Deponia Doomsday is a point-and-click adventure created by Daedalic Entertainment and released in March 2016. It is the fourth installment of the Deponia franchise. The first three parts are considered a trilogy. This installment is "paralellic."
Gameplay
The game follows the principles of a classic point-and-click adventure: the user controls Rufus as he travels across highly detailed backgrounds as the plot continues. Rufus can startup conversations with other characters and put items in his inventory for later use. These items, combined or not, are used to solve puzzles and advance the story. Furthermore, the game has some optional minigames.
Story
Prologue
In the introduction, Goal briefly explains the history of Elysium. Her ancestors started a small settlement on Deponia. The settlement became a town, eventually graduating to a city. Buildings became higher and higher and technology improved. One day they built a spaceship called Elysium and left. During the following decades the Elysians forgot their own history and were sure Deponia was only a dumping ground where nobody lived anymore. That is why they wanted to blow up the planet. Things changed unexpectedly thanks to Rufus who convinced the Elders of Elysium that he lives on Deponia, thus confirming that the planet is inhabited. In an attempt to avoid the crash of Elysium onto Deponia, Rufus fell off of the spaceship and died. As a result, nobody is aware Rufus is the hero who saved Deponia. Goal finishes her story but wonders what she would change if she were able to travel back in time and if these actions could lead to a better ending to her story. Next, the game moves to Deponia, now an ice planet due to a nuclear winter, where an old Rufus, followed by the Fewlocks (a parody of the Morlocks from H. G. Wells 1895 novel, The Time Machine), arrives at the tower which should have destroyed Deponia in the original plan of the Elysians. Not much further, a fallen Elysium can be seen. Rufus activates the bomb which will explode the planet.
The game
The young Rufus awakes from a nightmare. He is about to leave to Elysium with an air balloon. He only has to wrap up some crystal glasses, currently standing outside, and to pick up his girlfriend Toni. Once outside, he gets déjà vu and thinks all of this happened before: the crystal glasses will be destroyed, Toni and he will split up and there is a conspiracy of the Organon. Not much later the glasses are indeed destroyed by the car of professor McChronicle: an expert in temporary physics and the fourth dimension. His car is actually a time machine to travel back at some point in near past. He is not eager to use the device as it will create a time split and the consequences are not fully known. Rufus activates the machine and time is turned back until some seconds before McChronicle arrives at the balloon. McChronicle arrives with the car and Rufus tries to give parking instructions. He is however distracted by a pink elephant thus the glasses are broken again. Rufus reactivates the machine, but identically the same scenario repeats. McChronicle is somehow astonished Rufus could remember the future: normally this is only possible when the time travelers wear a special hood, but he doesn't question further. Rufus also realizes everything that has happened in the Deponia-trilogy must have been a dream as the time frame in which those events take place still have to come.
Rufus and Tuck, a drunk, try to figure out a method how to catch the elephant in the past. They reveal the elephant is hiding in the abandoned shopping mall. After they catch the "animal" it turns out to be the oversized mother of Toni who suffers obesity on which Toni ends the relationship. Rufus leaves with the balloon alone but it catches fire. It crashes in the town and sets the other buildings in fire. Rufus meets the "real elephant" although it are some men in disguise as they do not want to reveal their real identity. They warn Rufus "everything should be exactly the same as it was before" but he catapults them away. Rufus and McChronicle find a time travelling shuttle in the mall. It is able to create wormholes and they decide to travel to Elysium, which they can select from the time-pod graphical user interface. However, they end up in a crashed Elysium. There he meets Goal, although she is some years older as in his dream. She also recognizes him. Rufus realizes the events in the Deponia-trilogy did/will take place.
McChronicle, Goal and Rufus use the time pod and end up in a lower part of Elysium when it was still intact. Goal remembers the day: it is the day on which her younger version and Cletus leave to Deponia to verify if it is still habituated. Goal steals the time pod, as she wants to change her fate, leaving Rufus and McChronicle behind. Rufus wants to stop the Goal of the current timeline from leaving to Deponia. That's why he wants to consult the "Elder Ones" but they only meet in a few days. Rufus needs to find out a way how to set up the meeting immediately. The "First Elder" is having a massage. The "Second Elder" only wants to cooperate in case Rufus is able to create a new friendly kind of pet by mixing DNA-samples of different breeds. Although Rufus is able to create such animal, he also creates the evil Fewlock. The "Third Elder" wants improvements in the quality of served food and drinks. The "Fourth Elder" only wants to have a meeting in case someone earns at least 10 000 points in the fun center or in case a disaster turns up.
Meanwhile, the DNA-machine created a lot of Fewlocks which are attacking Elysium so the council is set up. Rufus convinces them: if he travels some hours back in past, he can stop Goal and can prove he is an inhabitant of Deponia. The whole mission and plan to destroy the planet can be cancelled. In meantime the time was already turned back some times and McChronicle suspects someone is messing up with his car at Deponia which creates the repeating time loop. As long the time loop is not broken, current events will repeat for eternity. McChronicle thinks all of this can be undone in case he is stopped with his car on the day he is on his way to Rufus' town.
