Hello internet!
Welcome to Game Theory the show that regrets the things it had to do to make this video.
Your sacrifice shall not be in vain, because today we're going to figure out what's going
on with the Internet's own version of Dora the Explorer, Amanda the adventurer.
You might remember last year when we theorized about this little game, it was developed as
part of a game jam and as a result was simple in its approach.
You put different VHS tapes into VCRs, all acronyms that I'm sure you zoomers understand.
And we answered questions posed by the lead character Amanda.
By feeding her the wrong answers, Amanda would get angrier and more chaotic, eventually losing
control and becoming a monster.
The Internet fell in love with this thing, and since then it has gone through a major
glow up.
Gone is the tiny living room, gone is being stuck staring at a TV screen and gone are
all the demonic drawings on the wall.
I wonder if we, like, step further back we'll see...
Oh, whoa, oh, whoa, whoa!!
Oh, this is so different.
Oh, they went hard on this new update.
This is great.
Instead, the full length version of the game has us in an attic full of clever puzzles
and old memorabilia that has a weird habit of appearing behind us when we finish a tape.
Woah, hey, there's a cake.
But the best thing to come out as part of the full length version of the game: LORE!
Not only are there a bunch more tapes to watch through, there are secret tapes and multiple
endings to find, and all of them paint a fascinating new story here.
So it was my old theory right or is there more hiding beneath the surface?
Insert the tape, press play and adjust your tracking my friends.
It's time to begin.
In this new update we play as Riley, and that's about all we get to know about that character.
Well, that and the fact that they just inherited this house that we're standing in from their
deceased Aunt Kate.
However, Kate warns us that if we choose to investigate the attic and the tapes that live
within, there's no going back.
Alongside this note is a conspiracy board full of post-its and newspaper clippings,
which means that Kate and I, you could ship it.
The main focus of the board at the beginning of the game is a letter from a woman named
Joanne talking about her missing younger brother.
The letter says that he used to watch the Amanda The Adventure Show a bunch as a kid,
but would end up in a trance-like state.
Eventually he would disappear without a trace.
Joanne then asks Kate to investigate, which seems like an odd request for your local librarian.
Then again if you look around the cork board, you could start to see why Kate may have been
the one picked for the job.
We see that she was looking into the kid's school records, something the librarian might
have access to.
We also see a note that mentions dynakinesis, which is the supernatural ability to create
and manipulate energy.
She says that you would see sigils if such a transfer occurred.
And right next to this note is a torn piece of paper with a bunch of sigils on them.
These aren't just any symbols either.
These are alchemical symbols that refer to specific elements.
Back in the day, alchemists focused on the transmutation of base metals like lead into
noble metals like gold.
Clearly, Aunt Kate ain't your average librarian.
Too bad she's gone now and it's up to us to figure out what's going on with this missing
kid.
Or should I say, kids, because it becomes very quickly apparent that this is not an
isolated incident.
The tape In the Neighborhood shows outlines of kids on both sides of the street, police
chalk outlines that are usually reserved for dead people lying on the pavement.
If you manage to find the corrupted version of this exact tape, Amanda's sheep companion,
Wooly, asks if the friends can come back to the neighborhood.
Amanda, though she seems unfazed.
Now, all of this alone doesn't prove that Amanda is somehow making a bunch of kids go
missing.
But I would tell you to pay close attention to the ending credits of that VHS tape.
After most of the tapes that we played through, we’re met with a credit sequence and ending
sting for the company that made the show Hameln Entertainment.
This is the production company that makes the Amanda the Adventure Show, but their name
and their mouse logo immediately reminded me of something.
“Follow us to fun.”
So it's like a Pied Piper situation.
Oh, Hameln.
Hamelin!
And it's a mouse.
*crickets* [Ash]: Yes?
If you like Ash, don't know what's going on.
This whole thing's one big reference to the story of the Pied Piper.
Basically, this fairy tale is the story of the town of Hamelin.
See?
There's the name right there.
It's overrun by rats, and there's your logo.
And so the town hires the Pied Piper to play his magic pipe to get rid of those rats.
And he does exactly that.
He plays a song that lures all the rats to him, where he then leads them down to the
local river to drown themselves.
However, when the town of Hamelin doesn't pay him for his services, he once again uses
his pipe.
