Take a look at the scene.
If I told you
this was from a mascot horror game, what would you see is going on here?
You'd probably think that this is a child's TV show gone wrong.
These puppets came to life and got the show shut down for killing people.
Maybe there's even the souls of kids
trapped inside there desperately trying to get out.
It's got to be honest.
That was my initial assumption
when the demo for my friendly neighborhood first released last year.
But what if I told you that none of that is true?
Well, this game is indeed a battle of good against evil.
The good isn't that of innocent children, and the evil isn't
some corporate experiment gone wrong.
Instead, it's a battle over your soul, just not in the way
that you'd typically expect.
Hello, Internet.
Welcome to Game Theory.
The show that knows the friendliest neighborhoods are the ones that hug
that subscribe button.
We're actually getting pretty darn close
to have an 8 million theorists in our little neighborhood here.
So subscribing would really mean
a whole heck of a lot to me as well as the rest of the block.
Speaking of neighborhoods, though, it's finally
time to talk about the newest neighbor to move into the crowded street
of Mascot Horror, my friendly neighborhood.
Despite this game's colorful, childlike appearance, I see that this is
just your typical cookie cutter indie horror game would be a massive disservice,
especially when Garden of Band Band exists.
My friendly neighborhood has itself a real focus on nostalgic gaming elements,
limited saved tokens, inventory management, interesting and complicated
puzzles, secret endings, cheat codes, speed running and free camp modes.
And best of all, we actually get to fight back for one.
Yeah. Your eyes don't do TV.
Your friends that right there is a gun.
Firing letters back at the villains who are chasing you around.
Now, if only you could take this thing in a puppy playtime.
I could finally give Hughey a piece of my mind.
There really is something for everyone in this game,
and that includes my little corner of the Internet.
Because you guys know that where there's mascot
horror, there's also bound to be some deep and rich lore.
The basic premise is that my friendly neighborhood was a children's TV program
back in the day
that featured Happy Go Lucky puppets living in a fictional city block.
Learning lessons about what it meant to be a good neighbor.
In short, it was a mashup of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers neighborhood.
Sadly, the show got canceled and eventually disappeared from the airwaves.
However, one night, the TV tower on top of the studio begins broadcast
episodes again, interrupting your normal TV lineup until it's up to us.
Lynn is disgruntled repairman
Gordon to climb to the top of the tower and shut off the broadcast
once and for all before it interrupts any of our precious TV time.
But as you'd expect, exploring an old,
abandoned building from childhood, things are never quite that simple.
Gordon has to survive an onslaught of living puppets that try to stop him.
At which point my friendly neighborhood actually flips the script
typically, and expect these characters to be possessed.
Maybe children
have been stuffed inside of them, and now they linger on inside of the studio.
But it doesn't actually seem to be the case at all.
There's no missing kids, no possessed entities, no
ample serial killers in mascot costumes, nothing.
What is going on in the studio, then?
Well, grab your alphabet blocks, theorists.
It's time to spell out a story of philosophy, humanity
and the nature of good and evil that might be too long to spell out.
You just stick with l0re.
Our first port of call are the various newspaper clippings and articles
that we find throughout the studio.
By collecting these,
we can start to put together a timeline of the show
and what happened to lead to its cancelation.
As soon as the enter studio for your met with a newspaper
clipping from when the show first launched back in 1968, again
pulling on that Sesame Street influence, which first launched in 1969.
In both cases, you've got yourself fabricated
urban neighborhoods, a mix of animal puppets
and human actors, and even some of the same character types.
Well, Sesame Street today is meant to be any City USA.
Its original vibe was meant to be
a reflection of the real New York City back in the sixties and seventies.
Well, today we might think of all NYC as a mostly safe and touristy metropolis.
That was not true just a couple of decades ago.
The late 20th century of the U.S.
is biggest city was more known for its rampant crime, drugs and debauchery.
Sesame Street was meant to be for city kids growing up in that time to learn
not just the alphabet
and basic math, but moral lessons they otherwise might not be receiving.
Sesame Street was never afraid to tackle more sensitive topics like racism.
