Video Game / In Stars And Time

Siffrin, our protagonist, cursed with the worst case of Time Loop Fatigue known to man.^note From left to right: Isabeau, Mirabelle, Siffrin, Odile and Bonnie.

"Have you tried Not Dying???"

The tyrannical King has cursed nearly all of the country of Vaugarde to be frozen in time, with the intention of locking Vaugarde in perfect stasis. It is now up to The Chosen One Mirabelle, the only person immune to his magic blessed by the Change God, and her Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to defeat him. They venture into his lair, the House of Change, and fight through it until they reach a corridor that's rumored to bring death to the unwary. The party's pun-loving yet quiet trap-finder Siffrin examines it thoroughly, finds no traps, announces that everything is fine... and is crushed by a giant rock, dying instantly.

Then he wakes up in the town of Dormont none the worse for wear, and after gathering his bearings discovers he's gained the ability to loop back to the day before they attack the King whenever Siffrin dies. Sure, he still feels everything, but it's fine. None of the rest of the party remember the loops, but it's fine. He can't tell any of his party members about the loops, but it's fine. He has to have the same conversations every day, but it's fine. Everything is fine.

And how long could it take to defeat the King and escape the loops, anyway? Ten loops? Twenty? Fifty?...

Beginning at the end of the party's long journey and the start of Siffrin's even longer one, the game tells the story of Siffrin as he struggles to remain positive in the face of endless time loops. Although death after failure and failure and failure again wears him down, Siffrin keeps going in hopes of defeating the King and ending this temporal tragedy once and for all. And keeps going. And keeps going. And keeps going. And keeps going...

In Stars And Time is a time-looping Role-Playing Game adventure developed by Adrienne Bazir (she/they), a.k.a. insertdisc5, and published by Armor Games Studios. Released on Nov 20, 2023 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch, the game is the finalized and expanded version of its prototype, START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: a prologue.

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The game contains examples of:

