This WW1 Survival Horror Game Will DESTROY YOU

Ad Infinitum is a psychological survival horror game set in the first World War, where a battle-stricken german soldier and his family must suffer the consequences of war.

I honestly just want to say that this story is one that will last with me for a very long time. The way it unfolds and how carefully crafted it is, it really is beautiful. Everything means something, even if it's wildly unspeakable in form, and to me that captures the true essence of psychological horror. This game obviously had so much passion put into it and I give all my respect to the developers for putting this incredible experience together. Hope you guys enjoy!

Want more Ad Infinitum gameplay? Let me know in the comments!

Chapters:
0:00:00 - Introduction
0:01:35 - Prologue
0:09:29 - Chapter 1 "Despair"
1:28:28 - Chapter 2 "Decomposition"
2:33:38 - Chapter 3 "Pain"
4:08:49 - Chapter 4 "Awake" (ENDING)

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More from IGP:

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About Ad Infinitum:
When reality is a nightmare, nightmares become real. In this psychological horror game, you fight the terrifying creatures invading your mind. Can you save your sanity?

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#IGP

[greatnate]

That head officer who was blind was a perfect way to symbolise a commander leading his company into battle blindly.

[thomasmitchells]

Hey IGP!

I'm the VA for Johannes. Thanks so much for playing Ad Infinitum!

It's by far one of my favourite acting roles to date

[BobbaFet]

Games based toward the psychological horrors of war aren’t very common, and this game nailed it.

[MakingtheCase]

So, at the very beginning, in the room with the morse code, you're playing as Johannes. His dear friends, including Teresa, and he were part of the Blue Doves artisan group. As Johannes was dying on the barbed wire, he was reaching out to his brother, Paul, to save him, which is why he let out such a painful and sorrowful cry when Paul abandoned him there. For the rest of the game, you're playing as Paul, who must overcome his immense guilt brought about by the loss of his soldier's lives due to his own incompetence and arrogance as a Leutnant. He thought his father had gotten him the position as Leutnant because his father was proud of him, but not Johannes. Instead, as we learn from the letters, his father (despite his disappointment in Johannes) merely got Paul the post so that Johannes could keep watch and protect him. Johannes, who's body is never seen on the battle field, is represented by the body of the dummy, is seen watching you (as Paul) while you complete tasks throughout the game, which shows Johannes always sought to watch over his little brother. However, the fact that the dummy Johannes' presence is also quite menacing indicates the underlying guilt and contempt Paul has for betraying his troop and brother on the battlefield. Thus, while the dummy IS technically watching over Paul, it is also haunting him, too.

In Chapter 1, Paul learns that his first failure was in his abandonment of family. He never wrote to his mother, saw his father as a stepping stone, saw is grandfather as a goal to attain, and saw his older brother as just a mere grunt out in the field. After having a fight with Johannes in the trenches, wherein Johannes begged Paul to come to his senses, humble himself, leave his ego behind, and escape the bloodshed that was to come, we see in one note that Paul responded by lashing out at all of Johanne's friends by giving them outhouse duties in spite of the fact they had done nothing wrong. Paul was arrogant, cruel, incompetent, egotistical, and lacked the empathy his brother Johannes seemed to possess. Ironically, although his father's favour made Paul the better soldier in his father's eyes, Johannes possessing the quality of character Paul lacked arguably made Johannes the better son and the better man. Paul was forced to grapple with his mother's sorrow, which was brought about by his own incompetence as a leader on the battlefield that led to the presumed death of her beloved Johannes. Based on the fact the first segment began after being pulled into the bathtub and there was a wedding ring in it afterwards, his mother's madness was almost at the point where she was finally willing to take her own life in the bathtub. In the end battle with the Mother of Sorrow (his mother's vengeful spirit), required Paul to find within himself the empathy required to ignore the military music, which drove his mother crazy, and instead calm her soul with the music she loved in life. At the very end of the game, we see the mother "chose life" and decided she would keep on living for her sons.

In Chapter 2, Paul is faced with the fact his father was never truly proud of him, despite his father getting him the position of Leutnant, and that his father pulling the strings to get him that position was merely due to his fear that Paul's youth & inexperience as a soldier would cost his favoured son his life. Paul was confronted with the man his father was, a bitter, crippled man who felt deep guilt for being the cause of his mother's death in childbirth and never felt adequate in the eyes of Paul's grandfather. The only time his grandfather ever looked at his father with pride was after he took the life of an innocent animal, which shows the kind of man his grandfather was: cruel, one-track-minded, and devoid of empathy. The 2nd chapter was about Paul making the decision... was he going to continue to be like his father and keep the factory alive, despite all the horrible death and destruction its chemicals caused? ...Or was he going to create his own pride in knowing he did the right thing by shutting down the factory permanently, despite the fact it wouldn't be what his father wanted? The second chapter was about morality and overcoming Paul's incessant desire to please his father at all costs. He realized he no longer wished to live just to please the memory or ghost of his grandfather, who had tormented his mother and warped his father in life with his cruel and bitter god complex. Through this moral act of self-determination, his father realized he too was a prisoner of his own misguided understanding of honour and legacy. In the end, his father sought forgiveness from Paul and asked for another chance to be a better father.