What Sesame Street
was really good at was taking those issues that the children were experiencing.
And then turning them into teachable moments
about friendship and caring for one's neighbor.
And that was exactly what my friendly neighborhood was designed
to do in the game.
That initial report talks about these old age lessons of caring and sharing,
as well as learning letters, numbers, and how to be a friendly neighbor.
For those reasons, my friendly neighborhood became an instant hit
with children and adults alike, just like the show that it's inspired by.
And with the sudden rise in popularity, there was only one thing left to do.
Take it to the silver screen in movies like Puppet Pirate Cove, a Puppet
Winter Song, Puppet Space Quest, all clear parodies of the real world
Muppet movies from the Eighties and Nineties, Muppet Treasure Island,
The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppets from Space and well,
everything was wholesome in the friendly neighborhood.
It turns out the show
started broadcasting during a very not so nice time out in the real world,
as we see from a newspaper article given to us very early on in the game.
In 1972, this city was coming out of a two decades long war.
Four years after the start of the My Friendly Neighborhood Show, the quote,
city government withdrew their forces from the northern continent.
Now, considering this article doesn't frame it
like city government has won the war, it suggests to us
that this was more of a strategic retreat rather than a glorious victory.
In the same article, we're told
quite explicitly how much the war was just like the absolute worst.
It was a, quote, war of horrors featuring guerrilla style fighting in a rain forest
with a whopping 100,000 casualties along the way.
The war is even described as the first war fought in the living room, as televised
news programs gave civilians their first look at the real horrors of war.
This caused the public to turn strongly against the fight.
They opposed it so much that when soldiers returned home, they weren't
celebrated or lauded, but instead were booed and hissed.
In fact, our main character, Gordon, seems intimately familiar
with all this.
Needless to say, it seems like he never really properly dealt with those issues.
And just like my friendly neighborhood, mirrored
the real life show of Sesame Street.
Sadly, this fictional war also reflects a very real
and very tragic war from that exact same time period the Vietnam War.
Just like the war in the game, the Vietnam War was also around two decades long.
It also became known as the Living Room War, thanks to news footage
coming in from the front lines that was now being delivered
to every home in the country via the television.
This gave the American public its first ever view into the ugly side of war,
which led to backlash, protests and the rise of the flower power movement,
especially among teenagers and college students.
That disdain for the Vietnam War only grew stronger with the release
of the Pentagon Papers 7000 pages
that were revealed to the public in 1971 via the New York Times.
It showed that the military and the federal government over
several presidential administrations had misled the public and Congress
about how the Vietnam War was going and how much the U.S.
had escalated the conflict.
It is almost impossible to properly describe
how this fundamentally shook the American's trust in the government.
Prior to this,
the public
was pretty much keen to accept anything the government said as being truthful
and honest.
But then the Vietnam War happened and put an end to that trust.
If you've ever wondered why people are skeptical
about government action, it comes from this.
The Pentagon Papers and the Vietnam War.
And that same negative impact on the public psyche is seen all throughout
my friendly neighborhood.
We see the immediate effects when God Boulet watches
some of the footage and breaks down crying in the theater.
But the long term effects are the ones that really stick out.
One article that you find in a display room tells us, quote,
I think across the whole city, the war has left us feeling troubled.
We were called to service
for the sake of righteousness, love for one city and protecting others.
But in the end, we found that those calls were just noble lies.
We left home as heroes and came home as murderers.
And it's important to note
that this is coming from the commander in chief of the city army.
Even they felt lied to and disgusted by what they were
forced to do, which leads them to finish off with these words.
Quote, again,
this tension leads to a question why we should care about right
and wrong or friendliness as the children show puts it.
Perhaps it's time to put aside those old ideas.
Perhaps the wise
man is the one who lives for himself and he's not alone feeling this way.
Another article
in one of the outside trailers discusses the tragedy of someone
sacrificing themselves for this pointless war.
Quote To lay down your life for someone else to lose everything.
How can anyone ask someone to do that?
The city even begins to reflect this mindset again.
Life in the city doesn't seem as enjoyable as it once was.