• Achievement Mockery:
  • There is an achievement for dying in every way possible in the game.
  • One death in particular is stupid enough to get its own achievement: you can choose to eat pineapples as a snack after Loop explicitly tells you you're allergic.
  • The game also gives you an achievement for repeatedly trying and failing to hear Isabeau's confession, and another achievement for kissing him under the tree and being pushed away called "Bad Touch".
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The player can loop forward or backward to different floors of the House, saving the trouble of going through the entire House again to re-visit a floor. Additionally, they can choose to loop with all the doors already unlocked if they just need to look at a specific room.
  • Any collected equipment or memories are kept on future loops. Save points will store your party EXP, so if you have to loop back to this an area they go back to stored values. Additionally if the player loops back and has less levels than the previously stored value, it will keep the highest stored value.
  • Act 5 will always start with a unique memory equipped and Siffrin has fixed stats, so that players who have not grinded or experienced many loops will always have Siffrin at their peak level of power.
  • A few of the equippable Memories help mitigate the tedium of the loops, such as by increasing XP gained or making enemies flee from you; the latter is especially helpful if you're only on a floor to look at one room and don't want to bother with fighting.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: While it was mostly due to how long the loop had been going in START AGAIN, long enough for Siffrin to have forgotten the names of his True Companions, Siffrin's more hardy and worn attitude is overall toned down at the start, with him much more willing to break out into puns, be smug and playful, and fear making people upset. However, as the story progresses and the loops continue, that niceness fades and Siffrin starts to act more like his START AGAIN self.
• Arc Symbol: Four pointed stars are scattered around the game in various locations. Siffrin implies that it's the symbol of the Forgotten Country, as he recognizes it from the King's gauntlets.
• Arc Words: "You feel a tug on your stomach." These words indicate not just dying, but actually using Time Craft and Wish Craft to loop by time-traveling.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The battle with the King himself reminds the team that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
• Auto-Revive: The Memory of Emptiness in Act 5 is equipped on Siffrin and automatically revives him whenever he is KO'd. In fact, it can do this as many times as it wants.
• Banana Peel: One is just lying on the ground in the starting village, which Siffrin can step on to instantly slip to their death; useful for immediately jumping to a desired area of the castle, as the only way to loop from Dormont. It's not even a banana, but a plantain!
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: In Act 5, after the King has slowed Siffrin down to being frozen in time, we see Sif... or maybe his soul or psyche... being stranded in the void as he confronts Mal du Pays, the manifestation of his sadness and self-loathing, in quite possibly the center of his mind. And this is where Mal du Pays breaks him with a lecture on the fear of being abandoned and forgotten. This almost works, and Sif almost succumbs to the darkness... Cue the Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Siffrin wished at the Favor Tree to be able to stay with his friends. Wish Craft manifested this through a time loop of the same two days that gradually drives him insane. Thankfully subverted in the end, though; he does get to stay with them after all! It just... takes potentially hundreds of loops (depending on how you play) and inflicts lifelong trauma.
• The Bechdel Test: Discussed. In one possible conversation that Siffrin can overhear while in the bathroom, Odile tells Mirabelle about how in some countries, women are supposed to talk about men and love and nothing else. Then they decide to make small talk about exactly that.
• Bittersweet Ending: Siffrin's trauma from the loops isn't going away anytime soon, the loop that ultimately sticks is the one where he caused a large rift between his teammates. However, Siffrin is finally free from the time loop, his True Companions aren't splitting up anytime soon and forgive Siffrin after understanding his plight, and Siffrin comes to terms with and moves past his self-loathing and homesickness.
• Blatant Lies: Early in the game, Siffrin encounters a young child who wants to give him a tutorial, and claims her name is Tutorial Kid. Siffrin immediately notices her real name is embroidered on her jacket but says nothing.
• Blessed with Suck: By nature of it being a "Groundhog Day" Loop. Congratulations, you have as many tries as you need to defeat the King! Too bad you have to die to reset, though! And even when you do beat the King... escaping the loop isn't that simple, is it?
• But Thou Must!: Loop tells Siffrin he can zone out during conversations he's heard before, but if the party catches him they might be angry he's not paying attention. This is essentially a tutorial for how to skip previously read dialogue, with Siffrin 'tuning back in' when he hears something new. It's also Foreshadowing. In Act 5, Isabeau's talk with Siffrin will start repeating again and again, saying the same thing over and over and forcing the player to use the skip function, which Isabeau catches on to, sparking the argument he and Siffrin have as part of the events that kick off the endgame.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Almost every member of the main cast struggles to communicate their feelings, and a key theme of the story.
  • For numerous reasons, Siffrin finds himself utterly incapable of discussing the loops with anybody except Loop. Or, more importantly, his affection for the rest of the party and desire to stay with them, which kickstarts the loops in the first place.
