How Many Endings Does Sweet Home Have?
Five endings, and the game counts heads, not names.
Five. After the final battle, Sweet Home counts how many of its five filmmakers are still alive and chooses the ending from that number alone. It is an unusually blunt system for 1989, and an honest one: the game does not care who you loved. It cares how many you saved.
The endings are why the party system matters. Every death you allow is quietly a vote for a worse farewell, cast hours before the credits.
HOW THE COUNT WORKS
Survivors, not namesFive endings
Beat the final battle against Lady Mamiya and the game totals the living. Five survivors down to a lone escapee produce five different endings.
Who dies does not matter
Japanese completion guides confirm the branch is a headcount, not a guest list. Losing Akiko and losing Emi produce the same tier of ending, which makes the system colder and fairer at once: the mansion charges by the person.
Deaths are never undone
Because death is permanent and the narrative continues regardless, an ending is the sum of every mistake you kept. There is no chapter select and no resurrection to launder a bad run.
THE FILM'S ENDING, INSIDE THE GAME
Two deathsThe movie kills two
In Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film, Taguchi and Asuka die and Kazuo, Emi, and Akiko survive, escaping as the mansion collapses after Lady Mamiya is reunited with her son. That outcome exists inside the game as the two-death ending.
The game lets you do better, and worse
A careful player can bring all five home, something the film never allows. A careless one can lose people the film kept alive. Japanese guides suggest saving with everyone alive just before the final battle, then watching the endings cascade as you reload and let the count fall.
The rescue
Every ending turns on the same escape: the mansion crumbling, help arriving from outside. What changes is who is left to be rescued, and what the survivors carry out with them.