On the subway, people's elbows jab in near personal space, angry pedestrians
and yell at you on the street.
When everyone looks out for themselves and trusts no one, crime becomes rampant.
The city becomes a dark and scary place with employees of the show
having to coordinate, walking home together just to be safe.
The only relief people have from this horrible world is television.
For a few moments, I can escape the anxiousness
and become lost in a world of pleasant dreams, which sounds like
good news for a light hearted, good moral show like my friendly neighborhood.
After all, Sesame Street pushed through all those dark times
and is still going to day out here in the real world.
However, this is where the parallels
to Sesame Street end, because by 1975, three years
after this fictional war show, my friendly neighborhood's ratings begin to fall.
Parents start complaining that these moral messages
inside the My Friendly Neighborhood Show were bad for their children.
I am frightened by the tone of the morals of that show.
Just yesterday, one of the characters said, You always think of others
before yourself, even when it's uncomfortable.
But what if somebody takes advantage of you for doing that?
What if doing what's uncomfortable ends up exposing you to hurt and danger?
Is it really a good idea to teach children to be so reckless
with their own well-being?
This is an alternate universe where Sesame Street's messaging falls on deaf ears.
We're told instead that people prefer to watch Crime City Drama Daily
shows that focus on the darker and sadly more realistic side of humanity.
Because of this, when my friendly neighborhood
continued to preach the message
of being a good neighbor, they're called out of touch.
The even tried to add new formats to the show to try to save their ratings.
With Arnold and his cardboard penthouse being identical to a segment added
to Sesame Street, Elmo's World, aimed at an even younger audience to help
keep their attention with bright colors, basic design and simplified messaging.
But not even that worked.
By 1983, just after their final movie Puppet
Winter Song, bombed at the box office, the show got canceled.
The creator gives one final message to the children.
It's like another famous neighborhood show.
Mister Rogers, quote, Have faith in light.
Sometimes it might be scary. Sometimes it may hurt.
Sometimes it's hard to know what's right and wrong
because good and bad are all jumbled up and confusing.
And when that happens, it can hurt a lot, but have faith in light
because the light will rescue you from darkness.
Great message.
Great show. I'm not crying. You are.
And with that, my friendly neighborhood and all its puppet friends
fall to obscurity.
Ten years passed until suddenly in 1993,
appears on the airwaves and Gordon is sent to take it down once again.
When Gordon meets them,
he isn't surprised that all the puppets are alive
or that Rikki doesn't have a hand controlling him.
It's just another day on the job.
There's no secret kidnapings, no corporate experimentation, no possessions.
It was just some friendly living puppet people putting on a wholesome show, a show
that was shut down by a world that was ugly and cynical and selfish.
Whoever of these puppets aren't evil.
Then why are they attacking us?
Why are they so messed up by the time we get to them?
Not only do they actively try to hurt us, but if you stop and listen to them, here
are some pretty bizarre things.
These aren't the sort of messages I want my kid hearing while watching
a kids show, but their original scripts, they don't reflect this sort of behavior.
Something has to have happened between their cancelation and today.
But what exactly is it?
Well, our main puppet pal, Ricky, gives us a bit of a hint during the game's
climactic ending.
So the message is too bad.
No, there has to be something more than that.
And it turns out there is.
I did a second playthrough and took a closer
look at some of the background elements and right at the start of Studio four,
where you get the first newspaper about the show launching, you'll notice
that there are some other pieces of paper on the board right behind it.
This piece of paper is repeated three times on this board alone, and it's
tucked away behind the other posters and boards throughout the map.
So you know that it's going to have to be important.
This page is actually an excerpt from an autobiography of a fourth
and fifth century Catholic theologian Bishop and eventual Saint
Augustine of Hippo.
St Augustine's
autobiography is a multi book series chronicling his journey back to God.
This particular passage, found in my friendly neighborhood actually comes
from the seventh book, specifically chapters 12 and 15,
which go through Augustine understanding what the true meaning of good and evil is.
Now it's an old book, so it's pretty darn philosophical.
So I'm going to do my best to just summarize
two of the key points that are relevant to what we're talking about today.
