Sooo... there's more?

OK, these are the known endings and conditions (Please correct me if I got something wrong or if you have more information):

1. Alice knocks Richard out and puts him in Church's basement: No mystery box, other unknown (Novotnus)
2. Richard ends up dead: Mystery box, other unknown (Brandchan, Novotnus)
3. Alice shoots Richard (might be same as 2): Mystery box, other unknown (Firkraags)
4a. Alice and Richard go to the Polar Bears: No mystery box, other unknown (Firkraags)
4b. Alice and Richard go to the Polar Bears: No mystery box, Confessed to killing, Pressed about ambitions (johkra)
5. Alice knocks Richard out, puts him in tool shed: No mystery box, Confessed to killing, Not pressed about ambitions (lowyhong)

The mystery box is obviously a factor. Pressing or not pressing about Alice's ambitions also appears to factor in. It is unknown if confessing to killing or anything which is said to Barney makes a difference. In my previous posting I listed all dialog options with multiple choices I could remember. I also collected a lot of notes, if this makes any difference.

I have a hunch 1 could be the same as 5, but we'll need Novotnus to confirm this heh.

Alice killed herself on my ending. Probably to frame Richard when the Polars came after the gunshot.
I didn't make RIchard press on her hobbies, but made him confess about his killings.
Alice told Barney about his father's death and also that he shouldn't worry about the Polars gang.
I picked the box in the lake.

Coincidentally I was thinking of that too, but I seem to recall that the notebook was something you'd have to take along with the newspaper.

I'll have to check - I'll be home in a couple of hours so I can see if you can leave it and report back here.

Hi! Ashton Raze, the lead writer here. Gonna keep this vague but I will confirm one thing; there's no ending variant where Richard is locked in the church basement, it's just the shed. So the ending referred to as him being in the basement is the shed ending.

*edit* Also the notebook is mandatory to take, yeah.

It's great to see you and Lewis here. I enjoyed your story and would buy future games you make. :-)

Thank you so much. :D Seeing people are enjoying it/discussing it and whatnot means a great deal. I'll be harassing Lewis for us to get cracking on our next game, then.

Just recalled another trigger: depending on whether or not you ask Barney about the "bad men", he'll give you the letter Sara wrote to Richard.

Just got the ending where Alice kills Richard. Here are the choices I made:

- tell Barney that the bad men won't be back
- tell Barney that Mark likes living underground
- don't pick up the satchel (and the note within)
- don't interact with the Polars sign
- don't pick up the note outside the church
- Richard denies having killed anyone before (but he eventually admits it anyway)
- pick up mystery box
- probe Alice about her ambition
- talk to the meteorologist/priest about all the subjects

^ This sounds like my Alice shooting Richard ending.

I still don't understand why any of those things would make her do so, though. Or any more so that the time she didn't.

But, I had the satchel. And I read the sign. And I had Richard say he killed people. (That was another odd moment because I had to say yes/no to "Did you kill someone?" or whatever, with no context.)

'Tis a mystery to me. I quite like enigmatic games (which is why I'm still reading the thread) but I think it has to be *possible* to figure it out. (Still, maybe I just missed the point of some pivotal clue.)

Yeah, the endings other than the one I first got (Alice knocking Richard out, then both going their separate ways) sound a bit too arbitrary to me. Would be interesting to see exactly what are the conditions needed to trigger each ending.

Hi again, folks.

It's so great to see everyone having this discussion! I still have to pinch myself every time I spot complete strangers on the internet talking about our silly little game. But you're all friends now! Mwah!

We really wanted to make a game that bucked the trend in terms of "multiple paths" in video games. We've all played those games that essentially come down to "Do you want to choose Ending A or Ending B?" and then, surprisingly, the respective ending plays out. Even the best games have fallen into that trap, as it is so easy to do, but it was a huge priority for us that a player's story could play out naturally - perhaps without them even noticing that they were making decisions that would affect the story.

There are multiple occasions on which you can affect elements of the story, as you've obviously all picked up on. Not all of these conditions affect the ending, but every choice you make changes *something* - even if it's just a single line of dialogue later in the game.

We were careful to craft each ending in the sense that even the smallest decisions you make can have far-reaching consequences - even determining, ultimately, whether a person lives or dies. It's like that old philosophical question about time-travel: if you went back a million years and squashed a pre-historic insect, what would it change today? There are so many possibilities.

Anyway, this is all a very long-winded way of explaining our design philosophy when it came to the ending conditions. For the record, you guys are still missing one ending and one condition, though you have got caught up in a few red-herrings. And that's all I'll say. Because I'm evil like that. :D