Hi Internet, welcome to game theory. I’m Matpat. Today we’re going to be
talking about Amanda the Adventurer. Do you know which of these games that is?
That’s right! We need to play this game so we can make a theory. What kind of theory should we make?
Ah ah ah, let’s try again. What kind of theory should we make?
Say the right answer! That’s right, a game theory.
Look at that! We’re now outside your house. How do we break in?
Come on. You have to choose something. Let me in… let me in… let me in… let me in…
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory. The show that’s asking…do YOU see the subscription
button? Don’t click on that one. No. You don’t want to see what happens if you click on it.
Good choice. What a good…good…good good,
Dora the Explorer. She’s cute. She’s funny. She’s willing to
stare at you for hours with her cold dead eyes.
Can you say vamos a la fiesta? Fantast…
But what if you took the concept of Dora the Explorer and truly let it enter the dark
nightmare purgatory that we know all children’s programming to be! Enter Amanda the Adventurer,
a short little indie title developed by designer James Pratt as part of Dread XP's Found Footage
Jam back in April. The basic premise is that you find some old VHS tapes of the show Amanda
the Adventurer in your attic, but immediately, you can tell that something here is going to be amiss.
Mirror Matt: I love that the one E is backwards. MatPat: That’s how you know it’s scary
Matt. Mirror Matt: But they.. like,
The rest of the Es are correct MatPat: This is the scary E!
In true Dora the Explorer fashion, Amanda wants you to click on specific things or spell
certain words, pausing an awkwardly long amount of time to figure out what the correct answer is.
Do you know where the store is?
But be careful. This ain’t the Dora you grew up with. If you answer any of Amanda’s questions
incorrectly, she starts to get irritated. Troll her for long enough, and she starts forcing you
into responding with the right answers, removing all other options or just straight up seizing
control of the keyboard. Also, can we just agree that it’s a bit strange we’re watching VHS tapes
but we’re playing them like a videogame? typing and using a mouse to click the answers? I’m
Just sayin’! Doesn’t quite make a lot of sense. Over the course of three tapes, Amanda and her
friend Woolie the sheep take you to a handful of different locations. The first tape focuses around
getting apples from the Grocery Store despite the fact our friend Woolie here seems to be allergic
At the end, a glitchy roll of credits plays. Of course, I looked through all the credits
frame by frame to see if there might be anything hiding there. Mostly it was just
parodies of real-life celebrity names that make you go “oh, yeah. That's… a reference”
MatPat: Directed by Heave Starvey, as opposed to Steve Harvey, that’s funny so that’s good.
MatPat: Glands Pimmerman! Mirror Matt: I think it’s like Hans Zimmerman.
MatPat: OHHH good one! Yeah. Oh music! music by… that’s right
But outside of all the groan worthy comedy, there is actually a secret code hidden inside
this thing, text that says “Turn The TV Off NOW.” So, like any good theorist I
did exactly what I was told…or at least, I tried to. I pressed every single button but
nothing would turn off or break, there was just the empty sound of my clicking mouse. So, having
no choice but to carry on with Amanda’s Adventure, we went in with Episode 2. And let me tell you,
that scary backwards E wasn’t lying. As soon as the tape begins, we see
Woolie looking walking towards the camera, breaking the fourth wall to address us on
the other end of the screen. Telling us to listen because we don’t have much time.
A glitch then forces Woolie back to his normal position. Today’s adventure
has us at the Butcher’s to get some Meat for Grandma…which is weird considering that Grandma
is a vegetarian. Once you fill in the blank
and ask the butcher for the meat, he brings out a large pile of realistic looking stuff,
and we just stand there awkwardly watching as he cuts, and Amanda slowly turns to Woolie.
Meat: It’s what’s for dinner.
Apparently not tonight friends, more like lamb chops. We start the third tape and
our sheep friend is gone with nothing but a small pile of wool left in his place.
Episode 3 is all about going home…but we’re not escorting Amanda back to her place.
Oh no! She wants into OUR house. Her body begins to contort, demonic whispers start to crescendo,
we hear the distorted phrase “Say Hello.” When we finally decide to let her in,
we’re met with a final jumpscare…a monster in what appears to be a living room. OUR living
room. Look at the wallpaper in the background. Now look at the wallpaper in the room where we’ve
been watching these tapes on TV. It’s an exact match. Everybody, sound the Afton alarm! Amanda,
in true indie horror game fashion, has broken out of her game in order to kill us!
And then that’s it. Roll credits. Like I said. It’s short. Sweet. Full of creepy moments.
