Video Game / Cursed Trilogy

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Created by Disaster Squad Productions, Cursed, Cursed 2, and Cursed 3 is a trilogy of Point And Click Adventure / Action / Horror hybrid games inspired by works such as Uninvited. The first game was originally released in 2009, the second released in 2019, and the third was released in 2022, with the series also being ported to Steam in 2022. The trilogy focuses on a cult of the demon god Malus, the warriors of the goddess Luna that fight against them, and the girl named Jennifer whose sacrifice is central to it all.

In January 2023, a remake of the original Cursed was announced via the developer's Twitter.

This trilogy has no connection to the Similarly-Named Works Cursed (2020), Cursed (2005), or the A Song of Ice and Fire fanfiction.

Tropes Across the Series:

• The '90s: Cursed 3 has a flashback to 1995 in its true ending, showing Randall and Jennifer meeting for the first time.
• Action Girl: After being captured and used as a tool by the villains of the first two games, Jennifer is promoted to being the main protagonist of Cursed 3, as she investigates her family's secret history and connection to the Lunar People. There's also the Goddess of the Moon, Luna, who waged war with the demon Malus before the events of the series and becomes the player character in the final chapters of the game, when Jennifer realizes that she is Luna's reincarnation.
• All-Loving Heroine: Death notes that the goddess Luna is this when she chooses to remove her and Malus from history so humanity can fight for themselves, stating that "[she] will do what [she] believes is the best thing for everyone."
• Always Chaotic Evil: The demons, naturally. If Jennifer speaks to the Shield Spirit in Cursed 3, he remarks that almost all demons and Void entities hate each other just as much as everyone hates them, refusing to cooperate or help each other in any way. It's what made him—a genuinely chivalrous Spirit that only wanted to protect his kind—so unpopular with his peers.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Cursed 3 name-drops Jesus and the Greek/Roman pantheon. Since Luna, Solus and Charon exist, it's left ambiguous if these deities and others like them also exist in this world. Likewise, it's left ambiguous whether or not they were also erased from history when Luna decides to erase the gods in the True Ending.
  • It's heavily implied but never outright stated that Malus is really Solus, the God of the Sun, who was transformed into a demon after being defeated and banished by Luna. Evidence includes the note in Solus' backstory that he controlled his followers through fear, the fact that imbuing his essence into the Staff of the Moon turns it into the "Staff of the Sun", and Malus' general Light Is Not Good motif.
• Anime Hair: Randall's hair is quite spiky.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: A few presented in Cursed 3.
  • Unlike in the game that inspired it, any item that Jennifer has equipped will not be considered part of her inventory. She can hold up to four items at a time, making each inevitable Inventory Management Puzzle a little more manageable. She can also find ammunition belts to make carrying around ammo for all of her different guns much easier. The game will also remember where you set down each item, so the player should feel comfortable ditching anything that's taking up too much space and coming back for it later.
  • The Scarecrow Spirit reduces the noise Jennifer makes so that enemies will be less likely to find her. This was intended by Disaster Squad for beginner players so they don't have to fight as often. In addition, upgrading that spirit with a Void energy orb (which can be found nearby) boosts their ability so that they can render the player invisible in hiding places as long as enemies don't see them entering it. Recommended for those who struggle with the midnight raid segments.
  • At the start of Chapter 2, where the player is stuck in the garage, if the midnight raid occurs but the door has not been unlocked yet, the player will not be in danger during this segment.
  • Death provides an hour-glass item early on, allowing the player to quick save at any time with a cool-down in between. This is useful to reload a save whenever you perish, and it only goes away when you quit the game. This applies to both sides of the game.
  • Disaster Squad productions has seen a few Let's Plays, and decided to increase the strength of the boards.
• Ascended Extra:
  • In the opening for the first game, there are four characters that the player talks to: Jennifer's parents, a tavern employee (who doesn't say anything), and a random bar patron with red hair. Cursed 2 reveals that his name is Randall, and he goes on to become the main protagonist of the game and the Deuteragonist of the sequel.
  • Jennifer's parents, Holly and Tim Lloyd, also receive an expanded role in Cursed 2 when it's revealed that Holly is the leader of the Cult of Malus and manipulated her daughter into going into the mine to become possessed, while Tim is the last descendant of the Lunar People who reluctantly went along with his wife's schemes to ensure that his daughter would be safe, only to turn on her and help Randall when he realized that "Jennifer" was merely a demon in disguise.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Chainsaw in Cursed 2. Regardless of any players' skill, it's amazing. However, fuel is limited, so use it wisely!
• Bait-and-Switch: One of the first items that the player can find in Cursed 2 are the AA batteries in the abandoned gas station. It's easy to assume that they'll be important, especially after finding the flashlight later on. Except the flashlight requires D-Cell batteries, which can be found in the tavern. The only thing the AAs are good for is powering up the Creepy Doll in Jennifer's house—which, needless to say, is not a good idea.
• Big Bad: The demon Malus is directly responsible for all three games in the series, plotting to overtake the world with his demon army.
• Body Horror:
  • The Cult of Malus has performed plenty of nasty experiments on human flesh, creating horrific monsters that range from writhing masses armed with scythes for arms to a floating mass of human faces that haunts the Torture Cellar where they conducted their experiments. The ultimate purpose of these experiments is to create a new body for Malus to inhabit which takes the form of a Kaiju of human flesh, created from the endless amounts of bodies the cult have sacrificed to create him.