  • Isabeau can't admit his love for Siffrin, no matter how many times Siffrin tries to nudge the confession out of him.
  • Mirabelle can't admit she's struggling with the Change beliefs in relation to her views on romance, or that she feels undeserving of her Chosen One designation.
  • Bonnie is only so aggressive toward Siffrin out of fear he'll get hurt protecting them again, and is keeping him at arm's length so he can't get hurt on their account.
  • Odile feels alienated from her Vaugardian half and isn't sure how to connect with its culture and people, leaving her feeling disconnected from part of herself.
  • All of them haven’t been able to bring up the fact they don’t want to part and want to keep travelling together for a least a little while after they defeat the King. Whether they feel it’s too selfish to ask, need to do something else first, or just haven’t found the right moment to bring it up, all of them want what Siffrin wants, and have hesitated to ask for basically the same reasons. They’re coping better because they didn’t have an ongoing time loop wearing their mental health down alongside that hesitation too.
• Cast Full of Gay: Vaugarde and the wider world are a world with very different cultural notions on gender and sexuality than the real world, and people of all sorts of genders and orientations feature throughout the game, including the protagonists. Particularly in Vaugarde, the widespread following of the Change religion mean that it is expected and celebrated that many people will completely change their appearance, gender, and personality throughout their lives.
• Chekhov's Gun: When researching Shield skills, Mirabelle eventually encounters one that she can't use yet, but she states to be able to completely reflect attacks back at the enemy. Guess how the King is defeated in the final loop.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: A key component of Wish Craft. The stronger the belief, the likelier it is that the wish will work. Downplayed in that belief on its own can't do much, and like any Craft there's rituals and other steps involved; not only that, but one person can only wish for so much. Wishing to win a single game of rock paper scissors could be possible, but wishing to win an entire world tournament isn't feasible by one's self. But if, say, the belief of an entire nation without a ritual crossed with someone performing the ritual without strong belief...
• Combatant Cooldown System: The combat is not turn based, but working on the cooldown system, this can give some clear indicators on when the enemy is about to attack, or when your ally is about to act.
• Dark Reprise: "The House" (all three parts of which include Floors 1-3) is remixed into a dark and messed up song, "The House (Trapped)". Likewise, "Do You Remember? (The King's Theme)" has two of them, "Do You Remember? (Our Country)" (played during Act 3, when Siffrin trying to say the name of the Forgotten Country is getting both him and the King killed) and "Do You Remember? (We've Been Through This Before)" (played during Act 5); "Game Over" has one: "Game Over (Don't Leave Me Alone Here)" (played in the boss fight with Mal du Pays); and "How Can I Help You, Stardust? (Loop's Theme)" has one: "How Can You Help Me, Stardust?" (played in the True Final Boss battle with Loop).
• Deliberately Monochrome: The entire game is in black and white, save for shades of red on some occasions, especially in Act 5 and the battle with Loop.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Siffrin can realize that what causes him to loop is the feeling that he can't continue on, whether that be physically or emotionally; there's many cases, such as seeing the party get annihilated by the King's first strike, where he's hit with such despair that he loops on his own.
  • Act 5. Siffrin finally becomes fully unable to cope with the time loops and sort of snaps. No longer able to view his party as anything but characters repeating the same lines, Siffrin loses the motivation to keep up his act and drops his script and facade. His only focus becomes reaching the end and escaping the loops as fast as possible. Still not informing his party (or "actors", as he calls them by this point) of the fact that he is trapped in the time loop, he lashes out against them during each of their quests. Siffrin is left with a party that doesn’t trust him, leading him to attempt a run of the house on his own.
• Driven to Suicide: Played with and potentially exploited by Siffrin. After interacting with enough tears, he can realize there's a much faster way to restart a loop: The dagger he holds. While functionally justified - he doesn't exactly stay dead, owing to the loops - it's implied that it's at least in part a form of cathartic self-harm as his mental health gets worse and worse.
• Empty Room Until the Trap: The Death Corridor.
• Expressive Health Bar: The closer the character is to being knocked out, the more damaged they look, while Odille just sports a manic grin.
  • Siffrin especially. In Act 2, when he is KO'd, he has a pained reaction with his eyes closed, and a shocked reaction with his eyes open when he is frozen in time. In Act 3 and 4, however, he is starting to resign himself to being KO'd or frozen (as indicated by the closed eyes and the frown on his face) due to his Time Loop Fatigue. By Act 5, he has grown so tired of the time loops that he welcomes the embrace of being KO'd or frozen with a smile, almost like he is Peaceful in Death. It's too bad he has the Memory of Emptiness equipped to keep him going, though...
• Evolving Title Screen: The title screen starts with Siffrin asleep in the field. Once you enter Act 2, he’s awake. He gets progressively more tired and depressed as each act goes by; by Act 6, he has a relieved look on his face with his eyes closed, and at end of the game he's no longer in the field at all. Because he's finally escaped the time loops with his family.
• Fetch Quest: Parodied. Odile's sidequest is a fetch quest that gets dragged out by an increasingly ridiculous series of contrivances, which is ultimately concluded by the punchline that the first group of NPCs they talked to had the item they were looking for all along, which greatly annoys Odile and Siffrin.
