Ad Infinitum (video game)

Lore & Background

Players control Paul von Schmidt, a young German veteran returning from the trenches after World War I. The game shifts between his family's mansion and a French town, representing his mental instability. Players solve puzzles and avoid monsters that symbolize his wartime experiences. Escaping monsters involves tapping controls; failure returns the player to a checkpoint.

Reader's Guide

Ad Infinitum received 'mixed or average' reviews on Metacritic. Critics praised its unique World War I setting and eerie atmosphere, as well as inventive creature design. However, many found the story disjointed, character development shallow, and gameplay reliant on stale walking simulator mechanics. The haunted mansion sections were criticized as derivative of better titles, while the trench warfare parts were called unique and compelling.

Did You Know?

• The game's protagonist is Paul von Schmidt, a German veteran whose brother Johannes shot him in the foot to save him from combat.
• Monsters in the game—Despair, Rage, Corruption, and Pain—represent aspects of Paul's family and war trauma.
• The ending changes based on whether Paul kills or spares four key monsters (Despair, Rage, Corruption, and Pain), with outcomes including an asylum or family reconciliation.

Gameplay & the Architecture of Dread

Ad Infinitum places players in the first-person shoes of a German soldier navigating the psychological wreckage of World War I trench warfare. The core loop blends survival horror with puzzle-solving, requiring players to avoid or outmaneuver various monstrous entities. When a chase sequence begins, the player must rapidly tap controls to escape; failure sends them back to a checkpoint rather than a game over, a design choice that keeps tension high without punishing progress. The game's setting fluidly shifts between the player's family mansion and a French town, a deliberate narrative device that externalizes the protagonist's deteriorating mental state. Rather than presenting a linear war narrative, the structure treats the battlefield trenches as a recurring, inescapable layer of the protagonist's psyche, with the manor and town serving as the surface world he attempts to inhabit. This dual-environment design means players are never fully safe in one location—the horror bleeds across both spaces, reinforcing the theme that trauma cannot be compartmentalized.

The von Schmidt Family & the Wound of War

The narrative of Ad Infinitum is anchored in the von Schmidt family, a household fractured by ideology, war, and unspoken grief. Paul's grandfather Lothar, a former military general, imposed a glorified view of military service on his son Karl, creating a generational wound that Paul inherits. His mother Madelein, who opposed Lothar's influence, largely refuses to acknowledge Paul, fearing he will become another soldier. Karl, caught between his father's expectations and his wife's resistance, pushes both sons into the war effort. Paul's brother Johannes, after being rejected by Karl for having an affair with a man, is similarly conscripted. On the battlefield, Paul's incompetence as a Lieutenant—stemming from his unrealistic, immature worldview—leads to starvation among his company. Johannes, recognizing the war's futility, shoots Paul in the foot to remove him from duty. During a subsequent attack, Johannes loses his left arm, an eye, and suffers barbed-wire lacerations to his face; Paul, in the chaos, leaves him behind. Both are taken as prisoners of war by French forces, and their homecoming only deepens the family's fractures.

Monsters as Psychological Manifestations

The creatures players encounter in Ad Infinitum are not random enemies but personifications of the protagonist's inner turmoil. The blind, ravenous Hunger creatures that stalk the trenches embody the sensory deprivation and terror of combat. Despair, a warped female monster found in a French church, circles a large tree in a lot surrounded by speakers playing either harsh military music or his mother's soothing songs—directly linking her to Madelein. Rage, a flaming centaur-like entity encountered near toxic gas, represents the destructive fury Paul associates with his father Karl. Corruption, a four-armed figure with mechanical grafts, guards the munitions factory and mirrors the industrialized violence of the war. Pain, a deformed humanoid with avian traits, is tied to his brother Johannes. In the final chapter, the Mayhem figures—mutilated bodies with prosthetic limbs—haunt a hospital bunker. Each monster presents a binary choice: kill it or spare it. These decisions map onto Paul's unresolved relationships with his mother, father, and brother, making the combat system a narrative instrument rather than a mere mechanical challenge.

Endings & the Cost of Incompletion

Ad Infinitum's conclusion is determined by the cumulative choices the player makes across three major encounters: Despair, Corruption, and Pain. If the player successfully kills or spares at least one of these three monsters, the narrative resolves into a form of psychological release—Paul awakens from his dreamlike cycles, suggesting a degree of reconciliation with his trauma. However, if the player fails to either kill or save at least one of the three, the game delivers its harshest verdict. The Officer, the commanding figure who has guided Paul through the trenches, delivers the line "there's no such thing as half a victory" before shooting him. Paul, having descended into full madness, wakes in an asylum. This ending structure transforms the survival horror genre's typical survive-or-die framework into a moral and psychological one: the true enemy is not the monsters but the incomplete processing of grief, guilt, and family dysfunction. The game refuses to let the player coast through; every encounter demands a definitive stance, and ambiguity is punished with the most devastating outcome available.

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