  • Thanks to their exposure to the God's Eye crystal, the Carrington family have all been mutated in horrific ways: Shannon Carrington has been turned into a grotesque Mother of a Thousand Young that can spawn dozens on demonic spiders on command, Justin is a mummified corpse without eyes or teeth, Pippy is a misshaped fetus that was miscarried during Shannon's transformation but is somehow still alive, and Spencer became the nightmarish Shadow Monster prowling around the house. The best off of the family is arguably Sarah Carrington... because she was murdered by the cult and now lives on as a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Hammer in Cursed 2. While it is the weakest weapon to have, it takes up very little inventory space, on top of it being the easiest weapon to wield. Power and Speed upgrades can make this considerably less boring to use. It appears again as Randall's default weapon during the Stylistic Callback segment of Cursed 3, with him also having a shotgun that hits harder but takes time to reload.
  • The Eyeball Spirit in Cursed 3 is likely to be the first Spirit that the player can encounter, and provides the mostly superfluous ability to see invisible objects. But once upgraded with a Void Orb, it allows the player to see the health bars of enemies. Even after the player gets their hands on more powerful Spirits, they'll likely fall back on the Eyeball for all the practical benefits of being able to gauge an enemy's strength.
• Boss Arena Urgency: During the fight with the "Tower Beast" in Cursed 3, its attacks smash holes in the tower you're in. The tower has its own health bar, and if it's completely emptied, the tower collapses, killing you instantly.
• Bittersweet Ending: The best endings of Cursed 2 and 3 both have a tinge of bitterness to them.
  • In Cursed 2, Randall and Jennifer destroy Malus, imprison his soul in the Staff of the Moon and banish it into the Void. All of the souls Malus has imprisoned are freed and able to rest, and all of the Cult of Malus' monsters are instantly eradicated. However, the entire town is still destroyed with hundreds or thousands of innocent lives lost, Jennifer's parents are dead, and she's still traumatized from her experience. Randall notes that neither of them know where they're going to go next, but they'll figure it out together.
  • In Cursed 3, after Spencer and Randall die fighting for her, Luna decides to go back in time to destroy the God's Eye to ensure that no gods or demons will ever be created, thus allowing humanity to fight for its own causes. Destroying the crystal ensures that Malus is finally destroyed for good, although Luna dies in the process. Though the credits sequence show that without the gods' influence, humanity still naturally develops as they did in real-life history, and Randall and Jennifer still meet and become childhood friends.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Brute from Cursed 1, who served as a boss, makes a comeback in Cursed 3 as a common enemy in a later chapter. They are as brutal as they were in the first game, but even worse thanks to them jumping between the ground and the ceiling, and their attack hitting so fast, they can quickly send Jennifer into a panic.
• Brick Joke:
  • For given value of joke. In Cursed 1, the player finds the corpse of a murdered woman in the mines, which later mysteriously revives and completely disappears from the game. If they want to find out what happened to her when re-exploring the mines in Cursed 2, just turn the lights off. She'll come to greet you.
  • Jennifer finds a wrench hidden in the bushes around the house in Cursed 3. If she searches the bushes again while at the Lunar Palace, she remarks that they're empty, no wrench this time.
• Canon Character All Along:
  • In Cursed 2, the player takes control of Randall, a man who claims to have been friends with Jennifer and heads back to their home town with the hope of finding her. If the player chooses to look in the mirror at any point or reaches either ending, it's revealed that Randall is the unnamed redheaded guy that appeared in the bar in the first game.
  • In Cursed 3, it's revealed that the monster that has been plaguing Jennifer the entire time she's been at her grandfather's house is really the restless spirit of Spencer Carrington, who is also the nameless protagonist that rescued Jennifer in the first game.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Zig-zagged in Cursed 3. Jennifer's cell phone gets wrecked early game, resulting in a puzzle where she has to repair the landline. However, Randall mentions that he is able to find her general location because her cell phone was able to make one last ping to social media.
• Chainsaw Good: The Chainsaw in Cursed 2 can make mince meat out of anything in the game. Fuel is extremely limited.
• Child of Two Worlds: Jennifer's mother is the current leader of the Cult of Malus, while her father somehow had access to the Lunar Tower key, and her curiosity about the latter leads to Cursed 3's events and learning just how far that half of the family tree is connected to Luna.
• Coins for the Dead: You can help Death deal with the bodies of the undead by throwing a coin onto downed undead, which will summon Death to take them away for good. To get the good ending in the second game, you must do this on every undead enemy, then use the boon he gives you for doing so to resurrect Jennifer.
• Composite Character: Charon is named after the underworld ferryman from Greek mythology, although his role as the God of Death is taken from Thanatos. His appearance also takes from the typical portrayal of the Grim Reaper.
• Crapsack World: Randall and Jennifer's hometown is secretly a Wretched Hive ruled by the Cult of Malus by the shadows. By the time of Cursed 2, the Cult has systematically killed anyone in town that wasn't smart enough to flee, leaving it a virtual ghost town overrun by hideous monsters. The rest of the Earth at least seems to be better off, although it's made clear that the world will never be safe so long as Malus still exists.
• Creepy Doll: In Cursed 2, you can find a doll and a set of batteries. If you put the batteries in the doll, it immediately kills you. The game doesn't tell you THAT.
• Cruel Twist Ending: The ending of Cursed initially appears to be a Surprisingly Happy Ending, showing Jennifer being unexpectedly alive after you killed her earlier in the game. At the very last second, Jennifer pulls a knife on you, actually being possessed by Malus all along, and proceeds to cause Cursed 2's Downer Beginning.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Green has been associated with Health in the first two Cursed games, including healing spells and potions. The green potions in Cursed 3 restore Jennifer's stamina instead, since that meter is green while her health is red. Although the green healing magic still heals.
