Darkwood

Darkwood is set somewhere in Poland (as indicated by the writings on the ground, and The Wreckage, an area of the map showing a Polish Air Force Mil Mi-8 helicopter) or somewhere else in the Soviet Bloc[3] countries in the late 1980s where a mysterious forest has occupied a large amount of land and is continuing to expand. Many people have been left trapped by the forest and a strange plague is ravaging the survivors, killing and causing victims to transform into monsters and abominations. A group named "The Outsiders" consisting mostly of government officials and soldiers were sent to investigate the woods, setting up hideouts and a tunnel system to get in and out of the forest. By the time the game takes place most of the Outsiders are dead or evacuated from the zone.

In the prologue, the player takes control of an apparent doctor as he searches for supplies. The Doctor seems to be disillusioned with his job of helping people and is hellbent on escaping the forest. After the prologue, the player takes control of "The Stranger", a man who is searching for the stolen key that will lead him through an underground passageway out of the forest. Other characters include a trader who helps the protagonist in the prologue, a half-man half-wolf hybrid known only as "The Wolfman", a cyclist drunk known as the "Bike Man" and Piotrek, who is mesmerised by space travel and wishes to build a rocket.

The game begins with The Doctor rambling about the forest and how it has consumed all exits and trapped its inhabitants, his inability to treat the plague and his devotion to escaping the woods before he perishes. The Doctor awakens and prepares to scavenge the surrounding area for gasoline. While scavenging, The Doctor comes across the Stranger, injured and unconscious after an unknown accident. After looting a large key from his body, the Doctor theorizes that the Stranger possesses knowledge on how to escape the forest. The Stranger is then captured, sedated and eventually beaten as the Doctor interrogates him regarding an escape route. The story focus and controls switch to the Stranger as he engineers an escape from the Doctor's house. After some exploration, the cottage is broken into by several monsters and the Stranger blacks out.

It is implied in cutscene that the Trader stumbled across the Doctor's cottage and rescued the Stranger, bringing him back to a hideout in the Dry Meadow (the first biome in the game). The Stranger first explores the underground entrance to make sure the Doctor has not gone through with the key, but finds that the door has not been opened in a while. The player may then side with the Wolfman or the Musician in order to find the Doctor, or accomplish this by his own devices.

Once finding the Doctor in the train wreck (either by exploring his house from the prologue, or getting an appointment from the Musician), he will attempt to resist the Stranger. If the player followed the Musician's path, the player will enter a dream sequence with several different outcomes: if the player dies in the dream sequence the Stranger will wake up and find the Doctor gone, and once the Stranger checks the underground entrance he will find the armoured door wide open. If the player survives the dream sequence, the Doctor will be at the mercy of the player who can kill him and take the key, take the key and leave the Doctor or allow the Doctor to accompany the player through the underground passage. One way or another, progressing through the armoured door leads to the end of chapter 1.

As the Stranger leaves the tunnel he finds that it no longer leads out of the forest and instead leads to a swamp (the fourth and final biome). The Stranger will also find the beheaded corpse of the Trader after the first night. Chapter 2 is where many choices in Chapter 1 affect the outcomes of certain characters, for example, if players did not aid the Wolfman then he will steal items from the player and lure them into a trap.

The Stranger finds a large talking tree that blocks the exit of the forest, which indirectly asks the Stranger to explore a radio tower. Meanwhile, a cripple requests that the Stranger burns this tree. Both pathways offer ways of leaving the forest and of reaching the Epilogue.

The Stranger pushes through the forest until reaching a town and their old apartment, where he settles in for a long sleep. However, careful exploration reveals this ending to be an illusion which the player can uncover, if they spot the odd things in the apartment block. The Stranger eventually finds roots growing under the floorboards and a hole under his bed. Crawling through will have the Stranger wake up naked, with his clothes discarded nearby, in a passage overgrown with roots.

The "Road Home" did not lead home, and indeed may be entirely illusory, as the player awakens in a chamber filled with thousands of people curled up around a strange being, sleeping and muttering in bliss. The being attempts to entice the Stranger by making him feel warm and tired, if the player does not resist then they will fall unconscious and be back in the apartment with only one course of action available: bliss and ignorance. If the Player resists, then the Stranger will find a flamethrower among the sleepers and burn the being and all those around it to death. The fire spreads so rapidly that the Stranger is unable to escape, with the flames quickly spreading and consuming most of the forest, killing many of its inhabitants but with the death of the strange being and the Stranger sacrifice had allow the military deploy to the forest safely saving the remaining surviving inhabitants and restore order. In both endings, text blocks detailing each character's fate appear, which can be influenced by the player's actions during the game.