Cabin in the Woods: The Game

Cabin in the Woods is a 2015 interactive drama survival horror video game. Players assume control of five young adults who have to survive in a cabin in the woods when their lives are threatened. The game features a butterfly effect system in which players must make choices that may change the story. All playable characters can survive or die, depending on the choices made. Players explore the environment from a third-person perspective and find clues that may help solve the mystery.

Gameplay
Cabin in the Woods is an interactive drama in which players primarily assume control of five young adults who have to survive on Blackwood Mountain until they are rescued at dawn. The gameplay is mainly a combination of cutscenes and third-personexploration. Players control the characters in a linear environment and find clues and items. Players can also collect totems, which give players a precognition of what may happen in the game's narrative. An in-game system keeps track of all of the story clues and secrets that players have discovered, even across multiple playthroughs. Action sequences feature mostly quick time events (QTE). One type of QTE involves hiding from a threat by holding the controller as still as possible when a "Don't Move" prompt appears.

The game features a butterfly effect system, in which players have to make choices. These range from small decisions like picking up a book to moral choices that involve the fates of other characters. Some decisions are timed. Certain choices may unlock a new sequence of events and cause unforeseen consequences. These choices also influence the story's tone and relationships between characters. Players can view the personality and details of the character they are controlling, and his or her relationships with other characters. All five characters may die by the end of the story, depending on the player's decisions. Deaths are permanent; the game's narrative will adapt to these changes and continue forward without them. The strict auto-save system prevents players from reloading a previously saved file. This makes it impossible to revert choices with unfavorable outcomes. The only ways to change the player's choice are to restart the game or to continue to the end and start a new game.

The game is divided into 10 chapters. There is an intermission between each chapter in which Gary Sitterson, Steve Hadley and Wendy Lin address the player directly. They analyse the player's fears along with the choices they have made.

Plot
During a party at a cabin in the woods, Sam, the last survivor of a ritual, flees the cabin and runs into the woods, pursued by a mysterious figure, resulting in her falling off a cliff's edge.

A year later, Curt invites his girlfriend Jules, Dana, Holden and Mary to the same cabin Sam and her friends were killed in. The group arrive at the cabin in Curt's van.

From the lab, Sitterson and Hadley remotely control the cabin and manipulate the students by intoxicating them with mind-altering drugs that have effects such as hindering rational thinking and increasing libido. The lab departments take bets on what kind of monster will attack the students and discuss the failures of international operations. In the cabin's cellar, the group finds many bizarre objects, including the diary of Patience Buckner, a conch, a puzzle sphere, a music box, a fortune teller machine, a unicorn tapestry and an amulet. Whichever item Dana picks out triggers the Buckner family, a Merman, Fornicus, the Sugarplum Fairy, Clowns, a unicorn or a werewolf.

Jules is abducted by an unknown individual during a tryst between her and Curt outside. Curt is given the choice to pursuit of her attacker or run. If the attack his pursued, Jules will be able to escape though Curt will assume she's dead. If Curt runs back to the cabin, Jules will later be found dead.

As the night progresses, Dana, Curt, Holden and Marty find themselves terrorised by the summoned horror. The torment culminates with Marty being forced to decide whether to save Dana or himself. If Marty saves himself, the lab employees panic, thinking that by killing Dana, the Ancients will awaken and wonder why its not happened yet.

After Dana or Marty are seemingly killed, the survivor along with Curt and Holden attempt to escape in their RV, but Sitterson triggers a tunnel collapse to block them. Curt can attempt to jump a ravine on his motorcycle to seek help on the other side, but will crash into a force field and fall to his death.

On their way back to the cabin, Dana/Marty, Holden and Curt if he's alive are attacked and the RV crashes into a lake. Holden can be killed here. If Curt and Holden are dead and Marty chose to save Dana, Dana appears to be the only survivor at this point, the lab employees celebrate their success until the Director calls them to inform them Marty is alive. If Marty chose to save himself, the Director will inform them that Dana is alive, explaining why the Ancients haven't awoken yet. If Curt had pursued Jules' attacker, the Director also informs them that Jules is alive.

Dana or Marty and/or Jules save the other survivors and take them to be elevator they discovered under a grave.

They descend into the lab and discover a large collection of monsters of various types locked in cages. Dana correlates them with the objects in the cabin's cellar and realizes that the objects determine which monsters are released. Cornered by security personnel, the survivors trigger a "Purge" button and release all the monsters, which wreak havoc and slaughter most of the staff. They flee the carnage and discover an ancient temple, where they are confronted by The Director. She explains that worldwide annual rituals of human sacrifice are held to appease the Ancient Ones, a group of cruel subterranean deities. Each region has its own ritual, and the American ritual involves the sacrifice of five slasher film archetypes: the whore (Jules), the athlete (Curt), the scholar (Holden), the fool (Marty), and the virgin (Dana). The order of the killings is arbitrary as long as the whore dies first and the virgin dies last or survives. The Director urges Dana to kill the other survivors (starting with Jules if she's alive) to complete the ritual and spare humanity. If Dana takes too long to make a decision, she is attacked by a werewolf, while Patience Buckner, one of the zombies, kills The Director.

The game has three endings;
 * 1) Dana can either kill the other survivors
 * 2) Dana decided that humanity is not worth saving and share a joint with the others while awaiting their fate. The temple floor collapses and a giant hand emerges, destroying the facility and the cabin itself.
 * 3) Dana was is bitten by the werewolf before killing the others. The ritual goes as planned but Dana turns into a werewolf and attacks the surviving lab employees.