• Damsel out of Distress: In the first two games, Jennifer is the victim of a Human Sacrifice that needs to be resuscitated and rescued. In Cursed 3, Jennifer decides to take charge of her own destiny and is Promoted to Playable as its main protagonist.
• Darkness Equals Death: Try to enter and wander areas where everything is pitch black without a light source.
• Dem Bones: Red Skeletons are a common enemy in the first game and make a comeback when Randall revisits the mines in the sequel. There's plenty of other skeletons shuffling about as well, including the sentient skeleton who stares at the player for no reason, Charon/Death, and Randall after his Heroic Sacrifice in the True Ending of Cursed 3.
• Demonic Possession:
  • In Cursed, it turns out in the ending that the Jennifer you rescued has actually been possessed by Malus.
  • In Cursed 2, Jennifer is still possessed, but it's possible to free her soul and resurrect her, with her Evil Matriarch then using her own body to give Malus a physical form.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Randall goes from the main protagonist to a supporting player in Cursed 3, who spends the bulk of the game trying to find where Jennifer went. Jennifer can still call him at any point in the game and he makes a return during the finale, where he gets killed by Malus in the path to the "End the Curse" ending and helps Jennifer defeat Malus in the "Prevent the Curse" ending, even briefly becoming playable again.
  • It's revealed in the finale of Cursed 3 that the Shadow Monster plaguing the house is really Spencer Carrington, who is retroactively established to have been the protagonist of the first game. After having his mind restored, he briefly acts as a supporting character and the player even gets to play as him again during the final battle with Malus, before he ultimately sacrifices himself to help Jennifer and Randall destroy the curse.
• The Determinator: In Cursed 2, The Knight defied his Goddess' wishes by making sure not another human gets through him, noting that the last time he let one passed, they caused a lot of problems for the town above. Even when defeated, he still makes sure that you cannot past him. Unfortunately he also tells you he's undead, the very thing Death wants to remove.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • There's an alternate bad ending where you kill Jennifer after reviving her. This changes the first half of the transcript.
  • You can take off your diving suit in the lake in "Cursed 2". Doing so will cause you to slowly drown.
  • Suppose you approach the knight in Cursed 2 with any weapon but the sword and shield. He won't challenge you because it is not honorable. He destroys your inventory icon in the fight, too. This is to prevent the player from blowing him up with a shotgun or just spamming the hammer.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: In the third game, one of your goals in the first few chapters is acquiring the pieces of the God's Eye crystal. They're being carried by the warped members of the Carrington family, each of whom need to be put to rest to acquire their piece. This leads to the oddity of you raising Justin Carrington from the dead, only to then hunt him down and kill him more permanently to take his piece of the crystal. The second half of the game has you exploring the Void for the parts of the Staff of the Moon in the same way.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In Cursed 3, the mysterious green liquid that refilled health in the last game now restores Jennifer's stamina meter, ensuring that she can keep her energy up without needing to sleep. It's not too hard to imagine that the green liquid is some kind of caffeine drink that Jennifer keeps slamming down so that she can stay awake.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Charon the god of death, who takes the familiar form of a robed, scythe-wielding reaper of souls, is encountered as an ally throughout the series due to the protagonists fighting against the demon-aligned undead that defy him. He was also one of Luna's closest allies back before the divine war.
• Easter Egg:
  • Two in Cursed 2:
    • Giving a white rag to Death will cause him to wear it, turn uncharacteristically goofy, and cause the game to play a musical sample of YTP - Michael's Memory Lane Movie Making. The game is locked in this state and can only be exited out by closing the game through external means.
    • Sometimes, the game over screen will play the famous Game Over Yeah tune.
  • Two more in Cursed 3:
    • Using the phone to call the phone number from one of the emails lead to a call with the Freak Phone.
    • The game over-screen at the very final segment will sometimes misspell the Load button. LOAF
• Essence Drop: The initial "shop" system of Cursed 3 is the Void Conversion Device, a Lunar machine which transmutes orbs generated when a monster is killed by the Animae Mutatio arcana into raw Void Energy that the VCD (configured by Spencer) can then convert into physical supplies such as ammunition, potions, an energy orb, the Aegis Facere scroll, and the Ammo Spirit. These orbs also serve the purposes of filling the lab's Monster Compendium and opening the other facets of the Void once the crystal is restored.
• Evil All Along: While they were merely minor characters in the first game, Cursed 2 reveals that Jennifer's parents are the leaders of the Cult of Malus. Or rather, Holly is the leader and the one who provoked her daughter's sacrifice. Tim only begrudgingly goes along with their plans to ensure that his daughter is safe, and turns on his wife the minute he realizes that the thing pretending to be Jennifer is just a demon in disguise.
• Evil Matriarch: The climax of Cursed 2 reveals that Jennifer's mother is actually the current head of the Cult of Malus, and encouraged her daughter to take the steps that led to her sacrifice.
• Exact Words: In Cursed 2, choosing to be Immortal will have Death clarify that he cannot prevent you from death. However, he can make it to where you cannot take damage during combat. It's true, you can provoke him to check it for yourself. Many of the game's instant-kills also don't rely on doing damage.
• Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy: The Knight in the second game refuses to let you pass after you defeat him, stating that he's undead and thus cannot be defeated. Of course, you're carrying a coin that summons Death to claim the undead...
• Expy: In addition to taking a lot of musical cues from the Splatterhouse series, Jennifer is a clear stand-in for... Jennifer. Right down to being possessed by a demon and killed in the first game, and the quest to revive her driving the second game.
