10 Best Games That Demand Multiple Playthroughs

Some games tell their story in a straight line—start at point A, end at point B, and you’ve seen just about everything there is to see. But not every game is so straightforward; in fact, many titles practically beg you to hit the “New Game” button after their credits roll.

Whether it’s due to branching storylines, multiple endings, or new bits of lore that get revealed with every new playthrough, these games offer experiences that can’t be put down after a single run.

Playing these titles over and over again isn’t repetitive—it’s downright revelatory, rewarding you with new perspectives and hidden secrets you would never have been able to catch the first time around. In fact, for some of these games, your first playthrough will barely feel like a warm-up.

From choose-your-own-adventures to experimental RPGs, these are the best games that demand, and, more importantly, deserve, multiple playthroughs.

10 Scarlet Nexus

Double the Protagonists, Double the Fun

At first glance, Scarlet Nexus might look like your standard, flashy, anime-inspired RPG, but there’s a unique twist to it that lies in its dual protagonists. Most RPGs that offer a “boy option” and “girl option” usually tell the same story no matter which you choose, sans a few minor gender-related differences here and there; but in Scarlet Nexus, each of the protagonists offers an entirely different side of the story.

You can choose to play as either Yuito, the boy, or Kasane, the girl. While their stories do frequently overlap, they also diverge in a lot of crucial ways, changing the perspective on the story as a whole depending on who you choose.

Set in a futuristic world under constant threat from strange mutants, called Others, the story follows the exploits of psychic soldiers Yuito Sumeragi and Kasane Randall, an eager recruit from a prestigious family, and a cool-headed prodigy with her own hidden agenda.

While they’re both part of the all-important Other Suppression Force, their paths begin to diverge as political conspiracies, shady experiments, and even questions of personal loyalty throw them onto opposite sides of a rapidly escalating conflict.

Each of the characters has their own perspective on the strange and often mind-boggling events of the game, as well as their own unique party members, powers, and even emotional arcs. Playing through the game with just one character only gives you half the picture; it’s only after experiencing both sides of the story that the full narrative will click into place.

While one playthrough may answer a few questions, it takes two to make you realize just how deep the rabbit hole really goes.

9 Volcano Princess

Every Single Choice Matters

Bringing a child into the world and raising it is never an easy task, but when you’re doing it alone, and it’s the future monarch of an entire kingdom? Forget the village, it’s going to take an entire city to raise this child.

Volcano Princess allows its players to take on the role of a single parent raising their daughter (the future queen) in a fantastical kingdom, guiding her through childhood all the way to adulthood. Every decision you make, from her daily activities to how she spends her free time, shapes her skills, personality, and future, consequently changing the kingdom’s fate as well.

Will you raise a battle-obsessed warmonger greedy for new territory? Or will you raise a noble knight, set on defending her kingdom from inside its borders? The number of possible paths feels staggering, and it would take an astonishing number of playthroughs to see every last one of them.

Your first playthrough feels more like an experimental warm-up than anything, allowing you to get a feel for which decisions will have which consequences. For example, having her study art in her adolescence may not make her a great strategist, but it might help endear her to her future subjects, winning their hearts long before she takes up the throne. Public opinion does matter a great deal in politics after all, even in medieval monarchies.

Watching how your choices shape her life is strangely addicting, and it’s not long before the curiosity kicks in after the credits roll. What if you had trained her differently? Chosen her friend groups differently, provided alternate books and tutors? There’s only one way to answer that, and it’ll be a dozen playthroughs or more before you’re finally satisfied with your princess.

8 The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Take Fate into Your Own Hands

I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve played this game. I’ve lost count of how many playthroughs I have under my belt, but even I still haven’t seen all the endings this game has to offer. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood has so much to offer its players, it’s truly a game that you can’t put down after only one playthrough.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is like the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure game, except instead of just deciding your own fate, you’re dictating the future of an entire cosmic society as well. Players get to take on the role of Fortuna, a fortune-telling witch forced to live in exile for centuries, punished for foreseeing the downfall of her coven.

Banished on your tiny asteroid home, isolation begins to get the better of you, and it’s not long before you’re desperate enough to do the unthinkable: summon a forbidden entity, and make a deal with it.

After bartering for your freedom and gaining all-new powers, you’ll be able to design your own tarot-like divination cards, which can then be used to read the fortunes of other witches—fortunes that ripple outward and alter the balance of the cosmos themselves.

The story might always begin the same, but how it ends is entirely up to you. If you don’t feel like staying and fixing up the political mess that is your own universe, you could always abandon it entirely and create new dimensions of your own; you could start your own coven that worships you like a god, you could renounce your immortality and live among humans, or you could even turn yourself and all your friends into cats and enjoy a quiet life by the sea.

The paths feel almost endless in this game, and I guarantee you’ll have trouble putting it down before you’ve seen them all.

7 Until Dawn

Will You Save Them All?

