Source basis: this guide is built from the Steam Community walkthrough (for the chapter structure and key puzzles), the GameFAQs Deponia Doomsday FAQ, and Wikipedia + the Steam store for official details, with an embedded full-game video for the moment-to-moment. Deponia Doomsday is a long point-and-click adventure with fixed, hand-designed puzzles, so this is a chapter-by-chapter guide — the goal of each chapter, the standout puzzles and the spots that trip people up — rather than a click-by-click dump. For the exact moment-to-moment solving, the video below walks the whole game. The ending section is clearly spoiler-flagged. Nothing here is invented.
What is Deponia Doomsday?
Deponia Doomsday is the fourth game in Daedalic Entertainment's beloved Deponia series, after Deponia, Chaos on Deponia and Goodbye Deponia. It launched on March 1, 2016 for PC (with console and Switch ports later) and costs around $19.99. It's a classic hand-painted point-and-click adventure with the series' trademark slapstick humor, and a single playthrough runs roughly 10 to 13 hours.
The twist is that Doomsday isn't a straight sequel — Daedalic called it a “paralellic.” The trilogy had already ended; this is a time-travel story that loops back through Rufus's past, present and future to give the saga a different, bittersweet farewell. You can follow the puzzles without the earlier games, but the emotional weight of the finale hits much harder if you've played the trilogy first.
The setup (no big spoilers)
Rufus — the selfish-but-lovable junk-planet hero — wakes up certain that the events of the first three games were only a dream, and sets out to stop his break-up with his girlfriend Toni using what he “remembers” of the future. He falls in with Professor McChronicle, a temporal physicist whose car doubles as a time machine, and with Tuck. Every trip into the past spawns a new branching timeline, so you're soon juggling not one loop but many — with the planet Deponia always one mistake away from being wiped out. Running gags include tinfoil hats that preserve memories across time resets, and a mysterious figure who keeps showing up dressed as a pink elephant.
How to play (quick tips)
- Reveal the hotspots. Hold the hotspot-highlight key (shown in the game's controls/options) to light up everything interactable on a screen — this kills the pixel-hunting and is the single biggest time-saver in any Daedalic adventure.
- Think Deponia-absurd. The puzzle logic is comedic on purpose. When you're stuck, try combining the two most ridiculous items in your inventory, and exhaust every dialogue option — clues and new items hide at the bottom of conversation trees.
- Look at everything, take everything. If you can pick it up, you probably need it later. Re-examine items in your inventory; some can be combined or taken apart.
- Use the video for the long sequences. A few stretches (the Elysium pipe puzzle and the “Fun With Portals” hop especially) are faster to watch than to read. The full-game video below plays the whole game start to finish, so you can scrub to the exact spot.
Full walkthrough video
Chapter-by-chapter guide
Doomsday runs through about a dozen scenes. The popular text guides label them differently — the Steam guide splits “Village” and “Time Travel,” while GameFAQs uses the in-game place names — so here's the order with the real locations, what each is about, and the puzzles people most often get stuck on.
1. Prologue
A snowy nightmare that doubles as the tutorial. Make an Improvised Flamethrower (Spray Can + Lighter) to thaw a toolbox for the Blowtorch, weld through the door bolts, escape the fewlock (the planet's monsters) up the stairwell, and drop the bomb. There are no missable story items here — just learn the verbs.
2. Kuvaq (the village)
You wake in Rufus's home town of Kuvaq and meet Tuck and Professor McChronicle, whose car is the time machine. The signature puzzle is the tinfoil hat: chill a glass of ice at the Nilbot, melt it on the barbecue into water, cool a baked potato, unwrap it for Aluminum Foil, and combine Foil + Straw into a Tin Foil Hat for Tuck — tinfoil hats are how people keep their memories through a time reset. After that you build Tuck a loaded gun, set the toilet-seat trap for the pink elephant, and follow the elephant's footprints in the right order to the cactus switch.
3. Elysium, part 1 (arrival)
A time jump drops you in the burning floating city. This stretch is mostly linear traversal: grab the Pole, fix the ice-cream dumbwaiter with the “fire extinguisher,” rig the Hook and cable, and climb up to wake Goal — the love interest from the original trilogy.
4. Elysium, part 2 (the long one)
The biggest chapter. Two puzzles trip almost everyone up:
- Lure the critter through the pipes. To get past Cletus you free Precious and guide the toxic little creature through a grid of pipes whose grates open and close as you move — this is the “left-right-up-down” puzzle some guides mislabel. One documented route through the eight nodes is: 2, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 7, 6, 7, 4, 3, 2, 5, 6, 8.