• Fairy Companion: Cursed 3 introduces a variety of non-evil Spirits that Jennifer can find and rally to her cause, with each one providing different abilities (seeing invisible items, improved hiding abilities, freezing enemies, etc). One of these Spirits is also quite literally a fairy.
• Fate Worse than Death: While Grave Robbing in the church cemetery, Randall comes across the body of a humanoid creature that has been both skinned and buried but is somehow still alive. He (and the player) decide that it's best to just put the poor thing out of its misery.
• Featureless Protagonist: The protagonist of the first game is merely a nameless blank slate, and was only retroactively given a name and identity by the sequels. Averted by Cursed 2 and 3, where Randall and Jennifer not only have established character designs but have multiple opportunities to look at themselves in mirrors placed around the map, letting the player see them.
• Feed It a Bomb: The Avatar of Malus in 2 and the Shadow Monster in 3 (once you reach chapter 6) both have mouth-opening attacks that leave them vulnerable to a charged blast from the Staff of the Moon.
• Fetus Terrible: Pippy in the third game.
• Final Death Mode: Hardcore. Not only do you get one normal save slot to use, but dying deletes the save. In addition:
  • In Cursed 2, Randall no longer heals from leveling up, can't quit during battles, only has a single health potion (though the scroll still exists,) and has a cursed ring stuck in his inventory that slowly leeches away his health.
  • In Cursed 3, Jennifer outright cannot level up due to receiving no XP or Faith from killing or catching monsters. In addition, you now need to fight a second phase of the Captain to recruit him as a spirit, you need to fight the shadow beast before cleansing it with Spiritus Exilium for the Prevent ending, and you have four day/night cycles to finish the game before a never-ending midnight raid - pointed directly at your location - blows away your save.
• Final Solution: Malus waged war with the goddess Luna in the ancient past, leading to near-eradication of her followers, the Lunar People. It's revealed in Cursed 3 that he actually had a practical reason for his attempted genocide as the curse he placed on humanity can only be undone by a Lunar and a human plunging themselves into the Lake of the Gods (mirroring how Malus placed the curse by sacrificing a human and a demon to the lake). No Lunar People, no hope of his curse ever being undone.
• Foreshadowing: In the third game, when Jennifer points out she's never used magic before, Death seems oddly sure she'd be able. He knows she can use magic because she's a goddess incarnate.
• Friendly Fireproof: Averted in Cursed 2 during the final battle When Jennifer is driving the truck away from the pursuing Malus. The Staff of the Moon's projectiles can in fact kill her if you accidentally (or intentionally) shoot her. If she dies, there's no one driving and the truck is destroyed when it crashes.
• Gainax Ending: In Cursed 2. Getting the true ending on Hardcore proceeds as normal... until Randall notices the Legendary Golden Rag beneath Malus' dissipating body, and gifts it to Death, to which Death responds by becoming "ultra-mega-brosabe-deluxe-chum-boys" with Randall. Fist bumping, the two "rag bros 4 life" strut down the road with exaggerated swagger, proudly wearing their rags.
  • In Cursed 3, getting the Prevent ending under Hardcore Mode goes about as far as ripping out Malus' essence before Jennifer returns to see... the Crystal laying off to the side, and skeleton Randall playing Beyblade against Death in the place where it used to be. Instead of going through to the past to prevent the curse - or even to pre-emptively win the war, as was the original plan - Jennifer just walks back home a la SpongeBob's "lost episode" cheap walk cycles.
• Game of Nim: In the second game, Randall plays a version of the game with a cloaked figure. There is a set of marbles on the table, either player can take up to four at a time, you choose who goes first, and if the figure takes the last marble you die. The solution is to let them have the first turn, then when he makes his move, you subtract that number by five and take that amount.
• Game-Over Man: Death takes this role in Cursed 3 with a snark related to your death should you lose the game.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: There's a lot of this in regards to the phone in Cursed 3. Jennifer can call the police for help at any point, however, they will never show up to help her regardless of how much time passes in-game (justified in-universe as them having no idea where to look, as Jennifer doesn't know her exact location) but they will show up to rescue Jen after only a few hours in the "Delay the Curse" ending. The same goes for Randall, as Jennifer can call him at any point, and it's evident that he's looking for her, but regardless of how much time passes he'll never show up until Chapter 5, where he either gets himself killed fighting Malus or helps Jennifer stop him for good.
• Genre Shift: Cursed 3 makes a gradual turn away from horror into fantasy adventure, particularly during the path to the Golden Ending where Jennifer discovers that she is the reincarnation of the goddess Luna.
• God in Human Form: Luna, the benevolent goddess of the series, turns out to be Jennifer, due to Luna's soul reincarnating as her.
• God of Evil: Malus, a horned demon whose forces are the main threat throughout the series.
• God of Good: Luna, a purple-skinned female goddess associated with the moon, is benevolent towards humanity and her blessed weapons are used to fight back against Malus' demonic forces.
• Good All Along: In Cursed 3, Jennifer's car gets destroyed by a mysterious Shadow Monster that spends the rest of the game hunting after her, showing up at random throughout the house to attack her. But if the player unlocks Chapter 6, it's revealed that the monster is really Spencer Carrington, the protagonist from Cursed 1, who was turned into a monster by the God's Eye like the rest of his family. Once returned to normal, it's explained that he destroyed Jen's car to ensure she'd stick around to undo the curse and thwart Malus' plans. It's assumed that he's also the one who left the notes around the house warning about the nightly Midnight Raids.