First, the idea that corruption can only exist
if things are inherently good, arguing that if everything wasn't
good at a fundamental level, then nothing could be corrupted.
Everything would just be inherently evil.
The second point is that corruption itself isn't a tangible thing.
It is just the absence of goodness.
How does that relate to our silly sock puppet video game?
Well, the puppets, the characters that used to dazzle children
the world over were always good and mostly still are.
They were living the message of being a friendly neighborhood. It's
why when they see us and start teasing us, they're not saying horrible things.
Their arms are stretched out wide for a hug.
They're not trying to hurt us. They're happy to see us.
They want to be friendly.
It's only after the show was canceled and they were exposed to the evils
of the world via television.
Did corruption start to seep in?
And those good things,
like a hug or a child friendly message, became twisted, corrupted, hurtful.
And those were the lucky ones.
Eventually, the puppets that became too exposed to the horrors of the world
transformed and morphed into the amalgamation of evil that we see
during the game's final battle.
And the connection
to this random theological text isn't just the story of the puppets.
The game is trying to tell us that we humans are also inherently good.
Throughout the game, we repeatedly see this corruption
sneaking into not just the puppets, but to the adults of this world.
You have your parents writing in to say that the show's selfless messaging
might be bad.
General Rogers argues that a wise man is a selfish man
and the actor who left the show
after becoming more concerned with his future than that of the show.
All of these characters have let things like the war
and television corrupt them, make them selfish, capitalistic.
Thanks to that, the good morals of my friendly neighborhood,
the light that the creators mentioned
in his farewell message, has been snuffed out.
And just like Saint Augustine said, corruption is the absence of good.
And so with that good gone, the world becomes worse.
Even Gordon, after going through the studio
and seeing all the wonderful puppets and themes of the show
at the very end of it all, he's still worried about how the show's pure
messaging is going to hurt the children.
Humanity's turned away from the goodness of the light
that the show tried to pass on to children.
The game makes one point very clear even though the adults question
what the show was doing, even though the bigwigs
were always focused on the bottom line, the show always remained beloved
by the priest. Six age demographic.
The children
born pure and uncorrupted, continue to enjoy and find value in the show.
The kids weren't the ones who lost their way.
It was the adults who became so corrupted by the evil and negativity around them
that they turned into the very thing that they were fighting to avoid.
I mean, there's plenty to be said
about the level of trash content that just exists these days.
We're more interested in watching things like Real Housewives
or the Kardashians, stuff that focuses on drama and negativity.
The most popular podcast
genre is true crime, with 50% of Americans saying that they listen to it.
John Where that's focused on the bloody
and the gruesome even see it here on this platform.
Negative titles and thumbnails commenting on the latest drama.
Those are the ones that get the clicks, not the positive
skewing stories, the uplifting bits, the educational bits.
That is the world that we've built and the world that we're choosing to focus on.
But at the very end of the game,
if you complete the game's best ending, we can see that there is hope.
If you choose to save all the puppets and agree to help Ricky
reboot the show, yet this little gem prior to the credits
by remembering the
good, by focusing on the positive, it shines a spotlight on us.
And sure, it highlights our issues.
And yeah, that's super uncomfortable, but it's way better than just falling
into darkness.
This game is a warning for us not to shut our hearts
to the needs of others, to focus on the good of the world.
We, too,
can have Gordon's
journey back to the light, because at the end of the day,
we all started from a place that was good and sure.
Well, the world tries to strip that away from us.
We have to stand up to that. We have to face it.
We have to remember that the most important thing is to love our neighbor.
And sometimes all it takes to remember that is an abandoned studio
full of living puppets.
But hey, that's just a theory of game theory.
Thanks for watching.
If you're interested in finding more hidden stories
inside of unique indie games, check out our video on Pizza Tower.
Believe you me, there is more than just pizza in that tower.
Or if you fancy jumping into the latest that mascot horror brings to the table.
Hop on over to live
where I just played through and dissected every frame of security breach ruin.
I've got a theory or two coming up in the next couple of weeks,
so make sure you're subscribed to the channel
so you're notified when that one comes out.