What is that ending???

[Cindy, the Woofie]

I loved the game so much, but the ending felt so rushed? There were so many leads in the game that lead to nowhere? I feel like I am losing something?

[LotusBlade]

Yes that's weird. It's like all the time long you have wonderful acting, great grapchics and a lot of things to think about, but in the end nothing really matters. Ending was rushed and maked no sense at all.

So, here are major problems about the whole ending issue (no spoilers, don't worry)
1) There was no real point to kill Frea, the reasoning behind killer is just illogical, childish and plain dumb;
2) Many ingame lines gave us food for thinking, but had no point at all, there are lots of wasted detailed data and possibilities... At some point i thought this game will reincarnate Freddy Fish style, where every time you start game the killer changes, locations and item places change, puzzle change etc. Well i was expecting too much, there is just one story line;
3) What the heck with teleportation? I mean, this is NOT a part of the world, it is very cheap coder's trick, which reveals up only at the last moment of story and shows how silly they were when placing NPC;
4) You can figure killer the first time you talk to it / meet it, because this game is not using real-world detective relations or ways to solve crimes. In fact, i could end it any moment if game allowed me to just pick a killer among them. Many other details were badly hidden from player, hich makes story even worse at the end;
5) All important characters have way too many skills at their disposal, which also makes no sense. You can't just be a known football player, a moon researcher, a world-wide painter, a top you-tube channel gamer and a mother of 20 kids at the same time, while doing it all very good. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! In Tangle Tower some heroes have rediculous combinations of skills, while others are boring and one-dimensional.

Ending ruins game, so all those positive reviews are actually useless... And if someone gonna write about negative ending in details, he will ruin (spoil) game for readers -> developers used very clever way to get positive score.

I don't know which ending is worse — Game of Thrones (TV) or Tangle Tower. Feels like same guy wrote both.

[Troy]

My feel is that there are certain plot points that are not essential to solving the murder, and intentionally left open to interpretation for theory fodder. It is quite common for fiction to leave plot points unexplained in this fashion.

[abstractAPPLE]

The ending is just weak, i get that. The murderer explains 5 minutes why she killed Freya and still I couldn't tell you the reason.
It just doesnt make any sense.
It's also way to short and ends very abrupt and provides no real closure.
They also let you pick different answers in the final interogation with the murderer but i don't think that they effect anything. Too bad.

Anyhow, until that ending scene the game was a blast so i don't regret buying it.
The game could have been one of my all time favorites if they provided a better ending but as it is, it's still a good game to me.

Also, the game never says that but i imagined that the people in Tangle Tower are changed by the water of the sea, that's why nearly every of them is a genius to some degree.

I don't feel like it's likely but i would be great if the devs added more content in the future, fixing the ending and adding some more chapters to shine a little more light on the story overall.

[SFBDim]

The ending could have a little more meat to it, I can agree with that. Definitely something I would improve in a future game. It's fairly subjective though, in terms of what kind of closure each individual player is expecting. I don't have any intention of 'fixing' it - as it was the ending I intended the game to have. It resonates more with some people than with others, and that's okay. I'll just say, thanks for playing, I'm glad you mostly enjoyed it, and please remember we are a tiny tiny game studio and this is really only the second time we've ever made a game like this. We're learning and improving all the time :)

[abstractAPPLE]

The ending isn't even neceressarely "bad", it just the build up story-wise that comes before the ending wich makes it seem a bit too simple in the end.
I expected a grander scheme and a bigger mystery to become unveiled but in the end it simply was Penny , for ...reasons i guess.
She also can't teleport, so the whole Hawkshaw thing doesn't make too much sense (even considering that wandering around in game is hard to translate into real time but...maybe you could have placed her closer to Pennys room, than connecting both rooms by a ventilation shaft or something).

Anyhow, no hard feelings.
I would really rather just point out the stuff that i liked about this game, wich is a lot, than discussing that one part i didn't like as much as the rest.


Maybe you guys should expand a bit more on the game, if you would add multiple endings (finding the lab could be optional, resulting in different endings, One were Hawkshaw is revealed as the culprit, wrongfully) and some more chapters you could shape it up a bit more : )

[Joe_monsters]

I actually really liked the ending and thought it was an improvement compared to the first game which I thought was underwhelming.

SPOILERS FIRST GAME ON STEAM

Echo was very bland for me. I thought the idea behind the character was good but executed poorly. The guy barely fought at the end and everything felt half-assed for me. “This guy is the bad guy. Ok then. The end”

Here though... SPOILERS


Penelope was dark, intense, cold and manipulative. I thought the way it was acted and presented was suspenseful and satisfying in that way. Her motives were weird and intriguing and made me feel like she was different, like a bitter psychopath killing just because of disappointment and boredom. These kind of motives I found the most interesting. They seem superficial even stupid on the outside, but they have a certain complexity... There were a lot of loose ends, but it seems like a lot could be used for a great third and final game. It felt a bit like The Empire Strikes Back of the Grimoire series. A lot of foreshadowings building up to something big. I don’t know... I just think there were a lot of ambition and progress made compare to their first game (even the flash game, when you think about it).

I found that really impressive to be frank.