• Fish out of Water: Siffrin and Odile hail from different countries than Vaugarde, but Odile is at least well read and knows more about Vaugarde's customs, with Ka Bue sharing a few with it. Siffrin, on the other hand, shows confusion or unfamiliarity with multiple aspects of the culture, like not understanding bonding earrings or having more than one name. Curiously in Odile's case, she's half-Vaugardian in the first place, and is specifically in the country to connect with that half of her.
• From Bad to Worse: Act 5, where Sif's sanity reaches an all time low.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • The Memory of Self helps Siffrin know who he is and what he's been through. Equip a different Memory, and he'll begin to lose track of which loop he's on, reflected by an inconsistently-changing loop number when you wake up.
  • After a particularly horrifying loop involving the King killing Bonnie in front of the entire party, Siffrin will suffer a permanent Slow effect the next time he faces that enemy due to the trauma.
  You remember.
  • Skipping conversations you've seen before is represented by Siffrin zoning out and nodding along to whatever's happening during the fast-forward; in one conversation, he can be called out for not paying attention if you do this.
  • Equipment is retained between loops, saving you the trouble of going back and grabbing every weapon every time. If you do go back to grab it though, the universe will swiftly replace it with an item or a blank space where it once was, complete with confused reactions from the party as reality corrects itself - after all, you already have the weapon, so it can't be there, can it? Siffrin only gets used to this phenomenon once the player tries this a few times, after which it stops drawing comments from him.
  • The narration of certain events grows terser or even disappears as loops progress and Siffrin stops caring. In the first few acts, the game will mention it's "key time" when unlocking a door; by Act 5, the door just opens with no fanfare; toward the end of the same act, the narration is reduced to just one or two words in childish small letters and No Punctuation Period, as if the narration just lost its voice along with Siffrin.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: All of the characters use different words for surprise or anger similarly to profanity. What's interesting is that due to the group coming from different nations, they use different words for them. Isabeau, Mirabelle, and Bonnie who hail from Vaugarde all use the word 'Crab'; Odile from Ka Bue uses 'Gems'; and Sif uses 'Stars/Blinding'. Odile can potentially use 'crab' after her companion quest, mirroring her half-Vaugardian heritage. The King also says "Stars" like Sif when asked, a clear indicator that both of them once hailed from the Forgotten Country.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Siffrin is repeating the same two days, resetting whenever he dies - or sometimes for seemingly no reason at all.
  (You feel a tug on your stomach.)
  START AGAIN
• Have a Nice Death: After a while, the death text on the game over screen starts to become almost mocking as Siffrin's mental health gets worse.
  (After slipping on a banana peel): You're a living comedy sketch.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The first time you face the King in battle, you don't have anything that can protect you from his devastating attack, leading to a Total Party Kill. Of course, being that Siffrin is under a time loop curse, he has some power that can resurrect him immediately after his last gasp from the King's Coup de Grâce.
• Interface Spoiler: You kill the King, you celebrate... and then a save point suddenly appears and you get a Memory that boosts your attack in battles, letting you know immediately that the game is far from over.
• Look Behind You: If Siffrin chooses to touch a tear on the first encounter, he will shout something like "Look behind you!" to distract the team while he touches the tear to see what would happen if he gets frozen. Of course, this doesn't end well for him, but fortunately, he does have the power to loop back to the time before he touched the tear.
• Mental Time Travel: Siffrin can travel through the points of the castle they have cleared before by dying, their memories of previous loops will be still present, but it could possess a side-effect of seeing previous copies of Siffrins should The Player loop long enough to see it, or taking a toll on their mental state.
• Mind Screw: The House in Act 5 has a lot of rooms that are out of order (teleportation from one room to a different room in the opposite order than normal in Acts 1-4, and some rooms often repeat upon exiting), due to a combination of Siffrin's poor mental health and the use of Time Craft and Wish Craft to scramble up the rooms every which way. And many items and places are glitched up, visions of his friends appear in mirages, crossed-out shadows and voice glitches, and the Head Housemaiden sounds more robotic than usual, due to a giant blood red star in a sky that is dark and ominous.
• Narration Echo: On some occasions, you stumble into these instances, such as a doodle kid handing you a picture:
  Narration: It's Mirabelle!
  Siffrin: It's Mirabelle!
  [the doodle kid hands another portrait]
  Narration: It's you!
  Siffrin: It's me!
• Noodle Implements: To make a Craft bomb, you need a long thingy-thing, a short gizmo-gadget, and a vial of secret ingredient. None of these objects are ever described or explained further.
• Oh, Crap!: At the start of the first battle with the King, when he tells the entire team that he is "a merciful King" and that he will give them "an everlasting rest", when the words "The King waits" come up, instead of "[Player] time!" as a battle start message, they get only one word: "Stars."
• Oh, My Gods!: Mirabelle often uses the word "Change" as an interjection, like, "Oh Change" and "Thank Change".