In Chapter 3, Paul is faced with the guilt of everything he had ever done to harm Johannes, including exposing Johannes' homosexuality to his parents which ended Johannes' relationship with Christian. We learn Johannes was a truly compassionate soul and artisan. He wished to return the skulls in the basement back to their homeland just because he knew it was the right thing to do. Johanne's sense of justice extended so far as to become a black sheep within his family and his homosexuality isolated him from his family further. While his mother was trapped in the house by her own inability to free herself from her husband's grip and the gradual progression of mercury poisoning, Paul was still just a child: a schoolboy. Paul was innocent naivety, who had grown up playing with military toys, listening to his grandfather's tales of glory, and having his mind filled with his father's madness. Chapter 3 is Paul's desperate attempt to free both himself and Johannes from the creatures within, which rotted their minds, spirits, and relationship with each other. Paul saw the outcome of the war through the eyes of Johannes, who suffered from such extreme PTSD after the war and the "aid" he received from the doctor that he was unrecognizable to his mother, to the point where his mother (in her growing madness) began to believe he was a cuckoo. The mother hated what Johannes had become so much that she deprived him of any other colour of paint except black and said such hateful words to him, which simply broke Johannes even further since his bond with his mother was the strongest and all he wanted to do was come back home to her love. In the end, in a state of delirium, she said she took the skin and hair from the cuckoo (Johannes) to create the dummy. What that meant is she would have rather pretended a dummy was more her son than the man Johannes came back as. The Mother of Sorrow had a cross nailed to her hunched back, which represents the fact his mother had a heavy cross to bear both with her own mental health and her treatment towards Johannes.

NOTE: As Paul is walking towards the barbed wire to find Johannes in the end, we hear Johannes express his side of the discussion/ argument they had before the events that transpired. In order to hear Paul's responses/ side of the discussion, you have to keep listening to the tin can telephone in Johannes' bedroom. You'll see they line up.

In the very end, after freeing his brother and proving to himself that he was still a good man (or boy, since he was only 19) despite all of his faults and failures, his family took turns giving Paul the forgiveness he so desperately needed. Then, as he returned to the barbed wire to return to his brother, he was confronted with himself, but not his true self. It was the part of him which couldn't forgive himself. The bitter part of him who still had something to prove but was blinded by his own anger. Instead of continuing the cycle and getting angry at himself for all the times he had ever tried to convince himself to go down the wrong path time and time again, he hugged him. The last forgiveness Paul needed was his own. He needed to forgive himself. Once he did, his journey towards healing both his own mind and his relationships with his family could truly begin, because he saw them and himself for what they all were: fragile humans who each have their own demons to battle in a war that would never end within their own minds. Through their suffering and forgiveness, they brought each other closer. Not just as family, but as comrades in the wars they were still fighting within. Knowing that none of them could ever truly fight that war alone and they needed each other.

Paul being a POW meant he suffered humiliation at the hands of his captors. His rank meant nothing to the French soldiers who found him and mocked him for his height and age. He felt like the humiliation he endured as a POW had not only eaten away at the ego he had and humbled him, but it also made his anger towards himself grow because he felt he was a coward for not having died with his men. He needed to forgive himself for living, because survivor's guilt is a real symptom of PTSD.

What a beautiful game! It captured the horrors of war so eloquently and with such remarkably poetic grace. I hope more game developers take note of this game and use it as a standard for how war games ought to be. Not glorifying the battlefield, but showing it for what it was: a horrifying nightmare which we should never seek to repeat.

[okamisama]

Here's a theory. The dummy that we see throughout the game (the one that the mother made as a vessel for Johannes) is a representation of Johannes. You play as Paul. Johannes was asked by his father to look out for Paul. And so he does, every step of the way, as the dummy. At least in Paul's mind.

Also, I put this video on in the background while I worked (as well as watched Skilly's playthrough) and here's what I think. The saboteur in chapter 2 wasn't Johaness. It was the father. Not only because the boss represented him, but also we see letters where he wanted to stop the production of ordnance and arms, but Grubert refused to comply. So he himself went down there and sabotaged the production. That, or he asked Johannes to do so, but we see no mention about it from Johannes' letters.

