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Branching Stories with Multiple Endings

All games offer you agency. You can win or lose. You can complete them or stop at any time. But there are some games that offer a story that genuinely branches. Where you end up will be different from other players. This not only makes your actions really matter but also gives you a reason to play them again.

Setting aside games that evolve through simulation, or games where once you die it's game over, these branching narrative games tell a story that ends in a certain way because of the choices you made.

This list includes 204 games from the last 33 years, with 2,903 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to control how the story ends.

DetailsList Details

PEGI Ratings: PEGI 3 to PEGI 18
ESRB Ratings: ESRB EVERYONE to ESRB MATURE 17+
Australian Ratings: G to R 18+
Genres: Action, Adventure, Battle, Brain Game, Collecting, Communication, Creative, Fighting, Narrative, Platform, Point-and-Click, Puzzle, Race, Rhythm, Role-Play, Sequencing, Shooting, Simulation, Sports, Stealth, Strategy, Traversal and World Building
Total Likes: 2,903
 

Lake

Release Date: 01/09/2021

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person, 3D Third-Person and Cartoon

Lake is a narrative adventure where you play Meredith Weiss on a career break in 1986 while she returns to her hometown and ends up delivering the mail. As you talk to locals, meet up with old school friends and even fan a few romantic flames from your...

Fable (Series)

Release Date: 14/09/2004

Out Now: Mac, PC, Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Day and Night and Open World

Fable is an adventure role-playing game set in a fantasy world where your interactions with the world and villagers, and decisions about your use of magical power, substantially alter the story and the environment.

Road 96

Release Date: 16/08/2021

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon

Road 96 is a narrative adventure where you play a teenager trying to escape an oppressive, authoritarian country by reaching the border. Through a series of vignettes, you experience the most important and poignant parts on an epic road trip through a...

Storyteller

Release Date: 23/03/2023

Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made

Storyteller is a puzzle game about building stories. You use a set of icons to match what is happening in each frame of the story. It's a simple challenge that gets the mind-stretching as you construct some of history’s greatest stories using building...

Season: A Letter to the Future

Release Date: 31/01/2023

Out Now: PC, PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon

Season: A Letter to the Future is a narrative adventure about a young woman sent out from her secluded community to explore the world for the first time. She is tasked with documenting life in a local valley before a mysterious cataclysm washes...

Overboard

Release Date: 02/06/2021

Out Now: Android, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Hand-Made and Text

Overboard is a murder mystery narrative game played in reverse. You murder your husband at the start of the game and then try and get away with it. It's played on a ship where the characters are affected by your choices and changes their actions...

Bury Me My Love

Release Date: 26/10/2017, updated in 2020

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Cartoon and Text

Bury Me My Love is a narrative adventure game where you play the husband of a Syrian woman, Nour, travelling to Europe. Play involves receiving and sending simple messages where Nout tells you how she is getting on and you influence her choices. It...

Sable

Release Date: 23/09/2021

Out Now: PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon, Open World and Weather

Sable is an adventure game where you play a young girl, Sable, alone in the world, but bravely exploring ancient monuments, ruined architecture, and fallen ships to uncover her place in it. It's an adventure without combat that calls you to find your...

Griftlands

Release Date: 14/06/2020, updated in 2021

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Components: 2D Side-On, Cards and Hand-Made

Griftlands is an adventure game where you use cards to fight and negotiate your way through a broken-down sci-fi world. You will die or fail often, but then use your knowledge and growing deck of cards to have a better chance of survival on your next...

80 Days

Release Date: 31/07/2014, updated in 2019

Out Now: Amazon Fire, Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Day and Night

80 Days is a travel and culture discovery game set in 1872, where decisions about your journey around the world impact the course of the story and characters. You play be deciding where to go next and talking to the people you meet to find the right...

Wildermyth

Release Date: 15/06/2021

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Hand-Made

Wildermyth is a medieval role-playing game about diverse heroes and themes. You take on evil in a number of stories, each with different heroes and settings. The focus is on the characters as much as their adventures, who are believable, diverse and...

Goodbye Volcano High

Release Date: 29/08/2023

Out Now: PC, PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

Goodbye Volcano High is a high school coming-of-age adventure set in a world of anthropomorphic dinosaur characters. You play as band members, non-binary Fang and best friend Trish as they navigate the last days of high school. It's a mix of making...