• Painting the Medium: The text can often be shaking (for fright, pain, fear, or sadness) or wavy or go into giant capital letters for Bold Inflation when shouting, or tiny letters when whispering, or can sometimes break apart as if in slow motion or choking. One such example happens when Siffrin gets killed by the King:
  (The King... STRIKES.)
  [screen goes black on impact]
  (Ahh... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!! EVERYTHING HURTS!!!!!!! YOU CAN'T MOVE!!!! IT HURTS!!!!! IT HURTS!!!!!!! IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS it hurts it hurts it hurts it h
  urts it h u r t s i t h u
  you feel
  a tug
  on your
  stomach
  and then)
  [Beat]
  (The King killed you.)
  [automatic START AGAIN]
• Point of No Return: At the end of Act 4, Siffrin believes he's found a way to escape the loops - he just needs to speak to the Head Housemaiden, but contemplates looping a little longer to spend more time with his family and look around for things he might have missed. Although not explicitly stated, it's clear that speaking to the Head Housemaiden marks the end of the journey, and it's impossible to go back after the beginning of the end.
• Poor Communication Kills: Ultimately, the entire plot only happens because Siffrin is too anxious to admit he wants to spend more time with the party. Had he just spoken with them, he would have learned how everyone else felt; even once in the loops, his inability to admit he's going through them results in them going on far longer than they should. The party even tells him outright that if he'd just said something, they would have been happy to help.
  • Odile accidentally causes this as well, although it ultimately ends up being Siffrin who suffers for it. In Act 1 he very openly thinks of his friends as his… well. Friends. It’s only after a conversation during the first snack time where Odile hesitates to call them friends that he adjusts his way of thinking of the group from friends to allies, thinking he’s the only one who sees them all as friends. What Odile meant was that she’s a bit too old to think of a group of 20-somethings and a pre-teen as her friends, but she doesn’t really have the right word for them. Eventually they settle on family, as seen in the loops where Siffrin helps everyone out with their problems and climbs the House together with them, but even though Siffrin adjusts his way of thinking of the group to ‘family’, he’s far enough into the loops that the revelation can’t do much for his mental health in the long run.
  • The entire group has convinced themselves that Siffrin doesn’t like being touched. Because they care about him and his comfort, they all try their best not to touch them and cause them undue discomfort. The truth is that Siffrin likes being touched, they’re just not used to it due to not remembering things like casual affection in their past. The team going out of their way to make Siffrin feel comfortable only ends up making him feel isolated, and could’ve been avoided if they’d just asked him about it in the first place.
• Resurrection/Death Loop: One of the main forms of looping through time, though unfortunately Siffrin can still clearly feel and remember the pain they felt when dying. On numerous loops, they'll wake up shaking.
• Rewatch Bonus: Loop’s true identity recontextualizes a lot of their dialogue and their relationship to Siffrin. Who doesn’t love seemingly innocuous foreshadowing?
• Riddle for the Ages: Several things about the story are left unanswered, and Word of God states that this is intentional.
  • Some time ago, everyone forgot how to see color. How this happened is never explained.
  • Every so often, in certain spots in The House, you'll encounter ghostly copies of yourself that disappear when approached. Your party members can see them too, and when interacted with they seem relieved to be seen. Loop theorizes that the ghosts are echoes of past timelines, but even they don't have a concrete explanation, and ultimately this is never explained.
  • The island that Siffrin and The King came from just disappeared from existence, and attempts at remembering it fail. Sometimes with violent and painful consequences. It's never explained how or why that country disappeared, and very little is known about the country except that it was an island north of Vaugarde. The King eventually remembers, but is frozen in time before he can say anything, and Siffrin remembers some very basic details about his home — enough to know when he’s looking at his language, even if he can’t read it, and information about how they investigated the stars even if he can’t remember them, but nothing that explains much about what their country was like or how it ended up forgotten.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Siffrin is the only one in the group that retains their memory between the loops, apart from, well, Loop.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: The three "elements" used in battle are rock, paper, and scissors, though in-universe they're formally known as Protector Craft, Creative Craft, and Piercing Craft respectively. Rock-Paper-Scissors still exists as a game in Vaugarde, funny enough, and the characters even comment on the similarity.
• Rogue Protagonist: Loop is, in fact, the Siffrin from START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: a prologue, and it's possible to face them as an optional boss after the story if conditions are met.
• Sadistic Choice: During the final fight in Act 5, your only battle options are attacking your friends or causing Sif to inflict self-harm, due to Sif currently having a total mental breakdown.
• Sanity Slippage: Siffrin gets hit with this hard as the game progresses and the loops weaken their sanity.
• Schmuck Bait: Early on, Loop will tell you that you are deathly allergic to pineapples. On the second floor safe room, one of the snack options is pineapple slices, which will cause you to have an allergic reaction and die.
  Tastes spicy.
  [Siffrin falls down dead]
  You choked on a pineapple slice...?
  START AGAIN
