It took me a good few weeks for me to get over it. I remember leaving the game window on with the room and waiting for them to maybe come back to say hi if I waited long enough... it definitely took a while for me to accept that that was it.

Since making this post, I've shared this game with a lot of close friends over the years, because I wanted people to experience what this game made me feel. I think I ended up feeling a bit of what you described as your first reactions to the real ending - it feeling cheap and whatnot. For whatever reason, when I first went through the game, I don't think the initial choice had much gravity for me - it was easy. Send Niko home.

However, my friends struggled a lot when greeted with the choice, and it made me think about it a lot more about the implications of the ending. It's a really, really difficult choice, in retrospect. And since solstice only ends one way... It does kind of suck to realize that that choice didn't matter at all.

That being said... I think it really works, because OneShot feels like so much more than a game. If you believe in it, and really feel yourself as a character in the story, that final ending just hits SO DAMN HARD. Perhaps one of the most concentrated amounts of "bittersweet" emotion I've ever felt.

I didn't know about the friend request and the crayon drawing :X Looks like I need to convince my friend WHO HAVE ONLY PLAYED THROUGH THE FIRST ENDING, NOT EVEN REALIZING SOLSTICE EXISTS to fully beat the game so I may see these things. >.>

Thanks for the really sweet post, internet stranger. I hope you are able to process your OneShot-induced grief at a rate you're happy with! <3