• Grandfather Paradox: The true ending of Cursed 3 has Luna travel back in time to destroy the God's Eye, ensuring that no gods or demons—including herself—will ever be born. Of course, the game doesn't spend any time dwelling on how it doesn't make sense that a being created by the God's Eye could destroy it.
• Grid Inventory: Starting from Cursed 2, your inventory is limited in this matter, and made a little more blatant in Cursed 3. Thankfully, there are usually other places to put important stuff you want to save for later; in the second game, Randall has a metal box in the back of his truck for exactly this purpose. Jennifer can leave her items just anywhere, and the game will remember where they were.
  • Zig-zagged in Cursed 3, where items can actually share space on the grid, provided that they don't overlap. This mechanic is made unclear by the grid square still appearing red, but most easily observable using the lighter, which can be placed in many places that seem occupied.
• Guns Are Useless: Zig-zagged. On one hand, guns are indeed useful since both Cursed 2 and Cursed 3 hand out ammunition like candy. On the other, if one does not increase their skill in guns (especially reloading) then they can leave you a sitting duck in a fight.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Spencer in Cursed 1, and Randal in Cursed 2 primarily use melee weapons, with the latter having options for magic and firearms. Jennifer in Cursed 3 has a far greater emphasis on guns and magic, notably lacking any melee options besides blocking. Zig-zagged in the ending when she gains access to swords and shields.
• Harder Than Hard:
  • The second game received an update that adds this mode. Not only are the enemies much stronger, you have less chances to heal yourself (and have the ruby ring forever in your inventory that will slowly lower your health to boot). Completing this mode will unlock one of the biggest Joke Ending examples since the UFO Endings of the Silent Hill series.
  • The third game also received a similar update, though it also added new enemies, bosses, etc. It also has a similarly hilarious Joke Ending for completing the Hardcore mode.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the climax of the third game, Spencer gives his life to fuel a spell that will allow the protagonists to defeat Malus once and for all, and Randall gives his life (and even his unlife, when Death allows him to keep fighting as a skeleton) to protect the crystal that gives Luna her power. This also applies to the "Break the Curse" ending, where Jennifer (as Luna) takes Randall's dead body and plunges into the Lake of the Gods, breaking Malus's covenant with humanity at the cost of her life.
• Human Sacrifice:
  • The Cult of Malus has been doing this for a long time, arranging "disappearances" of townsfolk in the name of sacrificing them for their god. It's revealed in the endgame that they're doing this to build a massive Flesh Golem body for him to restore his physical form, powered by the life energy and spirits of their victims.
  • It's revealed by reading documents in Cursed 3 that Malus used this to enact his curse upon humanity: sacrificing a human soul (implied to be the wizard who created the Staff of the Moon) and one of his own demon followers to the Lake of the Gods in the Realm of Torment, thus ensuring that humanity's fate would always be tied to the Void.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Averted with Randall's hammer, which is nothing more than an ordinary hammer that he uses to bludgeon enemies. However, with enough precision and investing enough of his skill points into power and speed, it can make for a highly effective weapon. Enough to even harm Malus, the Big Bad himself, as seen in Cursed 3.
• I Have No Son!: If the player attempts to call her out on all the horrible things she did to Jennifer, her own daughter, Holly Lloyd protests that she has no daughter anymore. Now that Jennifer has been freed from Malus' influence, she views her as completely worthless.
• In Spite of a Nail: As seen in the True Ending of Cursed 3, even with history now rewritten so that all gods, demons and their followers never existed, Jennifer and Randall still end up in the same town and meet each other as children, with a Childhood Friend Romance implied to follow.
• Interface Screw: Cursed 2 has one boss fight where the Knight destroys your inventory icon just to make sure you cannot cheese this fight by healing or abusing the shotgun.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: Recurs throughout the series. In the second game, there's a hacksaw for the sole purpose of sawing off your shotgun just to free up space. The third game uses a Grid Inventory just to make this simpler.
• Joke Item: Cursed 2 has a few of them, though more often than not the joke ends up being on the player themselves. Examples include the AA batteries in the gas station (their only purpose is to power up a killer doll), the ruby ring (which drains health after being applied), and the dirty dish rag (which, once cleaned, can be worn as a bib—and used on Death to unlock a secret Joke Ending). Cursed 3 makes sure to avert this, as the game states outright that there are no completely useless items from the very start.
• Jump Scare: A good amount of instant deaths in the series involve this with plenty of the undead and monsters from time to time.
• Living Lava: Malus' normal form in Cursed 1 and Cursed 3 resembles a horned demonic variant of this. Cursed 2 is an exception since his cult provides a giant flesh body for him.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Cursed 1 starts you off with one paired with a sword, allowing you to block any damage coming to you. This returns in Cursed 2 with a few twists, such as a cool down from blocking an attack. Cursed 3 has the pot lid early on that serves the same purpose.
• The Magic Goes Away: The ending of Cursed 3 has the gods, mainly Luna and Malus, Ret-Gone from history, being replaced with a more mundane development of civilization free of divine intervention and magic, akin to real life history.
• The Maze: A staple in all three games. Some have One-Hit Kill threats as well.
• Miles to Go Before I Sleep: The climax of the Prevent ending in the third game has this for Randall. On the verge of death, with Charon obligated to collect, he makes a deal with the stoic reaper to turn Randall into an undead skeleton to buy Luna more time to defeat Malus and claim their essence orb.