Pilgrims

Release Date: 07/10/2019, updated in 2022

Out Now: Apple TV, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Cards, Cartoon and Hand-Made

Pilgrims is an adventure game where you collect cards to help the characters you meet. As you progress you assist them to complete their little stories by offering the right cards to the right people. It's a little like Scribblenauts but with less focus...

Wayward Strand

Release Date: 15/09/2022

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Cartoon and Hand-Made

Wayward Strand is a narrative game about Casey Beaumaris, an intrepid teenage journalist. You visit an airborne hospital, uncover the airship's mysteries, and explore the lives of its inhabitants. It's a Tintin-style point-and-click adventure with a...

Cris Tales

Release Date: 20/07/2021

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made

Cris Tales is a role-playing game where you see how your actions in the present affect the past and future. You play as Crisbell in a cartoon-looking adventure through four Kingdoms in a bid to stop the powerful Time Empress and rewrite the future of...

Citizen Sleeper

Release Date: 05/05/2022

Out Now: PC, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Cartoon, Dice, Grid and Text

Citizen Sleeper is a role-play game set in the ruins of interplanetary capitalism. You are an escaped worker exploring a lawless space station, making friends, and (ultimately) trying to escape your past. Each cycle you roll dice and decide how to spend...

Baldur's Gate 3

Release Date: 21/12/1998, updated in 2023

Out Now: Mac, PC and PS5

Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Dice and Open World

Baldur's Gate 3 is a role-playing game that recreates the Dungeons & Dragons experience in a digital world. You explore the world and fight enemies by rolling dice and weighing up your stats to see what happens. But...

King Of The Castle

Release Date: 02/03/2023

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

King Of The Castle is a narrative strategy game where you play a monarch battling nobles for power in a kingdom. The twist is that the nobles are controlled by other players who also have their own factions and objectives. You play by making decisions...

The Pale Beyond

Release Date: 24/02/2023

Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, 2D Side-On and Day and Night

The Pale Beyond is a narrative simulation game where you captain an exploration ship stranded in the frozen Antarctic waters. You carefully manage and gather resources and keep your crew in good health to hopefully survive until the summer. It stands...

Call of the Sea

Release Date: 12/08/2020, updated in 2020

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Call of the Sea is a narrative adventure set in the 1930s. As Nora, you explore an island in the Southern Pacific to find your missing husband. As you do you discover that he went hunting for a cure for your mystery illness, but what happened after that...

Paradise Killer

Release Date: 04/09/2020

Out Now: Mac, PC, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Day and Night and Open World

Paradise Killer is a detective game set in the open world of Paradise Island. It's a strange place with quirky characters and an alien obsessed, demon worshiping world. You are an exiled investigator brought back to solve the mass murder of the island's...

Heaven's Vault

Release Date: 16/04/2019

Out Now: PC, PS4 and Switch

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Heaven's Vault is a communication adventure game you play an archaeologist translating an ancient alien language whose decrypting weaves through an unfolding drama. While doing real linguistic work you interact with companions and locals. Your choices...

Disco Elysium

Release Date: 15/10/2019, updated in 2021

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 14+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made

Disco Elysium The Final Cut is a role-playing game set in the fictional city of Revachol where you play Harrier "Harry" Du Bois who must solve a complex murder. Unusually, your choices and actions not only determine how the story unfolds but affect...

Forgotton Anne

Release Date: 15/05/2018

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Components: 2D Side-On

Forgotton Anne (Forgotten Anne) is a hand-animated adventure that combines cartoon (Ghibli-inspired) storytelling with running and jumping puzzles. You play as Anne, the enforcer who keeps order in the Forgotten Lands, as she sets out to squash a...

Nier: Automata

Release Date: 23/02/2017, updated in 2018

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Components: 3D Third-Person

Nier: Automata is a role-playing game, that span off from the Drakengard series. It's set in an alternate future where there is a war between alien machines and human androids. But this isn't a game about winning the war. It's more focused on the plight...

Signs of the Sojourner

Release Date: 14/05/2020

Out Now: Mac, PC, Switch and Xbox One

Components: 2D Side-On, Cards and Hand-Made

Signs of the Sojourner is an introspective narrative where you interact with characters by solving puzzles with cards that represent emotions. It's a coming-of-age story set in the near future and explores how relationships form, break and mend in the...

