Mitadake High

Nail Bat. Hold It. Love it.

You are the killer! ... But don't tell anyone. You've killed one of the faculty members and left her body in the main courtyard, heh. Your role in this game is to kill every other player while surviving yourself; therefore, it isn't a great idea to tell everyone that you're the killer. Use your wits and various tools around the school to help in this goal.

Web-based multiplayer light-role-playing murder-mystery game that runs through the BYOND client. The game is similar to standard drama fare "Knives In The Dark": one player is the Killer (hereafter referred to in male terms) and must attempt to bury the unfortunates trapped with him before dawn. Alternative game modes include Death Note mode, in which one character ('Kira') spawns with a Death Note and another has the Shinigami Eyes, forcing the two to work together in order to kill everyone else; and Nanaya Mode, an out-and-out free-for-all. The reason for it being Mitadake "High" is because the default map takes place in a high school; an external map editor allows hosts to create additional maps to play on.

MH is heavily influenced by Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Death Note, and Tsukihime, with many shout outs to other anime in the bargain. There is also an on-going webcomic (Mitadake Saga) by Frosty.

After years of no real updates being made to the game, a spiritual successor in the form of Pyrce High was created, by Masterbraska, who recoded the game from scratch, adding in new modes. Suspect mode adds a new dynamic to normal mode, where a student is named by the announcement as the killer. Usually, they aren't the real killer, but to keep the players on their toes, there's a chance they could be. Zombie mode starts a player as a zombie, who can infect other players by biting them. If they can't find a cure and inject themselves with it, they'll become a zombie. Witch mode gives a player the ability to turn invisible and use various magic to kill people. They can also revive three players per round if they wish. An early version of this mode had a player spawn as Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koro ni, instead of as a student. Bernkastel was toggleable by the host, and Ronove, Battler and Eva Beatrice could be spawned by admins. This was changed as the focus of the roleplays constantly moved away from the original intent of the game.

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Tropes used in Mitadake High include:

• A Bloody Mess: Bottles of ketchup can be used to make puddles of fake blood.
• A God Am I: Primarily occurs whenever Kira can form a cult in Death Note mode.
• Awesome but Impractical: Alondite. Sure, it can attack from two spaces, but it doesn't even do as much damage as an axe, burns fatigue like nobody's business, and takes up a lot of inventory room. Newbies who rely on it too much have a tendency to get batted down, robbed, and killed.
  • Also, there is the server setting that has each in-game hour last an actual Real Life hour. You can probably tell that it doesn't ever get used.
• Badass Adorable: If someone's playing an obvious Kawaiiko and using complete sentences, chances are they're both a very good roleplayer and a very good player. Attack at your own risk.
• Badass Normal: Most people in the game qualify as Badass, due to most being normal humans. (Those with Death Notes, Shinigami Eyes, or Mystic Eyes don't count.)
• Batter Up: Baseball bats are available weapons. They come in wooden, metal, and nailed variety.
• BFG: The 7th Holy Scripture from Tsukihime sometimes spawns in-game. It is not technically a gun, mind you, but it's awesome nonetheless.
• BFS: Alondite, a weapon that can be found, can be one of the more effective melee weapons if you fight intelligently since it can hit from two squares away -- though it's weaker than the axe and drains energy insanely quickly, so if you don't kill the opponent within the first few blows, you're in a lot of trouble.
• Boring but Practical: Forkkie's server rules. "It's like I can SEE fun, but I can't reach it!"
  • Most server rules in general are either this, or completely ineffective at preventing idiots from being idiots.
• Breakable Weapons: Obvious Rule Patch to the previously mentioned Game Breakers below: the Baseball Bat and Alondite.
• Break the Cutie: Find a cutie. Attempt to kill said cutie, but fail. Cutie is now broken, if they're a decent RPer.
• Catgirls: Strictly speaking, the game contains none, but it's easy to RP as a cosplayer. And some servers let you RP as a straight-up catgirl.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: If you really need to write something, being covered in blood works just as well as having a Mechanical Pencil in your inventory. Bizarrely, having a weapon that is covered in blood is not sufficient if you are not bloody yourself.
• Critical Existence Failure: You're fine as long as you still have a sliver of HP.
• Crazy Survivalist: It's not uncommon to walk into a random room, or especially the basement, and find a barricade, with one of these inside.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Neither love nor money will save you if you are accused of being the Killer and the people playing are idiots.
  • Unless, of course, you're just that Badass and can kill everyone yourself.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Technically, any time Ramiel is beaten in combat.
• Dummied Out: Black Haired Girl and Pink Haired Boy have icons, but they're not coded to be given to anybody.
• Easter Egg: Nanatsu Yoru and the 7th Holy Scripture from Tsukihime may randomly spawn.
• Evil Eye: One player always spawns with the Shinigami Eyes in Death Note mode, and players have a (bizarrely high) chance of spawning with them in Normal Mode, as well as a chance of spawning with the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.
  • Or both at once. It's happened.
• Fan Nickname: The Green-Haired Boy is commonly known as "Cabbage-kun".
• Fan Web Comics: Mitadake Saga
• Gambit Pileup: If you're playing a game with several intelligent, witty players with well-thought-out plans, expect this to happen a lot. Especially in Death Note mode. Obviously averted in Nanaya Mode.
• Game Breaking Bug: The taser bug. Tasing someone who's unconscious destroys their inventory; in the case of the holder of the Death Note, this means that there's no more Kira and the game might as well be rebooted.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The most common argument amongst players is where the line between good player and bad roleplayer (or the opposite) should be drawn.
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Ramiel. Of course, he doesn't show up in every game.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: You think you know who the killer is? Great, go hunt them down... oh, look, the REAL killer got to them first. That sound is your brain breaking. In-Character, of course.
• Heroic Sociopath: Startlingly, though unsurprisingly, common.
• High School
• Hit Points: Measured by a Life Meter, naturally.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: You are hunting the Killer. The Killer is hunting you.
• I Know You Know I Know: Experienced players tend to do this with PDA Numbers in Death Note mode: being able to instantly contact your allies is fantastic, but there's the danger that one of them is Kira and could ID you through the school's database (assuming the host hasn't disabled computers due to abuse). If you can grab a PDA off a corpse, you're all set.
• Idiot Ball: A great number of games have been lost simply by Kira or the Killer getting a little too overconfident or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or occasionally, a paranoid idiot just getting lucky and killing the right person.
• If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: Sometimes players will try to trap the killer rather than kill him in order to avoid this. A good killer can use this to convince them to kill each other. Occasionally taken literally in Death Note mode - if someone kills Kira, the killer will (usually) pick up the Death Note and assume his role.
• Lethal Joke Item: The wooden bat used to qualify, until an update made it and the equally-broken bokken into Breakable Weapons.
  • Even more so now. It now takes a lot more technique to use wooden weapons than it used to, but they're still wonderful for punishing heavily-armed newbies.
• I Lied: Lots of this due to the nature of the game.
• Madness Mantra: Verbal and written, sometimes both at once.
• Magnificent Bastard: Some Kiras take extreme joy in invoking this trope, and a good Kira or Eyes player usually either is or becomes one, especially if Kira is clearly manipulating the Eyes player to do his bidding.
  • Bonus points for writing your own name in the DN set for a time past the end of the game (say, 7:00 AM) and then giving it to your Eyes and spending the rest of the round skulking while they kill everyone, since now they can't backstab you and write your own name in.
