RetroSpace Endings Explained: Both Endings and All 6 Post-Credit Stingers

RetroSpace does not branch as it goes. No guide or review documents an earlier decision, a morality meter, or a quest gate feeding into the finale: the game keeps its entire ending structure in one place, at the very end. After you clear the contagion block, you reach a navigation terminal — the bridge control that decides where Aurora 5 goes next — and you set the station's destination. That single input is the branch point for both main endings.

It is worth saying what is not documented in front of that terminal: no source records a final boss fight guarding the choice. The drama of the finale, as far as the coverage establishes, is the choice itself — plus everything your run has quietly been scoring for the stinger (§4). Play the late game for the run you are building: there is exactly one fork, and it is at the end.

The terminal offers the two destinations the whole game has been framed around. Aurora 5 is part of the AURORA / Golden Journey fleet — humanity's city-ships, out searching for a new home — and the station's own propaganda has been selling that mission on every corridor wall since the Gardens. At the terminal, you either honour it or abandon it:

Those labels — Good and Bad — are the names the sources themselves use, and they are all that is documented about the difference. At the level of requirements and structure, the two endings differ in exactly three ways: the destination you set, the ending that plays, and the achievement that pops. Nothing earlier in the run is documented to alter, gate or shade either one.

If you followed RetroSpace before launch, you heard "eight endings" — and you will still find the number repeated. It is wrong, and the arithmetic of the error is simple: the retail game has 2 main endings and 6 post-credit stingers, which adds up to eight ending sequences if you count every epilogue as an ending. Pre-release coverage did exactly that, and the phrase stuck.

Count it properly: your destination choice gives you one of two endings. Then, independently of which ending you picked, the game scores your run and plays one of six short post-credit epilogues. Endings are chosen; stingers are earned. The next two sections cover how.

The six stingers are not character vignettes handed out for story choices. They are play-style verdicts: after the credits, the game looks at how you played the whole run — what you used, how often you died, what you finished — and plays a single epilogue. If you qualify for several, only the highest-priority one plays. The other five are not "missed content" so much as outbid content: seeing all six takes at least six runs, each engineered to top out at a different rung of the ladder.

One sourcing note before the list, because it matters: the trigger conditions below are documented by one guide family (9to5gaming and Into Indie Games share text and authorship, so they count once, not twice). The structure — six stingers, one per run, priority order — is consistent everywhere it is mentioned; the exact thresholds are the best available record, and are labelled accordingly throughout.

1. Abomination — the mutation verdict. Play a Mutamod-heavy run and raise at least 3 different Mutamods to Lv3. Top of the ladder: if your run qualifies for this, it outbids everything else on this list.

2. I am the Void — the death verdict. Die 20 or more times in a single run. Cloning makes this the easiest threshold to farm deliberately — and the easiest to trip by accident on a sloppy high-difficulty run.

3. There is still hope… — the completion verdict. Finish all 6 side quests in the run. One honest caveat: the guide family's own two pages disagree about the exact six-quest roster. Four entries overlap on both lists — the Nebula errand, Joey's head, the Charley quest, and the date errand — but the remaining names do not match, so the precise roster is unsettled until a second source weighs in. The safe play is unchanged either way: clear every NPC quest you are offered.

4. Space Disease — the abstinence verdict. Never use a single Mutamod for the entire run. Note the asymmetry with rung 1: buying is not using, but the documented condition is about use — a zero-Mutamod run is a recognised playstyle in its own right, and this is its receipt.

5. The Wrench is the KEY — the janitor verdict. Score 20 or more kills with the wrench. Your starting tool, swung twenty times too many — the most on-brand stinger in the game.

6. Everything is funky — the default. Qualify for none of the five above and this is what plays: the game's shrug at an unremarkable — which is to say, ordinary, survivable — run.

The ladder turns collection into a subtraction problem: to see a lower stinger, you must fail to qualify for every rung above it. Worked through, the six runs look like this:

Two ties to the wider game. First, no achievement is attached to any individual stinger — the 29-achievement list covers the two endings and stops there, so stinger collection is a completionist's own project. Second, you need both endings for Too good to be true and Not the best outcome… anyway: pair each stinger run with whichever ending you still owe, and six runs clear both checklists at once. Our achievements roadmap lays out the full matrix, including the run-ending missables to protect along the way.

So which ending "really" happened? The honest answer is that nobody in a position to say has said. The guide family that documents the endings states it plainly: the canon ending is unconfirmed — no developer statement settles whether the fleet or Earth is the "true" destination.

Be wary, then, of fan-wiki pages that present one destination as the confirmed canon choice. That framing circulates, but it traces to no developer quote, no patch note and no in-game statement anyone has produced — it is a wiki's guess wearing the game's authority. If The Wild Gentlemen ever canonise an ending — a sequel, a DLC, a developer interview — this section gets rewritten the same day. Until then: two endings, both shipped, neither crowned.

How many endings does RetroSpace really have? Two main endings, decided by one choice at the navigation terminal — plus six post-credit stingers, of which exactly one plays per run. "Eight endings" counts the stingers as endings; they are scored epilogues, not branches.

Can I see both endings in one run? The choice is a single moment at the very end. The obvious experiment is to keep your one manual save from before the terminal and reload it — but your autosave keeps moving on its own, so treat a second run as the reliable route. You need repeated runs for the stingers regardless.

Do the stingers have achievements? No. The achievement list covers the two endings (Too good to be true, Not the best outcome…) and nothing per-stinger. Collecting all six is for your own checklist.

What happens in each stinger? Unknown — and be suspicious of any guide that tells you otherwise. The trigger conditions are documented (by one guide family); the contents are described in no reliable source we can find, so this page lists requirements only.

Is there New Game+ or post-game free roam after the ending? None is documented in the retail build. Pre-release interviews floated NG+, but no review or guide confirms it shipped. Replayability comes from the four difficulties, the second ending, the five stingers you did not see, and the challenge achievements.

Which ending is canon? Unconfirmed — officially and entirely. See §7, and ignore any page that crowns a "canon choice" without a developer source behind it.