Say Cheese! story walkthrough: how to advance each scene and reach an ending

Quick answer

Advance Say Cheese! by following its camera loop: photograph what the scene presents — the run opens in a park with the camera viewfinder and a POINT & CLICK prompt on screen — make the in-scene choice about which character or trend to promote, and in the dark late-game scene click to take the last photo. A full run ends in a named ending, the menu's ENDINGS counter records it, and replaying the opening with different choices steers you toward the others — 12 in total.

• Photographing what a scene presents is the core progression action; the camera is what moves the run forward.
• Branches come from in-scene choices about which character or trend you photograph and promote.
• Replaying the same opening with different choices produces different endings.
• The ENDINGS screen on the main menu shows how many of the 12 endings you have found.

The story is built as a repeating run rather than a list of chapters to clear: one pass through the loop produces one ending.

The loop a run follows

The Say Cheese! run loop

1. 01

   Open in the park

   Start a run and pick up the camera.

   The story opens in a park with round-headed and square-headed figures gathered around a central TV. The camera viewfinder is on screen with the prompt POINT & CLICK.

2. 02

   Photograph what the scene presents

   Click to take the shot the scene is offering.

   This is the core progression action; the camera is what moves the run forward.

3. 03

   Choose at the branch

   Decide which character or trend to photograph and promote.

   The run branches at recurring in-scene decision moments — making a hat popular and spreading it, making crickets popular, or declining one path to pursue another. Your pick decides what the park follows next.

4. 04

   Take the last photo

   Close the run in the dark park scene.

   Late in the run the game switches to a dark park scene and asks you to click to take the last photo. Clicking is the explicit advancing action here.

5. 05

   Finish on a named ending

   The run resolves and the ending is counted.

   Every run terminates in a distinct named ending, such as the Follow the money ending — one of the 12 the game tracks.

A run closes on one ending; replaying from the same opening with different choices steers you toward another of the 12.

How the choice points steer a run

The decision moments are where the story forks, so treat each one as the moment your run is being defined rather than as dialogue to click through. In the recorded run, one path was to make a hat popular and spread it to everyone in the park — the player called the plan, then later had everyone use the hat. The same material shows the alternative being weighed: declining an offered path with 'I'm not doing that one because... let's make the hat popular', and at another point trying to make crickets popular instead.

What matters for reaching an ending is the relationship between that choice and the run's close. Each run ends in a single named ending, that ending counts among the 12, and replaying the same opening with a different choice yields a different ending. The examples above are choices a player made, not a required order — they show the kind of fork the game offers, and your own pick at each fork is the part you control.

The TV beats a run can show

During a run the park's central television carries reports. These are the beats observed in one run:

Data table

TV report caption

OOH NICE HAT

What appears on screen

A hat-wearing figure on the television, while both round-headed and square-headed figures in the scene wear hats.

TV report caption

WHY IS EVERYONE SMILING?

What appears on screen

A smiling figure under the caption.

TV report caption

WHO PAID THE SCREAMER?

What appears on screen

A money bag beside two figures.

TV report caption

OFF AIR

What appears on screen

Figures surrounding the television while its display reads OFF AIR, with a suited figure and money nearby.

Data table

TV report caption	What appears on screen
OOH NICE HAT	A hat-wearing figure on the television, while both round-headed and square-headed figures in the scene wear hats.
WHY IS EVERYONE SMILING?	A smiling figure under the caption.
WHO PAID THE SCREAMER?	A money bag beside two figures.
OFF AIR	Figures surrounding the television while its display reads OFF AIR, with a suited figure and money nearby.

Treat these as individual beats rather than a numbered chapter list: read each report as it appears instead of expecting a fixed script of four scenes. Our TV headlines, photos and park scenes guide covers matching each caption to its pictured figure in more detail.

Recognizing the closing stage

The late part of a run leans on darker imagery. You can encounter a dark scene showing a television that displays repeated nested television images — a screen inside a screen — and a broadcast showing an avatar captioned LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHER while rows of figures face forward. Imagery like this is what you encounter near the story's conclusion.

The clearest signal that the run is about to end is the change in the park itself: it goes dark, the camera frame stays visible, and the on-screen instruction becomes 'click to take the last photo'. That combination separates the closing shot from the ordinary photography moments earlier in the run. Taking that shot carries you out of the stage and into the ending.

Recognizing an ending and tracking the 12

An ending is a visible moment, not a hidden state. In recorded play the player announced each one as it landed — 'Oh, we got an ending' for the first, then 'we got two endings', 'we got three endings' and 'we got four' as further runs were completed. After that, the total shows on the main menu.

The menu has three buttons: PLAY, ENDINGS and SETTINGS. Alongside them it displays a progress counter such as '5 / 12 endings found'. That 5 was the recorded player's own count, so your number depends on your progress. The story has 12 endings in total, and ENDINGS is the screen to open between runs to check how far through them you are.

Replaying for another ending

Because a run resolves into one ending, adding to your total means starting a new run and varying the choice you make. In practice that means promoting a different trend, photographing a different character, or taking a path you declined earlier. Use the ending announcement and the ENDINGS counter together as your feedback: the announcement tells you the run counted, and the counter tells you how close you are to all 12.

If you are starting fresh, our how to play guide covers the session opening and our camera guide covers the two camera prompts in detail. For the setting behind these scenes and the media theme running through them, see Say Cheese! story explained.