• Manipulative Bastard: Many killers pull this one.
• Melee a Trois: Make a few wild accusations. The players will immediately divide into those who believe you, those who don't believe you, and the real killer.
• The Mole: In a good-sized game, someone besides Eyes will be helping Kira.
  • Reverse Mole: Unless they're not.
    • But if they're good, you can never tell if they're one or the other. Often, they themselves haven't decided who they're really working for until the crunch comes, and many will prepare for either outcome.
• Moral Dissonance: A good way to catch Kira is to pretend to be the Eyes, and vice-versa. This usually leads to all but you and your prey dead, followed quickly by your prey's death.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning / Thanatos Gambit: This can easily occur in Death Note mode if Kira is a sadistic prick or simply cannot worm his way out of the oncoming storm. As Kira, take your Death Note, hide it somewhere the Eyes will find it, fake your own death, and hide. The Eyes will gladly kill off the other players for you, only to find that you've written their name in the back of the book for 5:00 AM. Savvy tropers will note that this is a fair recreation of the actual plot of Death Note.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Doesn't happen so much anymore, but back when the game was a more cerebral experience, the announcement of certain players to play certain modes (Axel Wildfire for Death Note, Minax for Normal - two examples out of many) often triggered a mass exodus from the server.
• Never Split the Party: You go it alone, and the killer will find you. Of course, if your "teammate" is the killer, you're screwed anyway.
• Ninja Looting: If you can justify it, an art form and a masterstroke RP. If not, you will be yelled at, insulted, and despised. Either way, a valid game tactic.
  • Particularly if, as the Eyes, you loot a KO'd Kira.
• Obvious Rule Patch: People who get the role of Kira have a tendency to rush to the office, check the student records, and write every name into the note, defeating the purpose of having several dozen extra names. Now the host has the option to disable computers completely.
  • The security tapes seemed like a good idea when the game was starting out, but now that everyone and their mother knows how to rush the tapes in twenty seconds flat, a toggle was put in to disable them. Only after this toggle was put in did it become well-known that the tapes sometimes lie.
• One-Man Army: Most of the time, the killer must try to manipulate the other players into killing each other. But not always. There have been examples of some clever masters of the combat system defeating as many as six enemies. At the same time.
• The Plan: Pretty much required for Kira or the Killer, sometimes turns into a Gambit Roulette.
• Poor Communication Kills: Boy does it ever.
• Powder Keg Crowd: Inevitable. If you know which way the crowd will go when it goes off, you will win. If not, you will die.
• Puss in Boots: For Kira's side, the game is won or lost by the Shinigami Eyes. A competent Eyes can usually meet up with Kira easily, barring the usual bad luck, stupid random attacks, or a Magnificent Bastard among the other students, while an idiot will get themselves killed or keep quiet the whole game. A good Kira can win without meeting the Eyes, but it's not easy.
• Recursive Adaptation: The game is loosely based on the Visual Novels Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Tsukihime. It is presently being turned into a Visual Novel of its own by two players.
• Refuge in Audacity: Nobody will kill you if you explicitly tell them you are Kira.
• Shout-Out: Almost too many to name- there are posters up all over the walls promoting Tsukihime, Melty Blood, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and the like, not to mention the blatantly-titled Death Note game mode. Also, the help file has commentary from Neco-Arc. Then we have the weapons. Some of the arsenal in the game include a billhooked cleaver, a steel baseball bat, a taser, the Death Note, Alondite, and the 7th Holy Scripture- oh, and the random attacks on the school by Ramiel. Most of the character sprites are Higurashi no Naku Koro ni characters, as well. There's also a poster of Orange-kun's fully upgraded form on the second floor of the default map. The page image, which displays before the game starts, is a Higurashi shout-out. And, of course, you can always play a Shout-Out of your own.
• Schoolgirl Lesbians: All the time. Sometimes they're sane.
• Something Completely Different: Nanaya Mode. No RPing this round, just Kill'Em All.
  • Inverted when the host manages to get everyone under control before the round starts. When this happens, you often get a well roleplayed and interesting game. Of course, it's still something completely different so it still counts.
• Spanner in the Works: Almost everyone who has been Kira or the Killer has constructed a brilliant plan only to have one person completely ruin it, often without realization.
• Spiritual Successor: to Space Station 13.
  • Has its own in Pyrce High, which is even based on its code.
• The Starscream: Many Eyes players turn on Kira at the first opportunity and steal the Note for themselves.
• Sunglasses at Night: While you are inside a building with lights the entire game, the lights can be switched off.
  • "SUNGLASSES. IN. DARK"
• Surrounded by Idiots: Yes, you are. Bad RPers and good RPers RPing as idiots.
• Ten Little Murder Victims
• The Chessmaster: Kira pretty much needs to be one of these in order to win.
• There Can Be Only One: Warning: Nanaya test sequences about to begin. Any staff still present in the building should vacate immediately. For test subjects in the building, your purpose is simple; if you wish to become the new 'Nanaya', or simply wish to live, kill everyone but yourself. That is all.
• Unwitting Pawn: You have no idea. Especially likely to happen when there's a personal relationship between the two players.
• Video Game Caring Potential: The killer has a tendency to choose one student (of their preferred gender) and spare them. This doesn't always happen, mind you, but more often than you'd think.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Again, with real people, far more common than the trope above.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: When Kira gets killed, it's extremely common to see another player take up the Note and become the next Kira. Sometimes invoked when Kira's player has things to do in the real world.