Parallel Me Guide: Actions, Goals and Endings

Parallel Me is a short life simulation about one university semester. You play a 19-year-old second-year student and have ten weeks to balance grades, money, mood, friendships and an unfinished story with an ex. Each run takes about 15 to 20 minutes, ends with one of many endings, and earns points you can spend to unlock more options next time. This guide explains how the systems work so you can plan a run instead of guessing.

Parallel MeLive one semester of someone else's college life, ten weeks at a time, through her phone.Play free in your browser →

How a run is set up

Every run starts with a random identity: a family background and a major.

• Background decides your starting savings and weekly allowance. The base options are Struggling, Ordinary and Comfortable: Struggling starts with ¥600 and gets ¥200 a week, Ordinary ¥1,860 and ¥400, Comfortable ¥3,000 and ¥600. A Well-off background (¥8,000, ¥1,200 a week) can be unlocked in the shop.
• Major gives a small permanent bonus. Journalism adds 20% to followers from content creation, Finance adds ¥30 to each part-time shift, Design adds +1 to every charm action, Computer Science adds +1 to every study action. Performing Arts (unlockable) adds 30% followers and +1 charm.

Next comes the talent draw: ten talent cards are dealt and you keep three. Cards come in four rarities (white, blue, purple, gold). You get one free redraw per run. Talents range from small tweaks (Early Bird: studying no longer costs mood) to run-defining ones (Koi: rare events twice as likely; Glass Heart Reversal: +50% action gains while mood is below 30).

Then you choose one goal from three offered, and finally spend 10 free points across Study, Charm and EQ (at most 6 in any one). All three stats start at 40, mood starts at 70, and followers at 0.

Stats at a glance

• Study – drives your final exam score.
• Charm – boosts follower gains and some endings.
• EQ – makes meeting people more effective.
• Mood – your emotional fuel. If it hits 0 at the end of a week, you break down (see below).
• Money – savings. Each week you receive your allowance and pay ¥500 in living costs, so on most backgrounds you lose money if you never work.
• Followers – from making social media content.
• Relationships – with four people: Su Ran (roommate, starts at 20), Tang Guo (best friend from high school, starts at 60), Chen Yu (ex-boyfriend, starts at 0) and Zhou Zhou (an older student who manages the bubble tea shop, starts at 0).

Actions and action points

The semester lasts 10 weeks, and you get 3 action points per week. The basic actions are:

Two more appear only in some runs: Club (charm +2, mood +2, −¥20) once you have joined a club, and Freelance design job (+¥300, mood −6) if you have the side-hustle talent.

Repeating the same action within one week has diminishing returns: the second use gives 70% and the third 40%. Spreading your points across different actions is usually more efficient than tripling one.

Between actions, story events and chat messages appear. Their choices can change stats, relationships and hidden flags that matter for endings.

Weekly upkeep, crashes and loans

At the end of each week your allowance comes in, living costs go out, and some talents apply their weekly effects.

If mood is at 0 or below when the week ends, you crash. If Tang Guo's relationship is 50 or higher, she comes over and your mood resets to 30. Otherwise you cry it out alone, mood resets to 15, and next week you only have 1 action point. The Beloved talent guarantees one rescue per run. Keeping a little Rest in your rotation, or keeping Tang Guo close, is the cheapest insurance.

If your savings drop below zero before the last week, you are offered a loan: ¥1,000 from family or ¥1,500 from an online lender. The online loan charges ¥100 interest every week until your savings are high enough to repay it automatically. Ending a run with an unpaid loan leads to its own ending.

The final exam

After week 10 your exam score is your Study stat plus a random swing of up to ±10 (plus any exam bonuses from events). A score of 85 or more earns a ¥3,000 scholarship, which is added to your savings before goals and endings are checked. Below 60 is a fail. If you are aiming for the scholarship, give yourself a buffer: Study around 95 is much safer than exactly 85.

The goals

You pick one goal per run. Completing it pays its points; failing still pays 3.

\* Unlocked in the shop. A ninth goal, about starting a business with a senior student, is listed as coming soon.

On your very first run only one- and two-star goals are offered. Some talents remove certain goals from the offer (for example, one that removes Chen Yu from the story also removes both goals about him).

Tips by goal

• Make Money: a Finance major or the Hard Worker talent (+¥50 per shift) helps a lot. Watch mood; two shifts a week plus one Rest is a steady pattern.
• Top Student: Scholar Physique (+2 study per study action) and Computer Science stack well. Remember the scholarship also adds ¥3,000, which can push you into money-related endings.
• Go Viral: followers scale with Charm, so build Charm early with the gym, then create content. Journalism, Camera Presence and Koi all help.
• Keep Friendships: Su Ran starts at only 20, so meet her often. High EQ makes each meeting count for more, and Popular (+15 to everyone) is a strong start.
• A Proper Goodbye: early on, Chen Yu sends a late-night "are you asleep?" message. Replying to it opens his storyline; the goodbye itself is resolved near the end of the semester.

How endings are decided

When the run ends, the game checks endings in a fixed priority order and gives you the first one you qualify for. Rare endings are checked before ordinary ones, and there is always a fallback ending for a quiet semester. This means a run that qualifies for several endings only shows the highest one, so to collect a specific ending you sometimes need to avoid beating it with something rarer.

Each ending card shows a short hint once you know about it, and endings you have reached are kept in the album. A few patterns to try:

• Balanced runs that finish with ¥4,000+, Study 75+ and Mood 60+ reach the "have it all" ending; it also matches the Have It All goal, so you can aim for both at once.
• Extreme runs unlock their own endings: very high Study with very low mood, a broke but very charming student, a run with two crashes that still passes the exam, or a failed exam with a good mood.
• Big numbers: 100,000 followers or ¥10,000 in savings each have an ending.
• Chen Yu's storyline has several outcomes depending on whether you reply to him, how you treat him, and how it ends. Not replying at all and staying in a good mood is a valid ending too.
• The rarest endings depend on special events (an exchange-program application, a street talent scout, an old letter hidden in the canteen) combined with a strong stat or a completed goal. The Koi talent makes these events more likely.

Every ending also comes with a closing message from one of the characters.

Points and the shop

Finishing a run earns points: the goal's value if you completed it, or 3 if not. Spend them in the shop on:

• An extra talent redraw (20 points, up to 3 times)
• +2 free stat points at the start (30 points, up to 3 times)
• The Back Together goal (40) and the Rest Well goal (30)
• The Well-off background (50)
• The Performing Arts major (40)
• A talent pool expansion that adds four new talents (50)

Upgrades that make the start stronger, like extra stat points and redraws, are a good first purchase if you want to chase harder goals.

Today's Life

Today's Life is a daily challenge. Everyone who plays it on the same date gets the same identity, talent draw and goal offer, built only from the base content: your shop upgrades and unlocks do not apply. At the end you can compare your result with other players from that day; rankings appear once at least five people have finished. You can also save a result card image to share.

Saving

Progress is saved automatically in your browser. During a run the game saves at the start of each week, so if you close the tab you can choose Continue on the home screen and resume from the beginning of that week. Your points, purchases, album and endings are stored separately and stay between runs. Because everything lives in browser storage, clearing site data or using a private window will start you fresh.

_The game's text is in Chinese; the names above are descriptive English translations._

Play it now

Parallel Me is free, has no ads and runs in any modern browser on phone or computer. It is intended for players 18 and over, and all characters and events are fiction. A run takes about 15 to 20 minutes, so try a different goal each time and see how many endings you can collect.