Game Theory - Please DRINK Me! (OnlyCans)

Episode Date: May 7, 2023

When a game like this shows up, you know I have to cover it. Theorists, welcome to OnlyCans. Yes, you read that right. OnlyCans. The game where you take questionable pictures of drink cans. Seems pretty straightforward, right? WRONG! This game is hiding a dark, meaty secret inside its bright and shiny cans. What is it? Only those brave enough to watch will find out...

Matt Pat, have you ever done a theory about this cool indie game? Uh, which one? There's a lot of them out there. Well, it's an indie game that's got lots of disturbing hidden lore. I might need a bit more to go off of. Uh, it's a parody indie game with lots of disturbing lore, hidden ARG elements, and a dead kid. I mean if I had a nickel for every time I've covered one of those? It's a parody indie game with lots of disturbing lore, hidden energy elements, a dead kid, and it's all about soda. Oh, yeah! Yeah, totally. Soda Drinker Pro!

Play that one back on GT Live in 2016's crazy game! Game. Really interesting though. Never did a theory about it. No, I'm talking about an entirely different sort of scene parody game with Hidden Lore and A-R-G and dead kids. You know, the one where the cans moaned a lot and one is a disfigured humanoid monster that longs for the sweet release of death. Oh, you're talking about ONLY CANS. Yeah, I've done an episode about that, and it's this one right here. Oh, Internet, welcome to Game Theory, the show that's thirsty. For knowledge, that is, friends, if there's one thing you know about me, it's that historically, I'm a Diet Coke fan. It's become my brand of at this point. And by that, I mean, liking Diet Coke is my brand. The Diet Coke trademark is actually owned by the Coca-Cola Company. For now. So it should come as no surprise that Yoil Cake 2100 on the Game Theory subreddit drew my attention to the newly released indie game Only Can's Thirst Date,

a riff on the um, uh, adult-leaning content platform only fans. Anyway, when the game dropped on Itchio and later on Steam, a lot of people just assumed it was a joke game. It was only there for the And honestly, don't blame them. It's a game where you spray water on soda cans and take sexy time photos of them. All the while with them moaning in appreciation, there is an uncomfortable amount of moaning. As you might imagine from that short montage, the joke wears off kind of fast. But man, will you look at those cans? No, really look at the cans. The can renders are shockingly high quality. And the new flavors that are getting revealed are always funny with names like raw meat, four cheese, veggie broth, and sardine surprise, but because there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of gameplay going on here, most people probably don't make it all the way to the bottom of the list, where instead of the usual,

play more to unlock, tease, leading us to the next character, we instead have a phrase of, please don't unlock. Huh, suspicious. And if dokey dokey literature club has taught me anything, it's that you don't underestimate warning screens. I mean, that one teased you with warnings of highly disturbing scenes, and boy, howdy did that one deliver. Only cans, meanwhile, kicks things off with a warning screen about body, horror. Also BDSm clowns, but you know, the body horror thing is the one that really stands out in a game about aluminum cans. But oh boy, does that body horror exist if you choose to ignore the warnings and open the final can contained in an ominous box label, do not release. Keep contained and just simply no.

Who's in the box? What's in the box? Ladies and gentlemen, today we're dealing with a canspiracy of the highest degree, one that pours out of the game and has its exploring websites, source code, and even altering the game files themselves, DDS. All to piece together the real horror story that's bubbling under the surface of what would otherwise appear to be a simple meme game Step one in solving this mystery involves piecing together the main lore using the fragments we get via the in-game descriptions Our story centers around She's sodas which dates all the way back to 1744 when the Shees family made a voyage across the Atlantic Presumably part of the early American settlers traveling from Europe by 1844 She's had a full production company under the control of John Shees the

first, who apparently had a real knack for thinking on his feet. Take, for instance, one incident where the production facility broke down right before a charity ball, and he had the bright idea to, quote, throw a few fresh veggies and some expired chemicals into a nearby pot, thereby giving birth to his new flavor, veggie broth with morphine. Eventually, the company passes into the hands of John Shees III, who is the closest thing that we have to a main character in this story. After early success with his controversial blueberry tart flavor, he starts using his soda empire for political power throughout the 80s. In 1983, She's the Third releases a special limited edition jelly bean flavor as a way to, quote, connect with high-ranking politicians of the time.