But this time he plays a song that leads all the children out of town.
He marches them all over to a local cave where they're never seen again.
This story seems to match the idea that the neighborhood is now missing all of Wooly's
friends.
Amanda is essentially our Pied Piper, and we actually see this firsthand through one
of the game's secret tapes that you can unlock.
Instead of our usual CGI Amanda and Wooly Adventure.
We actually get ourselves a home videotape of a girl named Lauren on her birthday.
She's sitting there glaring at the TV, transfixed.
Much like we heard about in that note from Joanne at the beginning of the game, her parents
are trying to get her attention, telling her that they have her favorite ice cream ready,
mint chocolate chip.
Which, whose favorite flavor is mint chocolate chip?
I mean, it's good, don't get me wrong, but favorite flavor?
Flavor preferences aside, the parents go back up to try and convince Lauren to come down
the stairs, but suddenly she's gone, with the front door of the house left wide open.
As they run out of the house to look for the last thing that we hear is Amanda from the
TV saying: I love mint chocolate chip.
Somehow Amanda is able to listen through the TV and she's somehow lured Lauren, who's literally
walked out the door and disappeared just like the children of Hamelin.
As you watch more of these secret tapes we actually get to see a little bit more insight
into Hameln Entertainment in the history of the show.
In one of the tapes, we actually meet the creator of the series, Sam Colton, and we
hear about how he started the show as a small live action production after being inspired
by his adopted daughter, Rebecca.
You
actually find a newspaper clipping on the conspiracy board in the attic during the time
puzzle, which has an interview with Sam, where he says this, quote: We may not have the budget
for a big production, but I truly believe there is a soul that transcends that.
*MatPat siren* Keyword alert!
Keyword alert!
Anytime an indie horror game mentions the word “soul”, you know that things are
going to end badly.
And sadly, my suspicions were correct here.
In the VHS tape Oh No Accidents there's a flash frame that reveals a credit for a Chief
Neurosurgical Expert.
Which at first glance would make you go; Why does a kid show need that?
But Amanda eventually answers that exact question for us in the tape Everything Rots
If she can feel her own body rotting far away, that means that Amanda has a physical body
outside of the show.
And who else is that going to be but the girl that played Amanda in their original live
action production: Rebecca.
I suspect that this chief neurosurgical expert has figured out a way to put her mind, her
consciousness, into the series.
Literally becoming the soul of the show.
She still does have some sort of link to her body, able to feel it rotting, but clearly
that's not supposed to exist.
As the tape distorts any time she thinks about it.
There is good news, though.
While her body may be rotting.
Clearly, there's still a chance to save her.
In the final tape we see Amanda playing alone on a couch drawing with crayons and asking
if we can share secrets.
If we say yes, the TV audio effects disappear and clear as day she tells us:
Rebecca is alive.
Sure, her body might slowly be atrophying and her mind might be separated from her body,
but there is still time to save her.
That said, we’re going to have to face the evil that's up ahead if we hope to do it.
What is that evil?
Ask yourself this.
Why would Sam, Rebecca's seemingly loving, adopted father, do this to her?
Was it just to make the show more popular?
Did he need to gather more children to him like the Pied Piper?
I know we talk a lot about awful father figures across the various series that we cover on
the show, but I was hoping that maybe, just maybe this one would be a little bit different.
Thankfully it is.
The indie horror gods heard my plea with this one because it turns out that Sam isn't the
one at fault.
Here he is no longer the one steering the ship.
Yes, Amanda the Adventure was his live action production, but he sold it to Hameln Entertainment.
Hameln is a third party that actually bought out the rights to the show and turned it into
an
animated adventure.
While this sounded like everything that Sam wanted on paper.
In practice, he started to feel more and more uncomfortable with how the production was
being run.
In the green tape, we actually listened to a recording session.
There, we hear Rebecca saying a handful of what seem like random phrases.
The person directing claims that this is to train the technology's dynamic voice reactions,
which is plausible, I suppose, given the rise in AI voices that we see all over the Internet.
However this series, Amanda the Adventure is set in the early 2000s.
Technology was not that advanced back then, so Sam is right to be suspicious of it all.
And then Rebecca says this:
This ends the session.
But listen again to those phrases that Rebecca was saying earlier.
At first they seem to be phrases that could be used in pretty much any episode: Bah Lamb
for when they go to the farm.
