacuate via the escape pod (which renders those characters unplayable, treating them as if dead), then upon the remaining character(s) dying, the game will cut to the escape pod arriving with the survivors in an "Intergalactic Refugee Center" where they can be controlled again for just a few seconds before the Alien Queen and a swarm of aliens suddenly spawn and start slaughtering them. It won't even play out until everyone is dead; after a few seconds of this it cuts directly to the Game Over screen, even if some of the survivors haven't died yet.
  • No Respect Guy: The four janitors are looked down upon by the other station personnel (to the point that their section of the crew quarters is just a bare floor and a clothing chest, and station personnel will complain on the intercom if you so much as touch them), but are the only ones resourceful enough to have a chance of dealing with the alien outbreak.
  • Revisiting the Roots: VI is a return to the gameplay formula of III as well as the original Lakeview Cabin; you start off in a mundane situation and are free to goof around in a variety of ways or even go on a crazed rampage. Then, after a while, the situation abruptly goes to hell...
  • Shout-Out: A massive one to Aliens.
    • The concept of the killer being brought to space to have their regenerative abilities studied is more of less the plot of Jason X. Not to mention the looming front view of the poster for Lakeview Cabin VI is very similar to Jason X's poster.
    • Droids were visually based on Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Silent Running.
  • Subliminal Seduction: The televisions play a video of a word of thanks from the CEO, while occasionally flashing "WORK" in static.
  • The End... Or Is It?: After getting the good ending, the CEO of The Company comes out to congratulate the survivors on getting out alive before it zooms in on him as the face of the father character flashes over him.

Last Christmas also holds examples of:

  • Bad Santa: The killers are a knife-wielding evil Santa Claus, and two naked reindeer-men.
  • Glass Cannon: Each of the killers go down in one hit, however unlike the inbred family from IV or the killer from V they can No-Sell most regular attacks.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: The two reindeer-men are buck naked. Charging at Santa while naked will cause him to be stunned in surprise for a couple seconds, leaving him vulnerable to attack.
  • Interim Villain: The killers don't seem to be related to the Lakeview Cabin myth arc, which makes sense as Last Christmas is a separate VHS film not tied to the Lakeview Cabin series at the theater.
  • Skippable Boss: It's possible to escape with your baby by exiting stage left (literally) without confronting any of the killers. This gets you the same ending as beating the game by killing all 3 killers would. You just have to find a way to make sure your baby can survive the cold, and juke around the killer that comes from the direction of the exit.
  • Twisted Christmas: The protagonist of Last Christmas comes home to find that his wife has committed suicide and entrusted the care of their infant daughter to him. Said daughter soon becomes the target of a Christmas-themed trio of child-killing serial murderers.
  • Would Hurt a Child: The killers are apparently part of a cult that engages in child sacrifice, their goal being to kidnap your baby to sacrifice her later.


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