ok, normally I just accept the ending to a game. but when I finally beat Unmechanical, I was left wondering. I just cant get it out of my head.

There are two possible endings - the one where you fly upward into the light and the other where you press the button with the janitor robot in the big cauldron

so which one is the one where the cute little robot is rescued, and which one is the bad ending? Or doesnt it matter anyway? I searched on the net, but opinions seem to differ on this

I didn't know there were two endings. I flew up into the light, the game ended, I thought "Wow, what a short game", and then played Trine.

The developpers intentionally made the endings that way, to left us wonder. As far as I'm concerned there's not really a bad ending. You either break free or become the new janitor-bot.

Man that game was so good, I wish they'd make another one.

There probably isn't a concrete "good/bad" ending but the "become the new janitor bot" ending does have a certain grim cyclical quality to it. I guess that would be the "bad" one if we really wanted to put it in those terms.

The "rising into the light" ending is more vague (and imo less satisfying) but I guess it works as a "good" ending in a sort of pseudo-religious imagery kind of way.

Thank you all! I decided to go for the light thing - after all, the janitor robot works for the system, and they cooked up all those little cute robots a little while earlier, so the system cant be good.

Its always like this with me, I cant help myself, I always have to play the good guy - cant even be a thief in Skyrim, have to walk the straigth path :-) The only game I played as a "bad" guy was Thief, and that was because, well, you have to be the Thief, or you dont play at all

And honestly in Thief the main characters wants to be a bad guy, but destiny has other ideas for him...

The main ending where you fly away to the surface is where you reunite with the robots you separated from at the beggining. That is the good ending. You also "save" the Janitor/Fixer Bot which you leave behind. However, knowing the second ending, you then are left wondering if you just condemned the bot to the underground engine.

The alternate ending where you get curious about gaining new abilities comes with the price that you get converted into the new janitor/fixer bot in whatever that underground engine was. It comes at the price of you now being trapped there since you just scrapped the previous Janitor/Fixer Bot, meaning you will not get to leave. It is the bad ending.

The abrupt ending was indeed surprising to me. But not because of the open end. Rather because previous good atmosphere and vague presentation of background story build up expectations, that there had to come more... but so it felt like suddenly thrown out of the story.
Especially the janitor ending (my first ending): I thought "Yeah! one more transformation. GO for breaking in into deeper systems and sabotage the complex and free all your fellows!" But then Credits... uff.
And the running away ending: Meh, 3 min later he'll get sucked back down there...
So I really don't like the early endings, but the rest was pretty nice. :)

Maybe the bot was unemployed and this new job saved him from pointless roaming around being up to no good and perhaps becoming a drug addict?

I would have liked a third ending though, where the job is only part-time and the bot can still fly around with its little friends!

Oh yeah, i hated that in both endings they didn't added a cinematic showing the consequences. 1 showing you working as janitor and maybe running into a new bot that fell into the underground engine. 2.- The good ending showing you get to reunite with your bot friends.