He follows this up shortly later in 1986 by releasing 2,100 cans of a limited drink to investors, giving special rings out to this elite group, thus securing his own personal Illuminati. That one worked better than Aluminati, right? Yeah. Anyway, that new flavor's name, Lemon Party. By the way, do not Google that. Trust me on this one. Just trust me on this one. Do not look it up. Of course, no indie game would be complete without a dead kid to add to the drama. Enter John Shees the 4th, beloved son of John Shees III, who, shortly after the release of Lemon Party,

dies somewhere in his mid-20s under mysterious circumstances. Based on a letter that we see in the game's D.L.C. Hot and Steamy, we can infer that John Shees III thought that John the 4th's wife was the real one to blame for his son's mysterious disappearance. Here's that letter. Dear Joy, I hope you're doing well, my dear. I know we haven't spoken since the passing of my son slash your husband but I've decided to create a she's drink in your honor blushing rose I hope blushing rose will be the olive branch we need after some rocky times between us I know I've made some accusations about my son's death but those are in the past now I'm working hard to honor his legacy and I would love for you to be a part of those efforts please enjoy John She's the 3rd so was the son murdered by the wife apparently John the 3rd thought so least for a while but what's

really going on with this death. Don't worry, we're going to get back to all this. Already struggling to deal with his loss, things go from bad to worse for John Shees the 3rd when his company gets bought out by a Russian bootleg brand named Shees. Notice the different spelling. Same pronunciation, though. The new Russian owners immediately oust John Shees III from the company and start rolling into a string of bad decisions. Releasing an onslaught of flavors that they think is going to appeal to the American palate, tangy ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. Again, these are soda flavors. Now with more time on his hands, John Shees III starts what the game calls a decade-long voyage of mourning.

But he wasn't just trying to get over his grief of losing his son and his company. In true indie game form, he was on a mission to bring his son back from the dead. From the various canned descriptions, we can piece together the fact that John Shees was researching the occult and the supernatural. He starts in Romania, researching local customs and legends. In 2012, he befriends a high-powered Egyptian businessman who, quote, grants him access to the country's ancient relics. And as we learned from the juicy melon can, after several years of discussion, John Shees and Ichero Yori of CyberLife Industries found the Shees Research and Development Facility. This was allegedly in the name of soda-based research,

but we can assume that something else was going on at CyberLife. The project of a father who is still looking for a way to get over his son's death, or, more accurately, a way to overcome his son's death. Bit by bit, John III sells off Shee's production facilities, all across the world to help fund a very important secret project. Project S, which will ultimately be his magnum opus. The culmination of nearly three decades of research, he creates his final drink, and the final drink of the main game, Thirstborn.

The R&D project ominously labeled, Do Not Release. John the 3rd, in his desperate quest to bring back his lost son, finally succeeds in creating this, this abomination, As we sprits and take pictures of she's thirst-born, we hear its tortured cries. Father, you made me. The flesh and the can are one. I feel my inside fizz. I feel stronger.

I will be CEO. And upon completing the level, I feel the soul's growing. Thank you for freeing me. The soul may move on, but the flesh shall grow. Are you proud of me, father? As we read in the description, Thirstborn is both can and human soul combined in one perfect organism, but it's the next line that changes everything.

It was the first of many. And this is where things really start to get weird, because obviously they weren't weird already. All the spraying and snapping of anthropomorphized cans that we've been doing up to this point wasn't just a gameplay gimmick or something done for the lulls. They are actual human souls trapped inside of the cans. And the game outright confirms this, you play the opposite way than you're intended. In the new DLC, hot and steamy, there's a can for the hybrid flavor blueberry melon twist, which we're told is a fusion of two soulful classics. And if you completely botched the minigame, you're treated to this.

