Game Theory - The Giggleland ARG Got Even DARKER…

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

In our last episode, Game Theory Host Tom began exploring what was TRULY happening in Act 2 of this mystery. Although the website seemed to have new clues that didn’t seem to lead anywhere, there was one more avenue for us to check…

Last time on Game Theory. Please investigate using the dev build. This is our next step to solving the puzzle friends. There is even more to this game than we have already played. And this is where the questions we've been asking can be answered. What are they doing the sacrifices for? Where does Sarah fit it into all this? And who is Elliot?

Hello internet! Welcome to Game Theory. The show that wants to walk a mile in your... Ha! Hmm, ha, that was weird. Maybe I just need to sacrifice you. Whoa, whoa, what is happening with all these glitches? Clearly, the glitches from the new Gigoland, ARG,

have been leaking into the videos of anyone who dares to uncover the truth. Last time, we began exploring what was happening in Act 2 of this mystery. We were getting updates from a girl named Sarah about a mysterious commune slash cult called the KMW, run by a man named Terry. Sarah's mother, Debbie, used to be part of this commune. And after snooping around through her things, Sarah was caught. leaving us with no leads or information to work with. The website had also been updated, now containing new clues that sadly didn't really seem to lead us anywhere.

We've got phrases like Thunbrew and Lifeless, but no cipher or key to put them in. The main thing we got was a quote saying, It wears my skin, which we suspected may have something to do with the evil mascots that have been hinted at. But there was one more avenue for us to check, a YouTube ad about a new gaming website featuring the Orange Cat Elliot from Elliot and Ella, the TV show made by the KMW. Sure, it wasn't the Giggle Land game that we were hoping for, but it was still a game we could play. And the multiple endings of Elliot's adventure revealed to us the KMW's real intention with the children they took care of in the commune. We met Mr. T, the in-game counterpart of the cult leader Terry, who asked Elliot to help him gather seeds so that he can purify them from the evil sorcerer.

The sorcerer is the big bad of this video game, though we've never actually met. them. And the more endings we discovered, the more we realized that purify meant sacrifice. Based on the collectibles, background art, and enemy types, it appeared the KMW were following the Aztec rituals of child's sacrifice and wearing their skin to appease their gods. So, that's dead children ticked off our indie horror bingo card, and the game's not even out yet. Then there was a secret message hidden in the game for Debbie herself, written by her partner, The Mysterious Simon. It warned her that if she didn't leave the commune, Terry, would do something awful to Sarah, so neither of them would see her again.

This is what led Debbie to run away from the cult all those years ago, and why she is now so protective of Sarah, not wanting her to go outside or learn more about the commune. Unfortunately, it was at this point that we hit a dead end. By completing the game and taking zero damage, we discovered that there was a dev build of the game somewhere. It gave zero hints to where it might be. But I knew it held the answers to the secrets that we were looking. looking for? Why are they sacrificing kids? Why is Sarah so important? And who is Elliot really?

So, join me, friends, because I am determined to find this dev build and uncover the truth behind this creepy Aztec cult. So, without further ado, let's solve the second act of Giggle Land's ARG. Let's think about this logically. Elliot's adventure is on the Kids Gaming Zone website, so surely this mysterious dev build would be hidden around here. That means we got to do the thing we theorists do best at time like this, click on every possible link and see if it takes us somewhere. I'm actually going to fast forward this bit because there is a lot of clicking and a lot of pages that are just pretty normal. That is, until you get to the very bottom and click on the web host link. Unsurprisingly, this takes you to a website where you can buy website domains.

But by scrolling down to the bottom, we can see a list of recently registered domains. And this is where things go from regular to irregular. GainTips is a website that gives you tips and cheat for games, including Elliot's Adventure, mentioning a god mode in the dev build. Other websites had hidden URLs, covered with text directly taken from Sarah's Tumblr posts. Oak Barrel Brew had a secret message when scrolling to the bottom of the page about how abandoned children's fingers would twitch as if they were trying to send a message. It's super weird stuff, but they are all things connecting to what we covered last time. Another one of the website's laughing little ones looks like a website about the biggest party ever, and so naturally, I'm gonna put in all my details because I want to be part of this super cool totally real party, please.

But after doing that, the screen went black, a weird sound played, and the text appeared Sarah Location, as well as a bunch of random letters. Once again, we have ourselves a code. What type of code is it? I'm not sure. This isn't any cipher I've ever seen. But as I mentioned last time, thankfully, there is a dedicated team of theorists on the official Discord that were able to help us out. This time, Discord user Chap figured out that breaking the string of letters into two letters at a time are the first two letters of the website we have discovered on the domain page. GL is Global Street Foods, RE is Retrobyte Hub, it all matches up. But we still don't know exactly what any of this means. We do know that we're on the right track. It's just,

where do we go from here? Which seems to be a running theme in this ARG. But again, Chap came to my rescue. They'd found something new on the old missing person's report from Act 1. Seriously, chap, you are crushing this. What they found was a new audio file named Conversation. But like always, it's password protected. Though I think we already have part of the answer for this one. I mentioned that in our part one video, we uncovered some secret words that meant nothing at the time. One of which was Funbrew that we discovered thanks to a random string of letters on the KMW website

