: Your actions as Bernd—whether he is diligent or lazy—heavily influence the branching plot, often leading to one of many dark "bad ends".
The game is set in the fictional, idyllic Bavarian village of Unteralterbach. The protagonist, a classic "Bernd" archetype, arrives in this deeply conservative, picturesque rural town expecting nothing more than a quiet escape or a mundane assignment.
On the surface, Bernd and the Mystery of Unteralterbach looks like a low-resolution, amateur project. The character sprites are stiff. The voice acting (only available in German) ranges from brilliantly nuanced to "the developer’s cousin reading lines in a closet." Yet, the game has a passionate following, with English fan translations circulating on obscure forums since 2012.
Bernd's new job is at a police station—the "Federal Office for the Execution of the Oktoberfest"—which is actually a front for a cybercrime division investigating a gang of sex offenders. However, Bernd soon discovers that Unteralterbach is far from normal:
