You like bad ends? No? Well, I don’t either. Not a fan of grimdark fantasy either where that sort of finale is a dime-a-dozen these days, but that’s not BAD END THEATER’s gig either. Developed by NomnomNami and published by Serenity Forge for console, we’re taken for a ride across numerous routes chosen by the player for the all-star ensemble—the Hero, Maiden, Underling, and Demon Lord—as they play out their roles and get “bad ends”. Usually in the form of dying and/or being eating. Or stabbed. You can’t have nice things happen in a place called BAD END THEATER, it’d be like walking your bike through a car wash and being surprised when you and the bike are inevitably shredded to bits. Or well, violently smacked about.
Upon entering the theater, we are greeted by a figure known only to us as “Tragedy”. Tragedy is a pleasant fellow, and they ask us only one thing: lead our heroes to their dooms. This can be accomplished by simply running their storylines to a conclusion. You’ll be presented by a couple of choices in each run and, depending on the other characters’ current traits selected at the main menu, different endings can be reached. By completing differing runs, the player can unlock new traits for the characters that can be used to influence other runs and in turn, help you uncover and collect all 41-ish bad endings, you horrible human bean.
And so, you’ll watch the Hero, the Maiden, the Underling, and the Demon Lord die a bunch. There’s a lot of CGs (think still graphical images) for ever run and just about every option you pick and they’re quite lovely in composition and fidelity. The art style is quite nice, and I quite enjoy the pixelated look across the limited colour palette in BAD END THEATER. As for the deaths, they’re T-rated violence and it’s more so the text that gives it a bad rap. Even then, I’ve heard far more violent depictions in the likes of ‘RuneScape’. It’s also quite amusing to watch everyone die a bunch a few times, but I’ve always loved a good choose-your-own-adventure sort of mechanic anyway. Reaching the other ends are also very easy thanks to a simple map you can view from the main menu and the skip button always skips to the text you haven’t seen yet.
Now say you kinda find the whole “death” thing tiring. Don’t blame you, it gets repetitive (and not just in the genre and contemporary sense of things)—there is a way for things to not be the way that they are, and the game is pretty blunt about it. I won’t go into detail here, but you do end up learning more about BAD END THEATER and Tragedy this way and I found the “true” ending to be quite lovely even if the journey to it is layered in soggy cheese. Though I suppose the game wears that on its sleeves, name and all.
BAD END THEATER is an enjoyable stint of being able to choose the dilemmas your cast of characters face and then watching them die a bloody death. It’s an amusing choose-your-adventure sort of game with a bit more than that once you explore what this theatre has to offer, even if it isn’t quite subtle about certain aspects of its venue. Perfect for the sadist in you and even the hopeful. ∎
BAD END THEATER
Played on
Xbox Series X