The Talos Principle

Release Date: 11/12/2014, updated in 2019

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Components: 3D First-Person and Day and Night

The Talos Principle is a narrative driven puzzle game, praised for its cerebral and philosophical nature, where you play an android with a human conscience. You explore environments to complete complex brain-teasing puzzles to collect "sigils".

Biomutant

Release Date: 25/05/2021, updated in 2022

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Day and Night and Open World

Biomutant is an open-world role-play adventure game where you play a Raccoon warrior in a large world filled with mutated animals. Exploring this living breathing ecosystem has the feel of Zelda Breath of the Wild, but in a broken-down steampunk...

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach

Release Date: 16/12/2021, updated in 2022

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person and Day and Night

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach is a survival-horror game where you explore a vast pizzeria and shopping centre while hunted by a murderer. In addition to continuing the intricate and multi-layered story of the previous games, this is the first...

Penrose

Release Date: 01/09/2020

Out Now: Android, Web and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Text

Penrose is a text adventure, where you don't only read the story and choose its next step, but can go back into the text to change it in all sorts of mind-bending ways. As the developer describes it, "Penrose is a non-linear narrative adventure game...

Five Nights at Freddy's (Series)

Release Date: 23/07/2014, updated in 2019

Out Now: Android, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person

Five Nights at Freddy's (FNaF) is a series of puzzle horror games with jump scares rather than blood and gore. You play the night-guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza and have to survive the night while in your office, checking the cameras and closing the...

Grand Theft Auto V

Release Date: 01/01/1997, updated in 2019

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 16+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Day and Night, Open World and Weather

Grand Theft Auto V is the latest in a series of action-adventure games where you travel around one large location taking part in different criminal activities: pulling off heists, with lots of shooting and stealing and driving a variety of cars and...

Detroit: Become Human

Release Date: 25/05/2018

Out Now: PS4

Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Detroit: Become Human is a branching narrative game from Quantic Dream, the studio behind Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. This is the third game in the series and offers a more refined version of the filmic branching experience.

Outer Wilds

Release Date: 11/12/2018, updated in 2023

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person, Day and Night and Open World

Outer Wilds is an exploration space mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time-loop. After 20 minutes of game time, you must start again – but each time brings a new opportunity to learn how you ended up on the planet and solve the...

The Forest

Release Date: 30/05/2014

Out Now: PC and PS4

Skill Rating: 14+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person, Day and Night and Open World

The Forest is a survival horror game where you are the only passenger to live after a plane crash. You explore a mysterious forest to find food, shelter and safety but soon have to battle strange cannibalistic people.

Last Minute Love

Release Date: 27/12/2018, updated in 2020

Out Now: Mac, PC and Web

Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Pixels

Last Minute Love is an adventure where you play an "old person" in a nursing home who is looking for love. This takes the dating simulator style of game in an unusual direction. You explore the home in your wheelchair, meet a quirky cast of people and...

Coffee Talk

Release Date: 29/01/2020, updated in 2023

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels

Coffee Talk is an interactive story about a barista working in a coffee shop in Seattle. You listen to customers' concerns about life and love, in a retro-pixilated world backed with lo-fi chilled hip-hop music.

Tell Me Why

Release Date: 27/08/2020

Out Now: PC and Xbox One

Components: 3D Third-Person

Tell Me Why is a narrative game following the story of twins Tyler and Alyson Ronan, as they unravel the truth about their childhood and why they were separated. It's a story about the impact of families and the lengths we go to make them right.

Little Misfortune

Release Date: 18/11/2019

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC and iOS

Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made

Little Misfortune is a dark adventure where you play a small girl called, Misfortune, who, guided by a voice in her head, seeks the prize of eternal happiness for her mother. It's played side-on and unfolds a narrative about the girl's family as you...

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Release Date: 15/07/2003, updated in 2021

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch, Xbox and iOS

Components: 3D Third-Person

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is a series of hard narrative-driven role-playing and combat games set in the Star Wars universe, 4000 years before Luke Skywalker and the Empire. You fight enemies and discover secrets by talking to the...

Taming Gaming Book Written by parents for parents, the database complements the in-depth discussion about video game addiction, violence, spending and online safety in the Taming Gaming book. We are an editorially independent, free resource without adverts that is supported by partnerships.

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