The game contains four episodes released from 2016 to 2017, each with different protagonists: Wilma Doerfl, a composer, Franz Markert, a painter, Emma Recniczek, a mathematician, and Albert Vogl, an aspiring writer.
The first episode, "Silence", follows Wilma, who is a rising star in Vienna's world of music. The stress of success and writer's block is beginning to get to her, and her mentor, Arthur Caban, gifts her with a trip to his cabin in the Alps. However, when she arrives, she reads a letter from Caban about him booking a concert showing off her new composition. Wilma must do all she can to finish her work, but a storm in the Alps and her own personal demons come to haunt her in the process.
The second episode, "Anthology" focuses on Franz, an up-and-coming artist whose paintings are renowned for getting into the deepest depths of a person's soul. Franz can see the hidden layers of people, and uses those to determine who he paints. But a harsh critic challenges his perceptions over what is "real", his health problems begin to creep up on him, and he is in despair over the fact that he cannot see his own layers, and what that tells about his own character.
Episode 3, "Derivation" features Emma, who has been humiliated and laughed at from an exclusive, all-male math society, The Radius, for attempting to talk about mathematics with them. After this incident and her father's passing from tuberculosis, she gets the idea of disguising herself as a man, Emil, and infiltrating the Radius. As she gets closer to and impresses the members of the Radius and her upstairs neighbor, can she keep her secret?
"Closure," the final episode, features a man on a train and his three traveling companions. From talking to them, he finds out their connections to Wilma, Franz, and Emma/Emil, giving insight into what they were like from an outsider's perspective, and what they did before and/or after the events of the episodes they were playable in.
This game contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Gender Identity: Whether Emma disguising herself as Emil Schell is simply crossdressing to get around society's restrictions about gender roles or indicative of being a transgender man or non-binary is up to player interpretation.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Emil's attractiveness is commented on by Nikol, who states 'he' is an extremely handsome man. If the player clicks on the quarreling couple in the cafe, Emil notes that the woman is winking at him. Other than that, it plays no role in the story and no one makes any such comments about Emma's physical appearance.
- Bittersweet Ending: Wilma, Franz and Emma can become successful and happy in their professions. However, World War I breaks out, Wilma's brother Otto can potentially die, and the game always ends on a somber note mentioning the death toll of the war.
- Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Episode 3 is all about Emma's trials and tribulations as a female mathematician. At the beginning of the episode she is laughed out of the Radius when she attempts to present her theory, forcing her to take a male identity. At the end, she attains fame after debating Zahler about her thesis and starts teaching at a university under her assigned gender at birth.
- Compassionate Critic: Grete Lawnicak is Franz's harshest critic but cares about having him improve his work and is genuinely concerned for his welfare, telling him to go see a doctor when he tells her about his blackouts.
- Cool Teacher: Professor Recniczek is liked by most of the class for making math approachable, telling great jokes, and encouraging individual students in their efforts.
- Defeat Means Friendship: If the player opts to Turn the Other Cheek and respect Zahler's efforts in the debate, he and Emma will reconcile and become colleagues.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: It is made abundantly clear in episode 3 what the gender roles and expectations in 1900-10s Austria was like in contrast to the present by showing the protagonist's goals and method to achieve them, while the vast majority of the male characters oppose her.
- Driven by Envy: Emil's achievements in the Radius's weekly challenges and growing respect among the rest of the members angers Zahler, the leader of the group, who focuses his attention on who he perceives as an interloper. In response Zahler dismisses Emil's thesis, swears to his (sick and unconscious) sister that he will "destroy him" and goes as far to find out where Emil lives (finding out Emil/Emma's secret in the process) before challenging him to a debate where he aims to completely disprove the theory and ruin his reputation.
- Friendly Address Privileges: If Franz wins Grete's affections, she will tell him to call him by her first name instead of Fraulein Lawnicak.
- Historical Domain Character: Real figures prominent during the Austrian cultural scene, like Gustav Klimt and Sigmund Freud, show up and play various roles in the plot, such as Klimt being a mentor figure for Franz.
- Mad Artist: Franz can see into the layers of people, and can make portraits that show off the personality traits of their selves, but he is tormented with blackouts, exhaustion, and despair that he cannot see his own layers. Eventually it gets so bad that he pays a visit to Freud for psychiatric help. In the very end of episode 2, he discovers that in his blackouts, he has been painting his own layers. Despite the painting being in his studio, it is implied that he is disassociating so hard that he does not even notice its presence until the end.
- May–December Romance: None of the characters ages are stated but Wilma and Caban are a possible pairing. When they first met, Wilma is not yet an adult, and in Episode 1 he looks noticeably older than her.
- Missing Time: After Franz paints his models, he always blacks out afterwards and reawakens in his studio, late in the night, with no memory of what happened.
- Modular Epilogue: The ending of the game is, effectively, a stitched-together slideshow of pictures and text relating what happened to the protagonists of episodes 1-3 and the three men Bert talked to on the train based on the choices players made throughout the game.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo:
- Both inverted and played straight. In episode 2, Franz can meet Emil and paint him. In episode 3, where Emil is the protagonist, the scene will play out from their point of view rather than Franz's.
- Episode 4 contains cameos from all three of the previous protagonists, as Bert talks to people who were close to them (or, in the case of Paul, close enough to observe/obsess over Franz) and they flashback to times when they were influenced by the previous Player Characters.
- Straight Gay: There are no clear hints or Camp Gay traits in Nenner's personality and/or physical appearance that indicates his sexuality, only subtle lines of dialogue relating to his feelings for Emil and having "unnatural" thoughts.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Emma disguises herself as a man to get into The Radius, a mathematical society, to present her theory at a time when women in math were almost unheard of.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Wilma's crush on her music teacher, Caban, is present by default but player choice determines whether or not she pursues him and wins his affections.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: No mention is made of Bert in the epilogue, despite the ending slideshows depicting the fates of his traveling companions and being a Player Character in Episode 4.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The end of episode 4 reveals what happens to Wilma, Franz, Emma, Otto, Paul, and Thedor and the effects player choices have on them.