• Scissors Cuts Rock: The craft system is literally Rock–Paper–Scissors but sufficiently strong attacks of the type least effective against certain opponents can still succeed even with the resist. They're just not AS effective.
• Second-Person Narration: Although Siffrin is non-binary and goes by the pronouns he/they, the narration refers to Sif as "you" throughout the game, even in battles.
• Sound-Only Death: Combined with Smash to Black: Often when a screen cuts to black as Siffrin as about to harm himself, we hear the sound of otherwise disturbing deaths such as a boulder crushing him, a tear freezing him, a slip of a Banana Peel followed by a heavy thud on the ground, or his own dagger slicing him followed by a thump on the floor. And then there's a cut to black at the end of Act 3 when we hear the crunch of Bonnie's bones, indicating the King has murdered them.
• Sudden Intelligence: Downplayed. Isabeau, the party himbo, demonstrates an aptitude for math out of nowhere while the party's discussing trying to remember the name of the Forgotten Country. Actually subverted. He used to be a huge nerd, and never stopped being smart, but decided to act like an airhead to fit the person he Changed to.
  Isabeau: When you asked me, answering you felt automatic, like if you asked me what 1 plus 1 makes, but trying to remember it now is more like...
  Mirabelle: Like calculating 72 times 89!!!
  Isabeau: Nah, that's 6408, I have a brain and I know how to use it.
  Mirabelle: WHAT?
  Odile: ISABEAU?
  Isabeau: Nah, it felt more like... Asking me to remember my first steps. How can I remember that!!! I can't remember that!!! How can you expect me to remember that!!!
  Odile: What a terrible analogy.
• Tarot Motifs: In Floor 1 of the House, you pick only one Tarot card from a bedroom drawer. Of course, what kind of card this is varies from time to time. Tarot Cards often symbolize Siffrin's journey so far and his increasing time loop dilemma as time goes on. Act 2 has the Six of Swords, the Eight of Pentacles, the Ace of Wands, and the (reversed) Star; Act 3 has the Two of Swords, the Five of Wands, the Hermit, and the (reversed) Six of Pentacles; Act 4 has the Eight of Swords, the Hanged Man, the Five of Cups^note mislabeled as the "Five of Pentacles", and the (reversed) Ten of Swords; and Act 5 has only one, the Fool.
• Tongue-Tied: No one can remember the island north of Vaugarde, Siffrin and the King's home country, and any attempts at remembering anything linked to it results in severe headaches, or, if further attempted, results in injury and death.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The reveal trailer spoils the party being defeated in one strike by the King. The game treats this first encounter with the King's alpha strike as a major wham moment both for Siffrin and the player, demonstrating that he's an even greater threat than he initially seemed.
• Translation Convention: A few conversations hint that the characters are speaking French. The discussion when obtaining Thyme has the characters not get the thyme=time pun, while its description says that the joke works "in some languages". Later, the party makes fun of Siffrin for not remembering "the word" for "stuffed animal".
• True Final Boss: Though there's only one ending, a True Epilogue can be unlocked featuring a fight against Loop. Or more specifically, the Siffrin from START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: a prologue, having made a wish to escape his loops. The only difference, though, is that after the end credits you see Siffrin's two hats rather than one from the normal ending.
• Un-person: The island north of Vaugarde, the original home of Siffrin and the King, completely vanished from the world and people's memories some time ago; much of the later portions of the game center on how traumatic it is to barely remember anything about their own culture, language, and home, which drives both into deep despair.
• Unreadably Fast Text: At the beginning of Act 5, the narration text starts going berserk and goes on a quick, Motor Mouth long rant in shaky all lowercase letters and No Punctuation Period that lasts for about three text boxes, about three or four seconds per box, until it stops. And that's if your text speed is 10% fast. If you set it to all-fast... well... good luck with that.
  (IF ONLY MIRABELLE DIDN'T DEAL THE FINAL HIT EVERY TIME... IF ONLY SHE...!!!!!! If only)
  [incredibly fast Wall of Text begins]
  (If only you knew if only the wish wasn't broken if only you could get to the king deal the final hit end it all and finally you'll be with your family forever and you'll be okay and you can just end it all you just need to get to the king deal the final hit make the wish come true make sure it all loops around you kill the king rip him to pieces for making you remember for making you see for not understanding for killing bonnie for getting in your blinding way every time you just need to kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him you just)
  [Wall of Text over]
  (need to get to the end
  and win
  and make sure everyone's wish comes true
  you just
  you just need to)
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Poor Siffrin...
  • Isabeau tries to confess his love to Siffrin. While Sif is unaware at first, he can soon figure it out through the loops, but despite his attempts to remove all interruptions to hearing it from Isabeau himself, he can never manage to spit it out. Making things worse, if Sif takes matters into his own hands in a later loop and kisses Isabeau himself, the latter's immediate response is to push Siffrin away, leading to an immediate loop back to before the conversation. Siffrin will refuse to let Isabeau touch him after this.
  • Siffrin can convince the King not to fight, and for a minute it seems like he might be getting somewhere in ending the loops... only for the King to immediately kill one of the party members once the party lets their guard down, traumatizing Siffrin so badly that he loops automatically.

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START AGAIN

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