• Mineral MacGuffin:
  • Cursed 2 introduces a cluster of colorful Crystal Skulls that Randall can find all throughout the overworld, which serve as the keys to the secret crypt where Jennifer's body is being kept. Similar Crystal Skulls also appear in Cursed 3, which serve as the keys for a few puzzles and unlock the final battle with Malus in the "End the Curse" ending.
  • Cursed 3 has the God's Eye, a mysterious magical crystal hidden underneath the house, which has drawn Malus' forces to it. If Jennifer rebuilds the damaged crystal on the path to the "Prevent the Curse" ending, it's revealed that it was responsible for creating all gods and demons at the beginning of time. Luna goes back and time to destroy it, ensuring that the gods never came into existence and humanity can choose its own destiny.
• Mini-Boss: The Undead in Cursed 2 serve this role, being considerably tougher to fight due to their large health pool, hard hitting attacks, and being able to block. Plus the only way to truly kill one is to summon Death upon defeating them, but that doesn't really count in the fight.
• Musical Spoiler: Used as a mechanic when you fight Justin Carrington. The boss retreats into the forest maze, and you have to hunt them down and kill them. Your clue as to where to find them is that the boss's theme grows louder as you get closer to his 0square, being loudest on the square where he's hiding.
• Multiple Endings:
  • Cursed 2 has a Bad Ending, in which the Final Boss is fought as soon as possible and Jennifer dies, and a True Ending, in which Randall accomplishing all of the sidequests leads to saving Jennifer's soul, resurrecting her, banishing Malus, and then driving away from the ruined remains of town with Jennifer at his side.
  • Cursed 3 has a similar set of endings.
    • Delay the Curse can be achieved by destroying the God's Eye crystal as soon as it's found. Jennifer is eventually rescued by the police, but is unsatisfied in having failed to get the answers she sought and knows that she's only delayed Malus' inevitable invasion.
    • End the Curse by fixing the God's Eye to unlock chapter 5, leading to Jennifer/Luna entering the Void to defeat Malus, after discovering that he's killed Randall. Luna then plunges herself and Randall into the Lake of the Gods, undoing Malus' curse on humanity
    • Then, a true ending, Prevent the Curse, is hinted at by a note from Randall's body in End, which holds the solution to completing the sarcophagus line puzzle in the Realm of Torment and unlocking chapter 6 onward. Here, Spencer, Randall and Jennifer defeat Malus, Luna claims his essence to create the Staff of the Sun, and goes back in time to erase herself and Malus from history, thus allowing humanity to choose its own destiny.
• My Car Hates Me: Downplayed in Cursed 2. While it runs out of gas in the opening of the game, Randall's truck is still more than capable of getting anywhere on the map once it's been filled up... barring the one moment of popping a tire in the middle of nowhere, right next to a monster. Played straight in Cursed 3 where Jennifer's car gets totaled by monsters in the opening of the game, leaving her completely stranded.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
  • The unnamed wizard that creating the Staff of the Moon to give humanity the power to control life. However pure his intentions were, not only did his invention end up summoning Malus but by (somehow) carving out a piece of the God's Eye to create the Staff he caused Luna's power to falter in the war.
  • The hero from Cursed 1 ended up screwing over the townsfolk in a number of ways by bringing Jennifer back after she'd already been possessed by Malus, allowing his evil to spread out and influence the town. Even before that, he gave out the pieces of the God's Eye crystal he found to his family members as gifts unaware of its magical properties, causing them to mutate into hideous monsters.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Cursed 2, by showing him the truth about his daughter's Demonic Possession, Jennifer's father, Tim, will trust Randall with the key to a tower dedicated to Luna, which leads to returning to the mine from the first game and obtaining the Staff of the Moon. Upon freeing Jennifer with the staff, Tim is killed by his wife for betraying the Cult of Malus.
• No Name Given:
  • Some of the characters had went unnamed until subsequent sequels addressed it. The protagonist of the first game had always been referred to as The Human in Cursed 2, for instance.
  • The town where the first two games are set is never given a name or a location. Even when calling the police to try and help with her situation in Cursed 3, Jennifer only says that she's near "the town that was destroyed".
• Non-Malicious Monster: The seven spirits Jennifer can summon in Cursed 3, three of which (Shield, Scarecrow and Eyeball) are stated in dialogue to be non-hostile Void entities (not counting the Guard Captain, who is an entity of Luna's facet of the Void.)
• Nostalgia Level: Completing the Lunar Tower in Cursed 2 is required to unlock the path to the underground mines from the first game, complete with enemies and the battle themes making a return.
• Nothing Is Scarier: This game thrives on this trope - many rooms are (seemingly) empty, silent, and abandoned. This is what makes some monster(s) coming out of nowhere scary.
• Not So Stoic: In the climax of Cursed 3, after Jennifer-turned-Luna learns from Death that Randall has died for her, she decides to completely Ret-Gone herself and Malus instead of just winning the war against the demons and hugs the reaper farewell. Death, a self-admitted curmudgeon, slowly returns the embrace.
• Nuke 'Em: In the bad ending of Cursed 2, after the government finds out what went down with the Cult of Malus, they decide that the best solution is to nuke the town off of the map, eradicating whatever's left of the monsters and stopping the Cult's plans... at least, for the moment.
• Our Banshees Are Louder: Cursed 2 introduces a monster referred to as "The Banshee" who is posing as Jennifer. Although apart from its ear-splitting scream the monster doesn't have much in common with the Celtic myth.
• Personality Powers: The Spirits that accompany Jennifer typically have personalities reflective of their abilities in the field. The Scarecrow Spirit is a Shrinking Violet, and his abilities revolve around hiding Jennifer from enemies; the Fairy Spirit is a boisterous, temperamental Ice Queen that can freeze anyone she attacks to make combat easier; and so on.
