The Church in the Darkness offers "a lot of endings"

We caught up with director Richard Rouse III on the floor of PAX East to learn more about the intriguing concept for cult infiltration simulation The Church in the Darkness.

"The game is set inside a religious cult in the 1970s", says Rouse. "You the player are infiltrating the group to look for your nephew Alex, to see if he's okay or to see if he wants to leave, see if he's being kept against his will, and playing the game you don't know. We actually change up the story every time you play. So it's got some roguelike elements, where you can replay, objectives change, enemies change, weapons change, that sort of thing, but also the narrative."

Speaking of that changing narrative it offers plenty of different potential endings and this is what Richard Rouse, III had to say on the subject:

"I've been saying there's definitely a lot of endings, so there's probably ten big variations to the ending you can get depending on who lived, and who didn't, and did you get Alex out or not, did you talk to the preachers or not. And then there are other little variants, cause there's lots of side characters you can meet, do you try and help them too or not? Or do you get them the thing that helps them come to grips with their own problem."

In terms of development, Paranoid Productions are "coming up on a fully playable" game from start to finish. They would love to "ship in 2017", but with the caveat that if it's not ready they'll give it more time.