Getting Started With Interview With The Devil
Interview With The Devil is a narrative-driven horror game that uses a point-and-click format mixed with branching dialogue choices to determine which endings you reach. It runs on PC and is available through several distribution channels. The game tracks your decisions across multiple chapters and uses a flag system to determine whether certain characters are alive or dead by the finale. Most players finish it in about four to six hours depending on how thoroughly they explore alternate paths. The official version is available on Steam and GOG. There is also a standalone installer on itch.io from the developer, which some players prefer because it includes additional audio files that get stripped from the store versions. I used the itch.io build for my playthroughs because the DRM-free version let me inspect the JSON files that track your story flags. That turned out to be useful when I needed to force-save mid-branch to test outcome variations. The system requirements are minimal. The game runs on integrated graphics from 2015 onward. If you are playing on Linux, it works natively through Proton without any configuration tweaks. On Windows, make sure your DirectX runtime is current. Several users have reported that skipping this step causes text rendering glitches during cutscenes. It is not a fatal issue but it makes reading dialogue harder than it needs to be.
How the Dialogue System Actually Works
Most people assume the dialogue choices are binary: one answer leads to a friendly path and another leads to a hostile path. That is not how it works. The game uses a hidden karma-style counter that tracks your empathy, ruthlessness, and curiosity independently. A single choice does not lock you into one outcome. Instead, it shifts your position on three separate axes, and the game evaluates those axes at key decision nodes to determine what dialogue options appear next. The three axes are Empathy, Pragmatism, and Obsession. Empathy increases when you choose compassionate responses or spare enemies. Pragmatism increases when you choose logically efficient answers even if they are morally gray. Obsession increases when you push for information aggressively or revisit topics multiple times. The final acts of the game branch based on which axis is highest. If Pragmatism and Obsession are both high, you get a completely different ending than if Empathy is the sole leader. Here is the part that catches most players off guard. There is a fourth hidden axis called Detachment that triggers when you skip dialogue entirely or respond with the neutral option repeatedly. Detachment leads to endings that are neither good nor bad but functionally hollow. The game does not tell you this. I discovered it by running multiple save files and noticing that a third ending existed that nobody on the forums seemed to acknowledge.
A Specific Problem I Ran Into
During my second playthrough I hit a point where a companion character would die permanently regardless of what I did. The game flags this event early, but the trigger condition is not obvious. If you spend too long investigating the basement area before reaching a specific chapter marker, the game marks you as "unprepared" and kills the companion during the next major scene. This happens even if you have maxed out all dialogue checks. My workaround was to time-box my exploration. I would spend no more than twenty minutes in that area total, then move the main quest forward. Once I reached the next story milestone, the game locks in companion safety and the basement becomes a low-stakes area for optional collectibles. This is not mentioned in any guide I found. The developers apparently built it as an intentional pacing mechanism to prevent players from over-preparing for the final act.
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Common Pitfalls That Ruin Playthroughs
The first pitfall is assuming that saving frequently is helpful. The game autosaves at four specific points: after each major scene, after every dialogue resolution, and at two chapter transitions. If you create a manual save and then proceed further, the game keeps your manual save but also locks the auto-saved state. This means reloading a manual save from earlier in a branch can skip entire dialogue trees that were supposed to unlock later options. Always clear your manual saves when you advance a chapter. The second pitfall is missing the audio cues. The game uses a very subtle change in background music to signal when a conversation is approaching a critical decision node. The music drops out almost completely for a few seconds before the branching moment arrives. If you miss that, you will make a choice blind and might not realize what you triggered until you are ten minutes deeper into the next sequence. Playing with headphones helps because the cue is quieter than most environmental sounds in the game. A third pitfall involves the item inventory. Certain objects are flagged as story-critical and cannot be dropped or lost. Others appear to be important but are actually decorative. I wasted an entire session trying to use a brass key on three separate locked doors, only to learn later that the key triggers a flashback sequence and has no physical use in the world. The game does not tell you which items do what. You learn through failure.
Advanced Insight: How Ending Unlocks Really Work
There are seven endings total. Three are story conclusions, two are secret endings, one is a failure state, and one is the detachment outcome I mentioned. Beginners usually chase the "good ending" by maximizing Empathy. That path requires sparing at least two mid-game enemies and refusing to use the confession mechanic more than once. If you exceed either threshold, the game redirects you toward the Pragmatism path regardless of how high your Empathy score is. The hidden counter caps at a certain value before the final act, so hoarding empathy early does not guarantee the outcome you want. The secret endings require conditions that most guides do not list. One secret ending triggers only if you visit a specific room in the final act that has no marker on the map and no prompt to enter. You have to walk into it without clicking anything. The game recognizes the action by detecting that you stood in the doorway for three seconds. Another secret ending requires you to have never opened the journal item during the entire game. The journal contains lore that is not necessary to understand the plot, but many players open it early and permanently lock themselves out of that outcome.
Is Interview With The Devil Worth Your Time?
The game is strong on atmosphere and its dialogue writing is solid. The voice acting in the English release is inconsistent though. Some characters sound professional while others sound like they were recorded on a laptop microphone. This inconsistency is most noticeable in Act Two and breaks immersion during scenes that should feel tense. The Japanese dub is better but it is not available on all platforms. The game also has a pacing problem. The middle section drags because the branching dialogue becomes repetitive after you have seen two playthroughs. The first time through, the variety feels fresh. By the third run, you are making the same choices again just to test a different axis. The developers added a New Game+ mode that lets you skip unexplored dialogue branches, but it only unlocks after you complete the main story once. There is no fast-forward option for already-seen conversations. If you want an alternative, there are other narrative horror games that handle their branching systems more efficiently. But Interview With The Devil remains one of the more ambitious indie horror titles in this space. The hidden mechanics reward players who are willing to study their save files and experiment rather than follow a single path. If you approach it like a puzzle game instead of a straight narrative, the experience improves significantly. Most people do not do that and leave frustrated because they got one ending and assumed the rest of the content was locked behind paywalls or microtransactions that never materialized.
The game is priced between eight and twelve dollars depending on the platform and current sales. It is not expensive for the amount of content. Just go in with the expectation that you will need multiple playthroughs to see everything, and be prepared to manage your save files carefully. Skipping that preparation is how most people break their game or miss the better endings entirely.