Oh. Two people, two souls trapped inside of the can against their will. Remember that letter that John Shees III wrote to his son's wife, Joy? The woman he suspected as being involved in his premature death, and how he said that he had a special flavor, for her. What was that quote? I'm working hard to honor his legacy and I would love for you to be a part of those efforts. Convinced that she was to blame, I think that he trapped her soul inside that blushing rose flavor. I mean, the can does wear a bridal veil, alluding to her, in fact, being John the fourth's wife. Revenge is indeed a drink best served cold, ideally chilled in a refrigerator and poured over ice.

So, is that it? Your classic tale of a soda baron using the occult to infuse carbonated beverages with living souls? Well, we're not quite done. You see, on the Only Can's website, if you check the source code, which you should always do in any lore-based indie game, you see a conversation happening between two freelancers, Ali and Sebastian, hired on by She's LLC to create their website. It goes a little something like this. Can't help but think something weird's going on, though.

Why was H&S funded through the fisheries department? Tax breaks, I guess, above my pay grade. And if you open up the game's files with the new hot and steamy DLC, you see a notepad text file labeled Hot and Steamy. H and S. Open up that file, change it to read fisheries, and all of a sudden you get something very unexpected in the game. A hidden audio file.

Cave has a pocket of air. It's a... From silicate. Roger. We see it. It's covered in slime. Quickly. Is there a box on the platform?

Affirmative, Mr. Sheese. We'll retrieve it and bring it up. Over and out. But what is it? Sounds to me like John Shees III found the secret to everlasting life buried deep in the ocean and he brought it back to the surface so his thirst-born son could rise again. As the can description for Sardine Surprise says, In my years of traveling the world alone,

I've learned much about what waits down in the abyss, what they left behind for us. And now with she's fisheries, we shall bring it to the surface for my son. And there's even more to the story. Elsewhere on the website's source code, we get yet another Ali Sebastian conversation. I'm just doing it this way because I forgot my Slack login again and IT are a bunch of pricks. Old school style, yeah.

Hey, Polly, can you stop asking the narrator about John? He's not allowed to say anything, you know it. Sorry, this whole work-for-hire sitch is driving me nuts. Don't change it again, please, Sebastian, please. And wouldn't you know, but there's also a notepad text file labeled narrator in the game's folder. So why don't we do what they tell us? Ask the narrator about John by changing the text in the notepad file. That gets us yet another hidden audio file.

Bring the facility now. He won't hurt anyone. Look at him. He's my son. He finished. In the description for Thirstborn, it says that John Shees III gave his life for Project S, though it's never really specified what exactly that means. But this scene shows us that they mean it quite literally.

We hear firsthand how John Shees III was shot down in the middle of taking care of his son, his son, the can monster. But there's one final mystery in all of this, the future of She's LLC. We read via the descriptions that after John III's death, the company is sent reeling, only to find its footing again with the flavor cookies and cream, a flavor proposed by an intern named Susie O. Fishbarg. It's so popular that Susie O. Quickly rises to take over the board of the company. Nothing out of the ordinary about that, right?

Wrong. In that description for cookies and cream, there's one little line that sticks out like a sore thumb. Quote, oh, it was John Shee's the fourth's favorite flavor of ice cream? That's just a coincidence? Coincidence? I think not. It's enough to get a theorist sense of tingling. Could Susie somehow be connected with John the 4th? It feels like the game is trying to make a connection here,

What is it? Well, doesn't the name Susio Fishbark seem a bit odd? Sure enough, if you rearrange the letters, you get yourself this. She's Four is back. Thank you for freeing me. The soul may move on, but the flesh shall grow. Are you proud of me, father? A soul reclaimed by his father, reborn as a can, and then released by us,

lives on to move the company forward into the next generation. collecting souls to be used for our consumption. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.