Pie Man for when they go to a bakery or bake some pies like they do in the first VHS tape.
So what's the big deal here?
Well, what if I told you that these phrases actually have a secondary meaning?
All three of them: Bye-yell, pie-man, and bah-lamb, are phonetic ways of pronouncing
the names: Bael Paimon and Balam.
Three king demons from the Ars Goetia.
Chanting the names of demons has always been part of summoning rituals, especially when
you're talking about these sorts of things in pop culture contexts.
And that's exactly what Hameln's trying to do here.
Why else would there be a containment specialist that's listed in the credits of the initial
neighborhood video?
After chanting the words, Rebecca hears the voice of a man in her headphones, one of these
demon kings, all of whom are described as having a hoarse voice.
While all of these demons are certainly different, they do share a couple of similarities.
They all control large legions of lesser demons.
They're all able to inform or give the gift of knowledge.
But most importantly, they all require hosts to manifest.
And usually this involves children either as sacrifices or to physically be the host.
That is what Hameln are doing here.
They needed Rebecca and the other children to become hosts and sacrifices in order to
summon these demon kings and gain their knowledge and power.
These children would be led to the slaughter.
Which is why, no matter what location you pick, it always leads you back to the butcher.
The eyes and those meat products aren't just a cute, esthetic choice, my friends.
Those are past to victims, past children that have been led to the chopping block.
However, there was one thing that stood in Hameln's way: Rebecca's father, Sam.
I would suspect after this sort of incident, he wanted to pull Rebecca from the show, maybe
even find a way to pull the rights entirely.
And so, as most of these evil companies tend to do, they made him disappear.
Sam was so happy with the idea that his show could be a bigger success that much like the
Fox in the video Everything Rots, he wasn't killed by a knife.
He wasn't killed by a gun.
He was instead lured in by Hameln using sweet berries, the sweet lies that would convince
him that they would turn his show into something bigger.
But instead it was all a big trap.
A trap created by the very people that swore to help him.
And then with Sam out of the picture, Rebecca is all alone.
They can get her to sign along the dotted line and do whatever they want with her.
Trapping her in the Hameln facility.
Just like the lonely kitten that Amanda so desperately asks us to help.
However, unlike silly Mr. Fox, I don't think that this is the end for Sam.
I suspect that he's still around keeping a close eye on things and trying to take them
down from the inside.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that Sam is the real identity of Wooly.
Wooly spent the entirety of the game trying to keep Amanda on track.
When she begins to discuss topics that are inappropriate for a kids show like death or
rotting wooly is very quick to interject.
He tries to get Amanda back on the good and wholesome path.
This strikes me not as the actions of a fellow child, but rather of a parent.
We hear a story during one of the secret tapes about how after Sam's disappearance, the show
begins to change, it starts to talk about inappropriate subjects.
This is not the show that Sam built and he can see that.
Wooly doesn't just play the killjoy either.
He's also the one that tries to help Amanda by keeping her calm.
When Amanda loses control, the monster comes out and Wally knows it.
So when she starts to forget things or remember the bad stuff that's happened because of her,
he desperately tries to make her happy.
Sounds to me like the actions of a concerned father.
He knows what Amanda is and what'll happen if the monsters let loose.
So he steers Amanda and the player towards positive and happy subjects in order to keep
that beast at bay.
But the Monster and Hameln are fighting back.
In their visit to the farm, Wooly is constantly being silenced, Amanda tells him that sheep
don't talk.
And as we go through, he begins to bah uncontrollably until he becomes another mindless sheep like
all the rest, finally falling in line with Hameln's plan.
It's actually pretty diabolical.
You're wanting to turn Rebecca into Amanda, so why not test out that mind transfer ability
on someone you don't mind accidentally killing if it goes wrong?
Notice that it's only once Wooly becomes a true sheep that we see Amanda asking to help
the poor and lonely kitten.
The kitten that represents her.
Now that Sam is gone, she's truly alone, asking for someone, anyone to help her.
But hey!
While Riley really did luck out.
Just being gifted a house by their aunt.
Sadly, we're not all that lucky.
We just can't wait around for a property with an attic this large to fall into our laps.
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As always, my friends remember, it's all just a theory, A GAME THEORY!
I’ll see you next week.