We also see his father many times in many forms throughout the 2nd chapter. First, he was as himself sitting on the sofa. Second, as a mad scientist, experimenting on the Johannes' doves, to make the gas. Third, as the man-horse hybrid from his dream, where he was not a failure in his father's eyes. Fourth, as the king on his throne after his father's death.

And here are also my thoughts about the human experimentations. There were no human experimentations. It was all in Paul's head. He kept reffering to the doctor as a character from a show or a cartoon he's seen and thinking that he is a miracle-worker that can basically bring the dead back to life. He also kept sending soldiers not fit for battle into the battlefield because of that (we saw that in the letters). The list of the reanimated soldiers was aslo his imagination. Basically, the soldiers were patched up as well as the doctor could do in that situation, Paul thought it was good enought to send them back on the battlefield, and when they failed to do their jobs, he made up some stories about them being cowards and whatnot. Cleaning up the lockers might be symbolic for fallen in battle.

Sorry for the long ramble, but I just wanted to get my thought out there.

[RedRoseMediaLive]

That scream in the prologue as you're in the barbed wire missing youre hand screaming for the man walking away is truly bone chilling. Sent a chill up my spine.

[UbilManther]

Quicksilver was an older name for mercury. He injected his wife with mercury, which caused her dimentia and mood swings. After nine years of mercury poisoning, it's no surprise that her personality changed. It's worth noting that mercury was used in many fields of medicine for thousands of years before it was discovered to be toxic, so this treatment would not have been considered unusual for the time.

[timeforgottenprince]

4:22:58 "a passion project of, " well that explains how it is so fucking good. Bloody hell, it is nice to see that games of this quality can still be made in this day and age. I wouldn't be surprised if this game becomes a classic in the future.

[MrYiangoss]

This game reminds me of the movie, “all’s quiet on the western front” simply gut wrenching. The realisation of the reality of war.

[TheCrookedMan-dmgr]

Johannes and the officer at the end was just chilling and dark… holy shit, my heart just sank of how good this game captures the trauma he feels.

[azarinevil]

Wow this game really layers on the tragedy from the very onset.. a son with PTSD, a brother lost to the war, a mother with clinical depression being exploited by a con man and who doesn't recognize her last remaining son, an abusive father and grandfather obsessed with nationalism at expense of their own family, all set to one of the most brutal and stupid wars of the last century. The devs really did it all justice, you can feel the weight of it all.

[neyaatalan]

What got me crying was the first sentence after the gameplay ended: "Human dignity is inviolable", which is- in its german version- the first sentence of our current of the Basic Law of Germany. "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar". Such a powerful ending!

[KovarrBlue]

I love when IGP plays psychological horror. He's one of the few youtubers who actually understands how awful trauma and war can be. His playthrough of that other trench warfare game is still one of my favourites.

[IGZ]

In my head Johannes came back, trauma filled, still mangled and destroyed, both physically and mentally. His mother not being able to have the same relationship and love, after first having him torn from her thanks to war, then pronounced dead. She held on to the idea that the same boy that left was going to come back, but he didnt, so now it wasnt her real son anymore. Johannes had been left for dead, by first his father, then his brother, and upon returning, his mother as well. Poor Johannes.

No matter what it all is supposed to mean, stories like this, of generational trauma, war and broken family dynamics, should be handled with care, and these developers did a great job, showing the horror of gruesome betrayal and trauma. And I'm glad it didnt shy away from the very real event that even though redemption, there is not always forgiveness.

[shadowbrain]

The fact that Trauma Horror hits so much harder, and still can end so positively, says something I don't have the words to articulate. This was a trip, and a damn sobering one.

[veinexesvideos]

I like the detail that IGP puts into the sections where he is wearing the gas mask that he makes his own voice muffled as if he was really wearing it

[kingarthurpt]

2:04:52 Jesus Christ IGP, this tiny audio effect when you put the mask in a so short amount of time, is just a proof that your editing and care for doing videos are the best.
Thank you sir!

[coltray]

4 hours of IGP! It doesn’t get better then this

[Dr.Reflex-qnuk]

2:14:39 I like how The Officer don't let Paul take the rifle and saying "Ah ah ah..!" 😂😂😂😂

[josselyneewens]

Someting similar happend with my grandfather. My great-grandfather wanted to force him to go to war, but he refused and his father kicked him out of the house. His brothers were, one died and another returned traumatized.
I love the video and game. Its like when my grandfather told me his stories and that he wanted to be a veterinarian and could not because his father.