Ending Way

Ending Way is a first-person survival horror game set in a foreboding fantasy environment where players awaken to find their parents missing. As they explore their eerie home and basement, they uncover grisly scenes of dead bodies and encounter relentless demonic entities. Combining tense exploration with strategic item-finding, players must evade supernatural threats and navigate unsettling environments to uncover escape routes while confronting atmospheric terror designed to test their nerves.

Ending Way: Review

Introduction

In the saturated landscape of indie horror, Ending Way (2021) emerges as a curious artifact—a low-budget, first-person survival horror experiment that wears its heart (and its horrors) on its sleeve. Developed and published solo by Jonathan Demir, this Unreal Engine 4-powered title invites players into a claustrophobic nightmare of missing parents, demonic encounters, and basement-bound dread. This review argues that while Ending Way stumbles under the weight of its ambitions, it offers a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the DIY spirit of indie horror, carving out a niche for itself among enthusiasts of the genre’s rougher edges.

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Development History & Context

Ending Way was released on December 27, 2021, for Windows, a fittingly quiet launch for a game forged in solitude. Jonathan Demir, the game’s sole credited developer and publisher, leveraged Unreal Engine 4’s accessibility to craft a project that mirrors the ethos of early 2010s indie horror pioneers like Slender: The Eight Pages or Amnesia: The Dark Descent. However, unlike those breakout hits, Ending Way arrived in an era dominated by polished, narrative-driven horror experiences (e.g., Visage, Phasmophobia), making its rough-around-the-edges presentation simultaneously nostalgic and anachronistic.

The game’s development constraints are evident. With no studio backing and minimal resources, Demir focused on core horror tropes—a haunted house, jump scares, and a minimalist inventory system—while wrestling with UE4’s learning curve. The result is a game that feels trapped between technical aspiration and budgetary reality, a tension that defines much of its identity.

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Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Ending Way’s premise is stripped to the bone: You wake up in an empty house, searching for absent parents, only to descend into a basement filled with corpses and demons. The narrative operates on sheer instinct, leveraging primal fears (abandonment, the dark, the unknown) rather than complex storytelling. Environmental storytelling is minimal—a bloodstain here, a scattered note there—but the game’s lack of exposition paradoxically amplifies its eerie atmosphere.

Thematically, the game explores familial disintegration and helplessness. The protagonist’s quest to find their parents mirrors the player’s own desperation to escape the house, creating a meta-commentary on the futility of survival in horror narratives. However, the delivery is uneven. Dialogue is virtually nonexistent, and character motivation is implied rather than explored, leaving the story feeling underbaked despite its potent potential.

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Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

As a first-person survival horror title, Ending Way prioritizes tension over action. The core loop involves scavenging for items (keys, tools) while avoiding demonic entities that stalk the house. Combat is intentionally clumsy—a deliberate design choice to emphasize vulnerability—but often veers into frustration due to imprecise hit detection and有限的 enemy AI.

The UI is minimalist, with no HUD to speak of, forcing players to rely on auditory cues and environmental hints. Inventory management is rudimentary, limited to a handful of slots, which heightens tension but occasionally leads to logistical bottlenecks. The game’s most innovative feature is its “realistic environment” approach: interactable objects (drawers, doors) require contextual button holds, lending a tactile weight to exploration. Still, bugs—such as objects clipping through walls or prompts failing to register—underscore the game’s technical limitations.

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World-Building, Art & Sound

Ending Way’s setting is a study in contrasts. The house’s upper floors are mundanely furnished, evoking a false sense of safety, while the basement morphs into a grotesque underworld of bloodied walls and piled corpses. Textures are inconsistent—some surfaces exhibit surprising detail, while others feel conspicuously flat—a testament to the game’s scrappy development.

Sound design is the game’s strongest asset. Demir employs a dynamic soundtrack that oscillates between oppressive silence and sudden orchestral stings, heightening the sense of dread. Enemy noises (growls, footsteps) are spatially precise, enabling players to track threats through sound alone. The voice acting, however, is nonexistent, with all storytelling conveyed through text, which may alienate players accustomed to more cinematic horror experiences.

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Reception & Legacy

Critically, Ending Way flew under the radar. With no professional reviews on Metacritic or MobyGames and only a handful of Steam user reviews (all positive, albeit from just three players), the game exists in a liminal space between obscurity and cult curiosity. Its Steambase.io score of 100/100 (based on four reviews) reflects a passionate but tiny fanbase.

While Ending Way has yet to influence the broader horror genre, its existence speaks to the democratization of game development. For aspiring creators, it serves as a proof-of-concept for solo projects, warts and all. Its legacy may ultimately lie in its embodiment of the “just ship it” ethos, proving that even imperfect horror can find an audience.

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Conclusion

Ending Way is not a masterpiece. Its narrative is threadbare, its mechanics unpolished, and its technical flaws impossible to ignore. Yet, within its janky framework lies an earnest attempt to evoke fear through simplicity—a quality often lost in today’s horror genre. For players seeking a raw, unfiltered horror experience, or developers inspired by the DIY spirit, Ending Way is a fascinating time capsule. It may not rewrite the rules of survival horror, but it deserves recognition as a testament to the genre’s grassroots roots.

Final Verdict: A flawed but intriguing curio for die-hard horror completists, Ending Way is best approached with tempered expectations—and a flashlight held tightly in hand.