On a desolate, rain-soaked night in a bleakly rendered Stockholm, Simon Luke Johnson wakes up in an alley after a car strike while trying to help an injured man. The city feels oppressive, with flickering lights, slick cobblestones, and a distant hum that never quite steadies his nerves. He struggles to make his way home, but the streets close in around him as deformed monsters emerge from the shadows, turning his pursuit into a desperate fight for survival. His attempts to call for help fail, and a cryptic text from a man pleading for aid pulls him deeper into danger.
He searches an abandoned apartment block and discovers the man dead in a bathtub, an image that festers as the building itself slips into decay—cracked walls, dripping ceilings, and corridors smeared with blood. A chainsaw-wielding monster erupts, and in a brutal moment the creature decapitates itself upon defeat, leaving Simon horrified, vomiting, and collapsing back into the nightmare streets.
When Simon comes to, he faces a cryptic, violent doctor Paul Franklin who questions his trust and sanity, casting a pall over every corridor he traverses. As he wanders the city, more threats loom and fragments of memory surface. He then encounters Sophie, his childhood friend and love interest, on a rooftop; a moment of vulnerability leads him to try to confess, but Sophie rejects him and tragically leaps to her death.
A monstrous figure named Carcass appears and offers Simon a stark choice: kill it or flee back into the labyrinthine building. This encounter propels him forward, though the world he moves through remains viscerally hostile. He heads toward a subway, only to find the passage blocked by a missing fuse. A nearby college holds the key, but the moment he secures the fuse, monsters overrun the halls and ambush him, forcing a tense retreat to the station.
The doctor resurfaces during the station sequence, underscoring a sense that someone is always watching and meddling with Simon’s fate. A door requiring two more fuses blocks the way to an open gate for a train, so he must return to the previously chained apartment. In a long, nerve-wracking hallway, he overhears a doctor recounting another encounter with a patient as he is assailed once more, and he finally recovers the fuses needed to advance. He sets off to retrieve the final components, only to slip into a nightmare where monsters hang from the ceiling and chase him through a dizzying maze before a door opens to a completely different hallway.
After boarding the train, Simon is assaulted again and the journey ends with a derailment. The wreck leaves him stranded, bereft of belongings, and as the train teeters near a cliff, he escapes into a dark, silent forest. Deep within, an asylum-like complex materializes, and the doctor enters the scene. The doctor tries to barter—hand over a new gun in exchange for passage—yet betrayal follows, culminating in a shootout in which Simon’s fate hangs in a delicate balance, ending with his victory over the doctor.
Emerging from the forest, Simon rows a solitary boat across a lake back toward his hometown. He reaches his house, only to find it empty. Inside his bedroom, a book lies waiting, and a flashback peels back the veil: the entire saga was a product of Simon’s mind. A car crash left him dependent on a wheelchair, and a weary therapist—who turns out to be the doctor from the game—urged him to document his feelings in a book. The monsters, mazes, and the cityscape were all manifestations of his trauma, a single mind wrestling with memory and pain. The story reveals that the protagonist and all the other figures are constructs shaped by Simon’s inner turmoil.
Cry of Fear unfolds across five endings, each determined by the choices the player makes along the way, offering a range of conclusions and revelations. For players who have unlocked the fourth ending at least once, there is also a secret humorous ending triggered by delivering a mysterious package addressed to Simon to a mailbox—a playful counterpoint to the heavier psychological journey.