Horror games might not seem like the type of experience you’d want to put yourself through more than once, but few horror games make your choices feel as weighty (or as fatal) as Until Dawn. The amount of pathways and endings that Until Dawn offers its players is almost overwhelming; you’d need to dedicate a truly embarrassing amount of your life to this game if you wanted to see them all.

Set during a winter getaway at a secluded mountain lodge, the story follows eight friends whose reunion spirals into a nightmare no one saw coming (if you’ve seen literally any 80s horror movie, then you already get the gist. Monsters hate teenagers.). With branching dialogue, quick-time events, and the “butterfly effect” system that made the game so famous, every decision you make can mean the difference between survival and a gruesome death, for you and your friends.

The ultimate goal of the game is to save everyone, but that’s a lot easier said than done. It’s going to be hard enough on your first playthrough just to keep yourself alive, let alone half a dozen other people. Playing through again and again is the only way to make sure everyone survives, along with getting the game’s “true” ending.

You might get lucky and save everyone on the first try—or you might watch them all die in spectacularly gruesome ways. Characters who feel unimportant at first can quickly become linchpins of survival, depending on the paths you take. Even the smallest choices early on can ripple outward in unbelievable ways, sealing your fate long before the real horrors begin. It’s almost impossible to get a perfect run on the first try, but that doesn’t mean plenty of people haven’t tried it.

No two playthroughs ever feel the same in Until Dawn, and if you want to get the full story, you’ll have to become good friends with that “New Game” button.

6 The Mortuary Assistant

Ghosts, Demons, Dead Bodies, Oh My!

On the surface, The Mortuary Assistant seems like a pretty straightforward horror game: embalm corpses, get spooked, repeat. But the game’s story and lore go so much deeper than that, involving demons, possession, and haunting secrets that were never meant to be revealed. After playing it the first time around, you’d be crazy to not jump headfirst into a second playthrough.

The glaring brilliance of the game lies in just how unpredictable it is. Each shift is different, with randomized hauntings, scares, and demonic events that keep you constantly on edge. Even when you know what’s supposed to happen, the game delights in pulling the rug out from under you and giving you heart palpitations. It won’t get any less scary with multiple playthroughs, but that shouldn’t stop you from diving deep into demon territory.

Like all good horror games, The Mortuary Assistant’s story isn’t a one-and-done experience. This game features multiple endings tied to how much you uncover about the protagonist’s past, how you perform your duties, and which clues you manage to gather about the demon in play. Some runs will lean more into true psychological horror, while others might turn you into a full-blown supernatural detective, pushing you toward deeper lore revelations hidden behind cryptic puzzles and clues.

It’s a game that practically dares you to play it again, not to just survive another night in the morgue, but to fully grasp the chilling bigger picture. One playthrough gives you a scare, but several playthroughs reveal the full haunting truth.

5 Change: A Homeless Survival Experience

Can You Survive Long Enough to Succeed?

Unlike most survival games that throw you into unrealistic and apocalyptic scenarios, Change offers an experience that feels far more grounded in reality, as heartbreaking as it may be.

In Change, you play as a newly homeless individual just trying to survive and navigate the harsh realities of homeless life in the city. It’s a lot easier said than done, and things like shelter, food, water, and even basic hygiene supplies feel like unobtainable luxuries. The game doesn’t sugarcoat anything, making it a hard game to want to pick back up again; that being said, every run has the potential to be wildly different from the last, and the possibility of a happy ending is far too tempting to pass up.

What makes Change a game worth so many playthroughs is just how many different paths and outcomes it offers its players. Each run starts with a different backstory for your character, which shapes your predetermined skills and opportunities, and even the city itself shifts with randomized events and encounters with every run. Luck is often a big factor in a successful run, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build your own hard-won strategies with every failed attempt.

From tragic downfalls to stories of recovery and redemption, no two playthroughs ever feel quite the same, making Change not just endlessly replayable, but a deeply empathetic look at the countless ways a life can unfold under different circumstances. It might not be the most comfortable game you’ve ever played, but it might just be the most important.

4 Outer Wilds

So Many Planets, So Little Time

Outer Wilds is one of those games that makes you wonder why time loop games aren’t more popular. In this game, you play as a wide-eyed astronaut exploring a solar system where the sun goes supernova every 22 minutes; the catch is that you mysteriously come back every time, only to start the entire process over again.

Every time the loop resets, you get to keep your memories, slowly piecing together the history of an ancient alien race, the secrets behind strange celestial bodies, and the ultimate truth behind the universe itself. Every new planet offers another puzzle piece to the mystery, with every loop revealing something new that you missed the time before: a puzzle solution you couldn’t quite grasp before, a new hidden location, or even a revelation that completely reframes the entire story.