- The 40cl drink (blender). Shuffle the liquid between the small glass, the bigger glass and the mixer until you have exactly 40 cl with the alcoholic fish kept safe in a glass. A clean six-move solution: big → mixer, small → big, mixer → small, mixer → big, big → small, small → mixer — it then mixes automatically.
Also here: swap a reading lamp for a heat lamp, make another tinfoil hat to wipe Ronny's hard drive, build “jackalope” cartridges to satisfy the three Elders, survive the sauna, and read the self-destruct code that finally makes Goal stay.
5. Carnival
A long fetch-and-trade chapter. The work is mostly talk-and-trade: cheat the crane and high-striker games to win a magnetic fishing rod, build a “mock-up Goal” from a bowling ball, turban cloth, gumballs and watercolors, photograph the fortune teller, and assemble everything McChronicle needs so you can take the boat of love. Exhaust the dialogue trees — clues hide at the bottom of conversations.
6. Junk Trade University (Porta Rustica)
The temporal-physics campus. Bait and swap platypuses to run the lecture contraption, then milk tachyon “feta cheese” from a goat you can only see through home-made 4D Glasses (Groucho Glasses + Denture Glue + glass shards), and pump open a portal in McChronicle's garage.
7. Paradox City
The trickiest chapter for many players, built around a timed siren. Tip / known bug: when you kick the siren, click the hourglass in the upper-left immediately — there's a documented glitch where the timer can drop to two or three seconds, and reacting instantly (or reloading an earlier save) keeps the run alive. Otherwise this chapter is marrying off Rita and Rokko, brewing peanut butter in the time machine, and building a Tachyon Crossbow.
8. Fun With Portals
Despite the name, this isn't a single maze with a fixed answer — it's an extended portal-hop. You repeatedly put on the 4D Glasses to reveal a “potential portal,” fire the Tachyon Crossbow at it, and jump through, bouncing between Paradox City, Elysium, the university and the desert and grabbing items as you go. Because it's all spatial and item-gated, it's far easier to mirror in the video than to read.
9. The End
The finale pulls the timelines together. The key closing puzzle: grab the Tongs by the fireplace, use them on the clock for crossbow bolts, take the vase (and its shards), rebuild the 4D Glasses and a Tachyon Bow, then in the time pod press the button, choose left twice and confirm to open the right portal. Heads-up from the guides: swap baby Goal's piano video for the “Cello Music” one earlier, or the bow you need here never appears. After that, it's mostly story.
The ending — explained (spoilers)
Spoiler warning: the next paragraph reveals how Deponia Doomsday ends. Skip it if you haven't finished.
Across the branching timelines, two versions of Rufus end up sacrificing themselves to save both Deponia and the floating city of Elysium/Utopia. In the timeline that survives, a Goal from an alternate branch settles on Deponia — never knowing that a Rufus gave everything to keep the planet from being destroyed. It's a deliberately bittersweet, tragic send-off, and it lands hardest if you've followed Rufus and Goal across all four games. This is the game's single canonical ending; the “it was all a dream” opening and the pink-elephant reveals are story twists along the way, not separate endings you choose.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to play the other Deponia games first?
Not to understand the puzzles — Doomsday is a self-contained “paralellic” time-travel story. But it's built as a farewell to the whole saga, so the characters and especially the ending mean far more if you've played Deponia, Chaos on Deponia and Goodbye Deponia first.
How long is Deponia Doomsday?
About 10 to 13 hours for a single playthrough, depending on how long the puzzles hold you up and how much of the (very funny) dialogue you take in.
How many endings are there?
Essentially one canonical ending — a bittersweet, tragic finale. The dream framing and the recurring pink-elephant figure are plot twists, not separate branches you pick, so there's no “good/bad ending” choice to miss.
I'm stuck in Paradox City — is the timer bugged?
It can feel that way. The fix players use is to click the hourglass the instant the siren goes off; reacting immediately keeps the timed sequence from misbehaving. If a run gets desynced, reload and try again with that timing.
What's the trick to the Elysium 40cl drink?
It's a measure-by-pouring puzzle: get exactly 40 cl while keeping the alcoholic fish safe in a glass. A clean six-move solution is big → mixer, small → big, mixer → small, mixer → big, big → small, small → mixer, after which it mixes automatically.
What's the “left-right-up-down” portal puzzle people get stuck on?
That's the Elysium pipe puzzle, where you lure the critter Precious through a grid of pipes with opening and closing grates — not the later “Fun With Portals” chapter. One documented route through its eight nodes is 2, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 7, 6, 7, 4, 3, 2, 5, 6, 8. The actual Fun With Portals chapter has no fixed string — it's a 4D-Glasses-and-Tachyon-Crossbow portal hop, easiest to mirror in the video.
Want a second full run to follow along with? Here's another complete Deponia Doomsday walkthrough on YouTube. You can find the game on its official Steam page.