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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33142
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33142
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### It depends on your genre - in horror games this can be a very good decision

If you are going for a darker themed game, and your description suggests that you are doing this, then having multiple bad endings is fine. I've played quite a few horror games that were created with the RPG Maker (I am not affiliated with the company) for example where there are lots of bad endings - and I enjoyed all of them. Because you spend most of your time in the game itself: _The journey is the destination_.

Having _only_ bad endings would probably be a bad idea. This would make the player feel like all of their effort was indeed wasted. But if your game makes it obvious that there are multiple endings and each ending gives information about a possible other ending, one of them being _good_, then everything is fine. _If only you had taken the knife with you that the Antagonist just used to stab you, things might have gone a different route..._

The players who enjoy playing a game multiple times will try to follow the advice they got. Others might simply look up a walkthrough that shows them the other endings. I've been on both sides, depending on how much time I would need to spend with the same stuff I've already done in previous runs. The more decisions one can do the better. Spending 10 hours only to click _Left_ instead of _Right_ before the Boss' lair is boring. But deciding whether you take the lamp or the book with you after a few minutes is a completely different matter. As long as these decisions matter that is. Having regular checkpoints, especially before important decisions can help, too. If that is your style, of course. Some games prefer to go a rogue-like style and let the players decisions be final when they are deciding which part of the story they want to play.

Having only one _good_, hard to achieve, ending is especially good for perfectionist gamers that want to get _everything_. They will try to get every ending and see which hints they contain that will help them get to _100 %_.

Furthermore having only one _good_ ending makes this one feel special to the players who manage to achieve it. It's clearly better than any other ending they managed to get and therefore more _valuable_ in their eyes.

Having bad things happen to your character is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you give it a positive spin. See my answer to the question [Still struggling with character desire, positive vs. negative, hooking readers](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/33120/still-struggling-with-character-desire-positive-vs-negative-hooking-readers/33122#33122) for a more detailed discussion about why negative feelings resonate more strongly in us humans and how this can be used to give a character a motivation that the reader/player can relate to as they are trying to bring happiness to the character that is suffering. Multiple bad endings mean that there are more reasons to help the character finally achieve his well-deserved piece of peace and happiness.

What you also sometimes see is that a game has maybe two or three bad endings (plus a Game Over that can for example occur if the player dies) and one good ending. And then one special, true ending that you can only get if you for example collect all of the very rare items. This is another possibility. Make it a little bit easier to have a nice ending to please your more casual gamers and make the true ending extra hard to get and thereby extra rewarding. The true ending doesn't have to be completely happy by the way, though this will surely leave the player with the feeling of having completed a _horror_ game.

Having only equally bad endings is possible, but in general you want your player to think: "That went better than the last time. Still bad, but I managed to get further. If I keep this up I will make it to the 'good' ending!" That means you should think about making endings in multiple shades of _bad_ - from "Game Over" over "I am dead at the end" over "Well, I managed to run away, but I didn't realize there was a trap outside that room" over "I managed to nearly get away - if only I had a weapon to fight that final monster" to "I managed to get away and lead a happy life". With the true ending being "The monster was my sister/ my father/ myself all along..."

But your game has to fit this style. You don't want a totally happy and relaxed game where you suddenly realize at the end that your decisions have led to a bad ending. Imagine for example a Pokemon game (again, I am not affiliated with the company) where you basically have nothing to lose from spending some time trying to catch or train your Pokemon - and in the end you realize that there was a time limit of 100 in-game days to get to the end and now you can't beat the Top Four. That would suck.

Original score: 39