I have a theory of what the secret ending means.

When Douglas talks about his friend's death that night it was only his friend that died, which is strange since during your experience there is a massacre of people. By using the clock time is turned back and people are brought back to life. Assuming Mendax went through the same experience, he was able to save everyone who died the night he died and was then sent to the void. Mendax asks surprisingly about Douglas being alive, chances are Douglas died that night and was revived by Mendax's sacrifice. I theorize that when you perform the self-sacrifice everyone is brought back and forgets about the horrors that occured to them and will find your body mysteriously dead.

Which also means that about every 25 years the Eldritch horror creature emerges kills a bunch of people and then choses a lucky contestant a chance to sacrifice themself and save everyone else.

It took me watching another playthrough to understand it, but the differences between the endings is literally that single image.  When William looks back before going with Mendax he's looking through the portal/door that goes back to the human world.  In the first ending there's only one person there because Carolyn left before the massacre happened, which left her the sole survivor.   The second ending showed four people; Carolyn, Henry, Sam, and Douglas, whose lives were saved when William used the clock. Obviously more lives than those were saved, but William had a direct connection to those people; so maybe that's why he saw them. Honestly it'd make much more sense if William and Mendax talked about it before leaving, even if it were just William recognizing them.

Not gonna lie, this is an awesome game, but the alternate ending left a lot to be desired.  I mean, you found clues and solved a puzzle to have just 1 frame be different?

37:29
Insym: damn that’s crazy
Also Insym: anyways these reports won’t file themselves
I’d be calling on the radio so damn quick personally

I think papers please is just it's own genre now

I remember from high school Latin that Mendax means “liar”… I wonder if there’s something to that, like he’s lying when he promises you’ll find a way out or something 😭

Submitting this video as your application for voice acting work. Amazing, my friend.

Horror versions of Papers, Please are showing up more and more recently.
What's next? You work as a 9-5 staff but sometimes you get the Karen?
That would be true horror for introverts.

You'll be fighting ancient deities and cryptids as they murder all your friends but the computer questioning if you are a human and makes you so a capture.  This is standard practice.

Watching Insym try to file reports in between people calling him and monsters trying to kill him reminds of me trying to get work done in my office while people interrupt me every 30 seconds.

I love this game so much! But the ending makes me so sad. They could've done a lot more to make each ending distinct.

Just midway watching this but laughed hard when Insym gave strong hardboiled voice to the new guy and then over the course of conversation, the voice switched between new guy and his character.

1:13:22 Aww crap, it's the Twins.

Poor Douglas is gonna show up like "NOT AGAIN" 😭

ok, horror games usually don't get to me.
But holy shit, the sound design and aesthetics of this game... 10/10 man

i love that there was a corpse on his room and he still does reports xaxa

Okay here’s my critique as an art major:
The endings practically being the same could be easily remedied in a patch or something where they just add an extra thing to the secret one (because still ending up in the void makes sense. you still die), maybe an after-credits cutscene where either you can hear voices from the walkie talkie from John and Henry OR a scene of John (since it’s implied you and him are besties for the resties) finding you dead. Maybe Douglas, since he’s seen this before, also shows up and it all comes full circle. The park covers everything up again.
For the no ending, I think it would’ve been cool if there was a shot sort of reminiscent of Dredge’s credit sequence where the man made world is burning.
Fanfic writers you know what to do

Literaly 20mins ago i got a recommended video with someone playing this game and i was like "Wonder when Insym is gonna play this". Talk about coincidence 😂

I believe that Douglas friend is MENDAX! Douglas starts off his story with saying the dead friend was found 25 years ago and Mendax has been in the void for 25 years. Plus at 54:04, douglas talks about hoe the dead friend doesn't have any harm to his body, and his body would move like a snake which i think his mind vent to the void and his body "stayed alive" but just brainless. So he had to take the deal to save douglas because he had stated the day his friend died, he said it felt off and he felt the monsters watching him

I fell asleep watching this and woke up with a video of a man explaining how a bear trap works