Perfect for an indie horror let’s play. But as for theories? Yeah. There’s not so much there,
it’s pretty cut and dry: Just a classic, “Monster disguised as kids’ cartoon character,
wants out of this game” story. Or at least, that’s how it was. But since the initial release
of Amanda the Adventurer there have been more and more updates to this thing, each one adding
secret tapes to the game that start building out who…or what exactly, these characters are.
The first and most obvious change when you open any of the updates is this picture suddenly
appearing on the wall: two children playing together with their eyes scratched out. Clearly,
this has been added after-the-fact to mean something. Now, the playful,
childlike pose seems to indicate a brother and a sister. They have the same hair color, which,
if this was normal life would mean practically nothing. But in video game speak, that’s shorthand
for THESE PEOPLE ARE CLEARLY RELATED. Also, you notice anything familiar about the girl
in the photo? Yellow shirt, blue pants…it’s the exact same as another little girl we know:
Amanda. Could this girl be our adventurer? Well, let’s look back at the interactions between Woolie
and Amanda in the tapes. On the second VHS, when Amanda and Woolie want to go and buy some meat,
they both refer to Grandma as… well… Grandma. Calling her a familial title seems to indicate
that she is a Grandma to both of them, again implying that these two might actually be
related. Could it be that this brother and sister in the picture are also Woolie and Amanda…brother
and sister somehow transported into the world of the show? It certainly seems that way.
Beyond the picture on the wall, the 3 updates have all worked largely the same way. When you
get to the butcher scene, Amanda asks you what to tell the “meat man” what you need. Normally,
the answer is Meat, but if you type the word “Lamb” in specifically in honor of Woolie,
a new tape appears on your pile. Putting this one into the VCR reveals different clues depending on
which update you are playing. Update 1.1 gives you three real photos, a house, a forest trail,
and a butcher shop with a load of pigs hanging from hooks. Update 1.2 replaces the image that
you find on the secret 4th tape. This time, it reveals the image of a real forest, with a big red
circle marking part of it, seems to be continuing the 1.1 update and the forest trail that we saw.
When you see the red circle in the forest, it then prompts you for an answer. The correct word
is “Woolie”. Clearly, this is where Woolie, or should I say, the boy who became Woolie,
was buried after being butchered…literally…by Amanda, his own sister. Wait a minute:
Nostalgic IP? Creepy tapes? Dead KID?!? Ladies and gentlemen, we just got the Game Theory BINGO!
At this point, I was just excited for update 1.3. Couldn’t wait to see how
it would expand upon the unfolding story, and when it came out, I was not prepared
for the rollercoaster that it would take me on. In the most recent update, we’re not met with
realistic photos, but instead one final adventure for Amanda and Woolie as they search for buried
treasure out in the middle of a forest. Three ominous mounds loom in front of us and Woolie
is clearly not his usual self. He’s distracted, almost like he’s here against his will. Amanda
asks you to click the correct mound, and once you do, things take a VERY dark turn.
Yeah? Is it normal to use a noose on your adventures there, Amanda?
It’s then that Woolie completely breaks character,
just like he did at the start of Episode 2, proclaiming that he doesn’t care what
Amanda will do to him. He grabs the camera and talks to us directly.
Amanda, like a possessed child, begins to float in the background,
transforming into the monster. If Woolie wasn’t dead already at the Butcher’s shop,
well, he certainly is now! But his outburst does give us some valuable insight. Notice what he says
The key word here is “Anymore.” This isn’t Amanda’s first rodeo, she’s done this before. But,
what is the “this” that she’s doing exactly? Well, for that, we actually go to the game’s
Itch.io page. On it, we have two very obviously scratched out lines. The first:
“Curiosity takes hold and you decide to watch the tapes and let HORROR” - scratched out - “nostalgia
take you back to a simpler age.” and, quote again: “Included with this box set: LET ME OUT”
So, we have an entity in the tape that wants out. And, in a clever pun, a horror that TAKES
YOU BACK. In short, it seems like a monster is coming out of the TV and is dragging victims back
into the tapes…feeding souls into the world of Amanda the Adventurer. It’s probably the
reason why all the objects and buildings and trees here have eyes, because there are people
trapped inside of this thing. Like Woolie said, he can’t do this anymore. Based on the number
of living objects inside of this world, looks like the two of them have been busy for a while.