[Apocrypha Maxwell]

I feel like the culprit did what they did purely for no greater reason. For jealousy and love. The culprit was fond of Freya but jealous for her zest of life. It’s almost like a crime of passion, a senseless murder as an expression of the culprits own art form, a way to find meaning in their own pitiful existence.

The culprit felt disillusioned with life at tangle tower and sought a greater meaning which could never truly be attained, even after learning the secrets of the previous 5 inhabitants.

That’s what I took from it, anyway. I loved the game - thank you for letting us play on Apple Arcade and I hope there’s another one. I really liked Sally too.


There’s only one thing I don’t get - the soulbearer crab thingy which gets you into the lab, is that really left behind by Freya? The culprit or someone else? Almost feels like the culprit left it behind because they wanted to be caught....

[Longes]

For a crime of passion, Penelope's crime was incredibly overplanned.

I was convinced the entire game that there was no murder because we are never shown the body. But I guess not.

[Apocrypha Maxwell]

Originally posted by Longes:

For a crime of passion, Penelope's crime was incredibly overplanned.

I was convinced the entire game that there was no murder because we are never shown the body. But I guess not.

If you look at the murder as an artistic expression it would make sense for
It to be as overplanned and intricate as possible, it is the way Penelope felt she could express herself and her feelings regarding Freya - don’t you find it ironic that the murder took place while art itself was being created?

I got the impression Penelope felt she did not “belong”, she was so frustrated at having failed to understand the secrets of mystic mansion that she used the very thing being studied by Pointer to carry out the crime, the mystid that Pointer had tried so hard to resurrect.

I honestly believe Penelope wanted to be caught given the way she reveals herself as Hawkshaw. I also believe she left the soulbearer for Grimoire and Sally to eventually open the laboratory. It’s all one big sad cry for attention.

[KC]

Originally posted by A Wild Wooloo Appears:

Originally posted by Longes:

For a crime of passion, Penelope's crime was incredibly overplanned.

I was convinced the entire game that there was no murder because we are never shown the body. But I guess not.

If you look at the murder as an artistic expression it would make sense for
It to be as overplanned and intricate as possible, it is the way Penelope felt she could express herself and her feelings regarding Freya - don’t you find it ironic that the murder took place while art itself was being created?

I got the impression Penelope felt she did not “belong”, she was so frustrated at having failed to understand the secrets of mystic mansion that she used the very thing being studied by Pointer to carry out the crime, the mystid that Pointer had tried so hard to resurrect.

I honestly believe Penelope wanted to be caught given the way she reveals herself as Hawkshaw. I also believe she left the soulbearer for Grimoire and Sally to eventually open the laboratory. It’s all one big sad cry for attention.

This one makes sense but also like sounds really.. really sad
...i guess she IS always been lonely :((

[[ZSU] Dave247]

Personally I don;t mind about the whole mystery to the mansion and it's strange properties not being explained, it's good to leave some things still a mystery for that sense of wonder, and it also enables some interesting ideas for the developer to play with if they ever move to make a sequel to the game.

Having spent a few minutes thinking about it, I think it was the lackluster motive for the murder that was the biggest factor in soiling the ending for me. While sometimes even a simple reason can suffice, the game didn't produce any reason or justification and instead seemed to chose to gloss over what is typically a very important fact.

Maybe it could of focused a lot more on the despair and unhappiness that all of the residents have living in the tower, and use that to tie a strong emotional reasoning to it. It would give the players something to sympathise with.

[Kris]

I think the end didn't feel very satisfactory for me because most of the game and the investigations did not lead up to it, the motive and some wider world building important for understanding it are crammed into a short time in the end of the game.

For large part of the game you go around talking to people and deducing about mostly irrelevant things. The suspicions you solve do not come satisfactorily together to form one big relevant thought or conclusion but are rather minor insights into the characters. The insights are fun, but amongst the character building it would be nice to get more insights into the motive and the suspect and a clearer picture of the world.

Overall I did like quite a lot about the game so my thanks to the developers for a fun game :)

[Caspian Roach]

Yeah the ending was very abrupt and strange, basically throwing all the detective work you did away and the 'villain' just monologuing about 'ha ha it is I who have done this'.

Come to think of it, what was the detectives' endgame? How were they planning to apprehend the suspect? They're not the police, they don't have any backup, they don't have any weapons and they don't seem athleticly gifted. (Come to think of it v2 - where are the law enforcement? They seem to have chalked off the victim's body contour and took her away but completely failed to contain the crime scene and are nowhere to be found on the next day?)

Anyway, the game up until the ending was great, I just wish it ended on a bit of a higher note than that.

[Crazybunnie11]

The main thing I really didn't understand is, if Penny was detective Hawkshaw how was she able to get to her room and the stone area so fast and do complete make-up/wardrobe change? I think that's the main thing I didn't like about the ending. Also why didn't Poppy's father show up at the ending, same with Fiona's father [spoiler/]
besides that I loved the game, the voice acting was amazing! The art was gorgeous! And I loved the character dynamic between Sally and Detective Grimoire, they didn't feel flat and predictable they were dynamic characters that worked well together and complimented eachother nicely :3

[Kari]

Is there any talk of updates with different endings/changed endings, etc.?