• Perverse Puppet: One of the enemies you can fight in Cursed 2.
• Police Are Useless: Zig-zagged in Cursed 3. Once the landline phone is repaired, Jennifer can do the sensible thing and call the police to rescue her... unfortunately, they aren't able to take any immediate action since Jen has no idea what the address of the old house is, and they can't track the phone signal since the phone has been out of service for years. That said, in the "Delay the Curse" ending the police do eventually show up to rescue her after she casts the God's Eye Crystal into the abyss. Played straight in the other endings, wherein the police never show up to help, no matter how much time passes.
• Oculothorax: Floating eyeballs are a common enemy type in Cursed 3, standing in for the bats that appeared in the previous game. The Eyeball Spirit that Jennifer can encounter is stated to be one of these monsters, who was made an outcast by the others for his lack of wings and joins forces with Jen to stop Malus.
• Once per Episode: Every game in the series involves a final showdown between the protagonists and Malus using the Staff of the Moon. Only in Cursed 3 is he put down for good.
• Press X to Die: There are quite a few blatantly bad decisions you can make throughout the series, ranging from literally asking Charon to kill you (or provoking him, otherwise you aren't in the way of his business) to murdering the person driving your truck while it's under attack.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Cursed 3 has Jennifer call Randall, her boyfriend and the protagonist of the previous game, for support during key events. A surprisingly alive Spencer Carrington, the protagonist of the first game who was stated to have been sacrificed during the second, shows up in the endgame to help defeat Malus, but only if you free him from his Face–Monster Turn.
• Quieting the Unquiet Dead: An obstacle Jennifer faces in Cursed 3 is the restless spirit of an old woman haunting the basement of the house. It becomes evident that this is actually the spirit of Jennifer's grandmother, and Jennifer can lay her to rest by handing over a toy bluebird that her husband gave her when they began dating, causing her to tearfully depart into the afterlife.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The trilogy uses music from other video games, such as Just Shapes & Beats and Doom, which is the primary reason why they are Freeware Games.
• Reforged into a Minion: While some of the monsters in Cursed 2 are just implied to be former townsfolk, Cursed 3 explicitly has most of its bosses be members of a family, the Carringtons, that were transformed into monsters as a result of demonic influence. Reading the bestiary's notes on the Cadaver enemies which menace Jennifer, it's implied that they are members of the Lunar People that Malus has resurrected to serve him.
• Reincarnation: The third game's climax reveals that Jennifer is a reincarnation of the moon goddess Luna, leading to her gaining Past-Life Memories and Luna's form.
• Religion of Evil: The Cult of Malus, which worships the eponymous demon lord and seeks his resurrection and domination of the earth. They have existed for untold ages, with the version led by Jennifer's parents in the present day just being its latest incarnation.
• Resurrective Immortality: Thanks to the curse he has placed on humanity, Malus has ensured that their fate will always be intertwined with the Void. So long as humanity exists, he will inevitably resurrect and plague the Earth again. Thus, Luna chooses to go back in time to avert the curse by preventing herself and Malus from existing in the first place.
• Ret-Gone: The third game ends with Luna wiping herself and Malus from history in order to avoid humanity dying from their wars, believing that humanity should fight for their own causes. However, the final scene shows Tim encouraging a young Jennifer to befriend young Randall.
• Satanic Archetype: Malus is a horned demon lord who rules over the Realm of Torment in the Void, spreading his corruptive influence into the human realm by tempting mortals to serve him with promises of power. As the series goes on, it becomes evident that Malus isn't just another demon so much as he is the series' version of the Devil himself, right down to (seemingly) being a divine being that was cast out and rebelled against the gods.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: In the second game, using a hacksaw on the shotgun will saw off much of the barrel, making it take a lot less space. Randall keeps it for his reappearance in the third game.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • In the second game, you find some AA batteries and then a doll in Jennifer's home that has a battery slot in the back. Giving the doll the batteries results in it killing you instantly.
  • Try installing a fuse into a fusebox with the power on. What could possibly go wrong? Even Death makes it obvious if you do it!
  • Walk into pitch-black areas with no light source.
  • Nothing will stop you from trying to attack Death. Nothing will go wrong. For him.
• Schrödinger's Gun: If you go to Malus's throne room early; Randall is revealed to have been killed by him. Don't go and finish the other plot first, and he turns out to be fine.
• Sequential Boss: The Knight in the second game. First he fights with a sword and shield, destroying your inventory icon so you can only use the same. Once you defeat this form, he refuses to let you pass and breaks out twin spiked flails. Even then, he'll stay in your way until you use Death's coin to remove him.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The third game ends with Luna going back in time in order to Ret-Gone herself and Malus, with the credits showing the scenes of their wars being erased and replaced with more mundane scenes of humanity's progress over the millennia.
• Shout-Out:
  • Investigating the church cemetery in Cursed 2, the player finds the grave of Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen, with a comment that he must've been #1.
  • The floating mass of faces hiding underneath the Church appears to be based heavily on Legion from Castlevania, right down to having a giant skull that appears once all its flesh is hacked off.
  • In another shout-out to SpongeBob SquarePants, the Joke Ending of Cursed 2 has Randall and Charon walking down the streets, performing the "cheap walk cycles" from "The Lost Episode". An update later added this same gag ending to Cursed 3.
  • The inventory system in Cursed 3 clearly takes a lot from Resident Evil 4, with the same layout and many similarly designed items. The game's secret weapon, a tommy gun (found by burning one of the chairs in the living room) is also clear reference to the Chicago Typewriter.