The whole thing actually reminds me a lot of the horror movie, The Ring,
specifically the American sequel, The Ring Two. If you don’t know, the Ring franchise is all
about a girl named Samara who exists inside a cursed VHS tape. If you watch the tape,
7 days later, the evil girl crawls out of the TV to kill you. And immediately you can start
to see the resemblance in these stories, Amanda and Samara…sisters from other misters. Crawling
out of TVs to kill people who watch their show. But, specifically in the sequel, one of the main
characters has a dream about being pulled into the television and is then literally possessed
by Samara. Later on, another character gets dragged in. Sounds awfully familiar right? And,
in both The Ring and Amanda the Adventurer, our monster clearly wants to get out, but doesn’t seem
to want to STAY out, having to return back to the realm of the VHS every single time.
That then begs the question, was Amanda ALWAYS a monster? or was she and her brother the first to
be dragged in by something that was already on the tapes? Honestly, it’s unclear. There’s not a lot
to go off of, but if I were to guess, it actually has to do with this right here; these weird white
circles on the top of the monster’s head. Notice that, overall, the monster has humanoid features:
fingers, hips. Even has Amanda’s hair buns. Really, the most notable thing about the design
are these white dots. Are they empty eyeballs? some sort of a fungus? Maybe. But to me,
knowing that this is a game where humans and monsters are entering and leaving digital worlds,
they’re very reminiscent of the nodes on an EEG cap. Now, long time Theorists know that, in a
former life, I studied neuroscience. And one of the labs I worked in did experiments using these
sorts of EEG caps, or Electroencephalography caps. Basically, these caps are networks of electrodes
placed at specific locations around the head, all reading electrical signals that are passing from
one section of the brain to the next. No joke – in the experiment that I worked on, I could
read what a person’s brain was thinking before they themselves realized it. Now, obviously,
I’m talking about very rudimentary signals here. But in theory, IN NEUROLOGICAL THEORY,
I was taking a person’s thoughts and I was putting them into a computer via these electrical signals.
THIS could be an explanation for the Amanda monster, a girl brought into the game
using one of these sorts of caps. And now she’s trapped, eager to force others to join her inside
this VHS world. Or, considering that Amanda is a 3D animated character, maybe this was a situation
with Mocap gone awry, where little white dots were placed all over the actress’s face and body to
capture her movement to create animation, only for her to then wind up inside of the machine.
Regardless, this appears to be the moment of Woolie's death. Amanda and Woolie have lured yet
another victim to the forest, Woolie can't do this anymore, he stands up to Amanda and is ultimately
killed off and buried in the woods for it. It’s worth noting here that the brother in the game,
Woolie, is depicted as a sheep…up to this point, he’s someone who’s been too scared to stand up for
what's right, he’s been sheepish. He's then followed along with Amanda's murder scheme,
he’s followed her like a sheep does. Finally, like a sheep, when he DOES
try to fight, he's ultimately slaughtered. Either way, the tapes don’t stop at Woolies
murder. In the second half of this newest installment, once Woolie has been dealt with
by Amanda, the video then shifts to found footage, not just real images, but actual video of someone
with a flashlight wandering through the woods. Eventually they reach a pile of sticks that almost
looks like a shrine. They place this most recent tape underneath the sticks and pull out a lighter,
ready to burn it, except they hear the familiar whispers of demonic force, the same whispers you
hear at the end of the game once you free the monster. They wind up not burning the tape,
instead taking it back to their truck and lying about burning it to someone else on the phone.
Apparently this thing has a hold of our protagonist
But the key detail here is this:
It seems like there’s someone else, or a group of people out there,
who’re trying to gather these tapes because they understand the power the tapes hold.
Swiper NO SWIPING those evil possessed tapes!
Oh man! Throughout the video, we see
a box these tapes came in with an additional VHS that reads “destroy tapes DO NOT WATCH”. Clearly,
people know about the evil that’s on these things and the last owner did, well, the
literal least amount possible to prevent people from unleashing that evil. Seriously. A label on
the box telling people not to watch? COME ON, man! THIS is not how you prevent a demonic uprising!
So, Amanda the Adventurer. A series of tapes where a girl is drawn into a fictional world and
trapped there, and then who goes on to capture anyone who dares watch the cursed episodes for
themselves. Her brother was partners with her for a while, a sheepish boy who followed her lead,
only to be slaughtered when he got cold feet. And now the conspiracy between
mysterious groups trying to capture the tapes and harness the power inside for themselves.
I mean, that is some seriously scary kids content! Almost as scary as those Spiderman Elsa channels.
But hey, that’s just a theory. A Game Theory! Thanks for Watching.
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