What makes Outer Wilds demand multiple playthroughs is just how impossible it is to absorb everything in one trip. Every planet holds its own environmental puzzles and time-based secrets, last-minute revelations swallowed up by a suicidal solar system on a timer. Even after reaching the credits, most players feel compelled to dive back in, whether they’re chasing unanswered questions or going into old events with newfound understanding.

By the time you reach the end of your first run, you’ll already be planning how your next one will go.

3 Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

Squid Game? Never Heard of Her.

What originally started out as a series of successful Nintendo DS games became what is now known as Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, a reworked combination of the first two entries: 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward.

These aren’t just kid-sized visual novels with puzzle elements—they’re twisted escape-room-style adventures where nine strangers are forced into a deadly game of survival, with each of their choices pushing the story down wildly different paths. It’s like the most messed-up version of choose-your-own-adventure imaginable.

The real kicker of it all is that you can’t experience the full narrative in a single run. Every playthrough gives you only one piece of the puzzle, but reaching the “true ending” requires exploring multiple timelines and deliberately retracing your steps in certain events.

The necessity of multiple playthroughs is baked directly into its gameplay, with many options remaining hidden until a certain number of runs puts you on the right path. Getting a bad ending and starting again isn’t a failure in this game, it’s just another stepping stone on the way to the truth.

Part of what makes this game so memorable is how it turns repetition into something so revelatory and enjoyable; choices you encounter on your third or fourth run that felt like dead ends before suddenly make sense, and small details you overlooked on earlier runs end up completely changing how you interpret the story. It’s definitely a game that will leave you with a lot of questions if you only play it once, but play it multiple times, and you’ll be one of the lucky few who finally understands.

2 I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

Growing Up as a Human Alien

If I had to pick one game to play for the rest of my life, it’d probably be I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. This game has stolen an embarrassing number of hours of my free time, and I’m sure it’ll steal several more before I’m done with it.

In this game, humanity has finally pushed Earth to its breaking point, and a radicalized resistance group decided their best bet for survival was to steal a spacecraft and launch themselves into the unknown, on a do-or-die mission to find a new home planet. Eventually, they found one: Vertumna. Thanks to a well-placed wormhole, the trip only took about 20 years, and you get to play as one of the children born on the ship prior to their arrival.

Life on Vertumna is wildly different from life on Earth (not that you’d know that, of course). Vertumna is full of strange alien flora and fauna, though its surface is seemingly devoid of any intelligent life, which is as lucky as it is suspicious. You’ll get a span of ten whole years to reach adulthood and find all the planet’s secrets, even the ones that no one wants you to find.

Here’s where it gets weird: every run is counted as a “life”, and the game doesn’t just end once it’s done. Every time you finish a run, it gives you an ending depending on the choices you made, and you get to restart your life again with all the knowledge you gained from your previous life. After you “die”, you awaken again as a 10-year-old child on the Stratospheric spaceship, trying to keep up age-specific appearances even though you’ve got entire lifetimes of memories crammed into your brain.

You’ll know of events long before they actually happen, and you’ll get to build your strategies around them accordingly. You’ll be praised as a hero by the community, but only you know the terrible secret: you’re stuck in a lifetime time loop that won’t let you rest once life is over. The only thing you can be sure of is that your consciousness is somehow intrinsically tied to the planet itself, almost like it isn’t ready for you to leave it just yet…

If you want a game that will live rent-free in your brain long after you’re finished playing it, then you should definitely look into getting I Was a Teenage Exocolonist.

1 NieR: Automata

Aliens vs. Androids

If you’re into games that feature dystopias, androids, and aliens, then you’re going to love everything about NieR: Automata. At first glance, NieR: Automata looks like your average JRPG-adjacent, hack-and-slash action RPG, but surprisingly, it’s actually a lot more than what you see on the surface.

In NieR: Automata, the planet has been invaded and ravaged by mechanical alien beings, who’ve taken over Earth’s surface. As humanity is pushed closer and closer to the brink, they unleash their final desperate effort for survival: a mechanical army of their own.

But unlike the alien invaders, these machines go far beyond ones and zeros; they’re androids, nearly indistinguishable from humans, built to outsmart and outpace their opponents in every way. An all-out war between the two armies soon breaks out, and though humanity finds themselves vastly outnumbered, the androids aren’t going down without a fight.

You start off in the shoes of 2B, a stoic combat android carrying out her mission alongside her partner, 9S. But once the last battle’s been fought and the first credits begin to roll across your screen, the game pulls its first trick: you’re far from done. Each new playthrough shifts your perspective entirely, handing you control of different characters and layering on new revelations that completely reframe what you thought you knew about the world, the war, and the very nature of life itself.

This isn’t just a game with “alternate endings”—it’s a game whose entire experience is based on the necessity of multiple runs. Entire story arcs, character motivations, and gut-punching truths only reveal themselves after you’ve gone through it again and again (and again). By the time you reach the final ending, you’ll realize your first playthrough was only barely scratching the surface of everything this game has to offer.