The Procession to Calvary is a 2021 Black Comedy Point-and-Click adventure game by Joe Richardson, and a Spiritual Successor to Four Last Things. This game continues the style of its predecessor by having graphics made entirely from animated Renaissance paintings and featuring public domain recordings of classical music.
The game depicts a farcical holy war in which the forces of Immortal John have just triumphed over those of the tyrant Heavenly Peter. Among John’s forces is a bloodthirsty champion, who is none too pleased to be told that the war is over and she must stop killing people. But upon hearing that Heavenly Peter is still alive, she embarks on an epic quest across the sea to find and kill him, meeting all kinds of wacky characters and solving various puzzles in the process.
Tropes:
- Adventure Game: Gameplay consists of old school point and click adventuring.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: A tailor couple will give you a dress if you help them out, subverted because the dress is necessary for one of the plotlines.
- Anachronism Stew: The game's eclectic art is a hodgepodge of Medieval to Romantic era art, with the soundtrack consisting of songs as old as Greensleeves and as new as Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever.
- Chain of Deals: Two of the three possible endings require you essentially doing one favor after another, trading your way to your next goal.
- Crapsack World: The setting is filled with war, torture, and all manner of exploitation and nobody seems to have any issue with it.
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Designated Hero: The player character is violent and utterly amoral, the whole reason she goes on her quest is an excuse to murder more people. - Depraved Dwarf: The Metrognome is a dwarf musician whose music tell torturers how fast to turn a torture device.
- Elegant Classical Musician: Most of the musicians are very well dressed.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The player character may be a bloodthirsty war criminal, but there are several NPCs she will refuse to kill for various reasons.
- Genre Throwback: To the aforementioned Adventure Game genre.
- Hollywood Satanism: A Satanic altar with a sacrifice on it appears in one area.
- Hero of Another Story: Immortal John was the protagonist of Four Last Things and appears as a self appointed dictator. He sets the plot in motion when he abolishes killing; this infuriates the player character so he compromises her and sends her on a mission to assassinate his rival, Heavenly Peter.
- Lady of War: The player character is a blackly comical deconstruction.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: The Magician looks exactly like Jesus and several of his magic tricks allude to Jesus' miracles.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Magician's tricks are rather ambiguous.
- Our Demons Are Different: They have animal heads, similar to many demons found in Western demonology.
- Pedophile Priest: Two Cardinals request "a boy with rosey cheeks and a pert butt" as a bribe.
- Samus Is a Girl: Subverted, the player's sex is stated early on but two of the three endings reveal her breasts.
- Serial Killer: One possible playthrough involves murdering quest giver NPCs instead of doing tasks for them.
- Smelly Skunk: It is possible to befriend one and use it to clear out a room of people.
- Talent Contest: The player must enter one to win a quest item, her talent is singing.
- Token Minority: A black guard posted at an infirmary is the only nonwhite character to appear.
- Torture Technician: A pair of these can be found turning a victim on a spit over an open fire.
- The Warlord: Immortal John, and his rival Heavenly Peter.
- World of Chaos: The crapsack elements paired with the mishmash of incompatible art styles lead to a world that makes no real sense.
- World Gone Mad: It's implied that the world has become this from the recent war.