  • When a Trickster from Cursed 3 reveals itself to you, it shrieks like Z-Ridley.
  • Rather than the typical game over screen, Cursed 3 will sometimes show Charon dancing to the infamous game over music from Total Distortion.
  • On the topic of game overs, if the player chooses to shoot Spencer Carrington after freeing him, they'll get a unique game over screen evoking Metal Gear Solid.
    Charon: Spencer?....... SPEEEENNNNNCCEEEEEEERRRR!!!!!!!!
• Solar and Lunar: The Staff of the Moon, a powerful weapon throughout the series, which uses a piece of Luna's power crystal, can be transformed into the Staff of the Sun, which controls time instead of life force, by replacing the power source with the essence of Luna's opposite, Malus, the Big Bad himself.
• Stylistic Callback: The initial battle with Malus in Cursed 3 involves all of the main protagonists in the trilogy. Not only do the protagonists of the previous two games, Spencer and Randall, get to fight Malus, but they fight him with the same combat system from their respective games, which are all different from the combat system that Jennifer uses.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Guns are indeed powerful weapons - but because these enemies take a lot of abuse before going down, reloading them can make the player a sitting duck since they don't have anything to duck behind to buy time to reload.
  • The Chainsaw is hands down one of the most powerful weapons in the game - but it's highly limited in its utility because it takes fuel and there's little to begin with.
• Token Heroic Orc: Cursed 3 introduces a variety of Spirits who aid Jennifer in her quest, half of which are outright stated to be Void entities who either refused to follow Malus or were hated by the other demons for being too kind. According to the Scarecrow Spirit, the Spirits who rebelled against Malus were persecuted and there aren't many of them left.
• Too Awesome to Use: The Staff of the Moon in the latter two games.
  • In Cursed 2, it is a powerful ranged weapon with a charged attack and the ability to pull in essences - which renders it temporarily unusable for fighting the Banshee once you use it to reclaim Jennifer's spirit from them, leaving it to mainly be used for fighting the Avatar of Malus.
  • In Cursed 3, the Staff's nature as a mortal-made relic with divine origin - quite literally, as its crystal was somehow carved from the middle of the God's Eye - is the one weapon Jennifer can wield as both Luna and herself, and has infinite ammunition. In the Prevent ending, not only is it unusable in the route's Malus fight as the centerpiece of summoning Malus to the crystal chamber, Randall restores the orb to the God's Eye to allow Jennifer to manifest as Luna in the real world.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Randall and Jennifer's hometown was secretly a haven for the Cult of Malus, who have been responsible for countless "disappearances" over the years. As Randall investigates his hometown, it becomes blisteringly apparent that the Cult has their hands in just about everything going on in the town, with even the local church being little more than a front for them.
• Two-Part Trilogy: The first Cursed game makes much less reference(s) to the lore and the metaplot of the series. This is somewhat justified in that the second game did not release until ten years later. Presumably, the announced remake of the first game will bring it into line with its sequels.
• Undead Child: Justin Carrington in Cursed 3. Granted, he won't be a menace until Jennifer collects and reassembles his body parts. Afterwards, he'll be a One-Hit Kill-inflicting terror until he is finally dead.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: In Cursed 2, if you managed to save Jennifer's soul but failed to request the proper wish from Death, the game softlocks.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Some characters you can interact with in Cursed 2 and 3 can be attacked and killed. Only one comes with no consequences.
  • The Good ending of Cursed 2 requires you to revive Jennifer, but you can immediately kill her with a weapon right after. Doing this will get you the bad ending immediately, with added dialogue added to note your spontaneous and terrible decision.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Holly Lloyd has a massive breakdown after getting shot, cursing Randall while surrendering the last of her strength to Malus to kill him.
  • Malus gets an even bigger one in Cursed 3, when he's summoned to Earth by the three humans he knows have been prophesized to defeat him, furiously attacking them to ensure he won't be bested by mortals again. When they overcome him, Malus attempts to unleash his fury to destroy the world out of spite, but is bested once again by Luna. He spends his final moments trying to stop Luna from travelling back in time with the Staff of the Sun, screaming the entire time before being finally destroyed.
• Violence Is the Only Option: In the opening of Cursed 2, Randall comes across a deceased gas station attendant while looking for some gas to fill his truck. The player has the option to beat the corpse into a pulp using the hammer, which the textbox lampshades as being unexpectedly violent. Although if the player didn't pulverize the corpse the first time around, they'll definitely choose to do so on their next reload, because it will come back to life and kill you if it wasn't already stopped.
• Void Between the Worlds: Cursed 2 introduces the Void Generator, which is used to banish Malus to in the Good ending. However, Malus is able to survive in the void and in fact cannot be meaningfully harmed when within it.
  • In Cursed 3, Jennifer-as-Luna can travel to the different realms of the void via a transporter deep inside the temple ruins.
• Wham Line: In the first game, Jennifer talks about how she doesn't remember anything in the mine... until that is, she mentions that you "Cut my f***g head off."
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: The third game has an in-game timer. Each time it hits midnight, an army of monsters will emerge and go on a rampage. If you're outside when this happens, you will die on the spot; if you're inside, you'll be endlessly attacked unless you secure yourself in a room, either by boarding it up or with a certain spell that seals doors until you open them again.
• Yet Another Stupid Death:
  • You can go in pitch-black areas without any light, which will certainly kill you if you stray in there for too long.
  • In Cursed 2, when Death offers to give you a favor, one option is to ask to have your life ended. Death will gladly oblige to your wish.