and a note in the guest book that encouraged us to use. paste bin as a means of communication. Now, this is where things are going to get a little complicated, but bear with me. We have two words, Fun and Brew. We also have a bunch of websites now, thanks to the Gigoland Directory and the domain site. One of the websites we explored last time was called fun.hthtml. And there, we discovered another word that meant very little at the time, lifeless. Now, one of these new websites is called Oak Barrel Brew, implying that the second half of the code is hidden in this website. On that website, we saw a secret message about abandoned children

and how their fingers were a message to something. We're trying to open up a conversation on a missing children's report. So, is that the secret word, finger, the thing communicating? Funbrew equals lifeless finger. Yes, that unlocked the WAV file. Let's have a listen, shall we? Ah, yes, the wonderfully nostalgic sound of a modem. I remember hearing that sound every time I tried to connect to the internet.

as a kid. Cue the Matt Damon Giff. But this is an ARG. Obviously, those aren't just sounds. And if you use an FSK decoder like mini modem, you can actually mimic a modem receiver, which will translate these sounds into text. It ends up being a chat log between two people

talking about a strange program appearing on TV while their kids were watching. But when they looked at a TV guide, they weren't able to find it. Sounds to me like we've got another Instagram. of Elliot and Ella on our hands. One of the parents says it reminds them of the channel 10 hacking that was on the news a while ago, which is interesting.

I did always wonder how this terrifying Elliot and Ella show would ever make its way onto the air. Trust me, I worked in Kids TV. No network is greenlighting this. But now the pieces are beginning to fall into place. No one needed to approve the show because the show was being hacked or forced onto the airwaves. In the first ARG, we found a video called the second, hijack, where we heard in the background an episode of Elliot and Ella. I thought that this was in reference to the hijacking of a kid, as we'd already found a missing report of one kid, this

would have just been the second. However, this now seems to suggest that it wasn't about the kids. It was about the TV airwaves. Maybe this Channel 10 hijack was the first hijacking, forcing this show in front of unwitting children, causing them to become terrified, so that the parents would send them to the KMW psychologists for treatment, or, as Terry put it, purification. And we get to read more about this hijacking thanks to one of the links that the parents dropped during the conversation. Or at least, that's what I thought we'd be able to do. In reality, it's not exactly legible. And just like the other corrupted pages we've come across, it is impossible to decode. The only readable thing are the ads on the side of the website

for an uploading site. So I guess we might as well try that? I mean, let's not forget. All of the This has been us trying to find the zip file containing the dev build of Elliot's Adventure. So a website all about uploading files could be our ticket. So by following the link and adding Gigoland underscore dev build underscore 9213.Zip to the end of the URL, we are taken straight to the download page. Bingo! Finally, we get to talk about the thing that started this video. But do you want to guess what happened when I tried to download it? Yep, it's password protected.

Again! You'd think, given how hard this was to find, they'd be kind enough to just give us the files. And people wonder why I have trust issues. Thankfully, this time, the uploader has given us a hint to the password's location. Uh, location, numbers, comma, numbers. The only location thing we've seen so far was the Sarah's location text before the string of letters the chap decoded. We know that each set of letters refers to all the websites we found. But for this, we need numbers rather than letters.

So could it be that each website has... has a number that can be used for this password. At first, that feels like a wild goose chase, but look close enough and some of these numbers do start to appear, like the number four on this coffee bean on the cafe website, or error codes on CL domains. But then, there are other websites like Retro, Bite Hub and Gardening with Mary that I just can't figure out.

And I wasn't the only one. The entire Discord was pretty much stumped by this. But with our powers combined, our big brains made a super brain, and slowly but surely, people, people began finding the numbers across these websites. And I gotta say, these solutions are strange. Some of them are things like how many times this cloud bobbed up and down until it stopped. The number of times the word tree is misspelled.

And the color of the 404 error cloud in hex code. And this is where I've got to get real for a minute. Actually, you know what? Right, Giggle Land. Let's talk. What was the thought process here? I'm all for a hard and challenging puzzle. I've sung your praises in every video because of exactly that. But this, this was just straight up brutal.

For a puzzle to feel satisfying, there has to be a rhyme or a reason to the solution. Maybe they're all background assets, or maybe it's all in hex code. But by mixing and matching like this with no sense of direction, it just invites that feeling of frustration and can leave people to brute forcing the solution because they don't see another way of doing it. If you guys are watching genuinely, I would love to understand the thought behind this puzzle. Was it simply a test for the community? Did we miss a clue?

We theorists, we love to learn from these experiences so we can be better informed and equipped for our next ARG adventure. But anyway, we did find the code, so let's go back to P&G Tom to keep this ball rolling. Using the original letters as our order and plonking all of the new numbers into it, we get the password 758483-28236. Now finally we can get our hands on the dev build. And there it is. Sorry, I'm just really excited about this.

Now we can get into this and find the answers we seek. When initially booting up this dev build, it looks exactly the same as the game we found before. But now we can activate the thing that the game cheat website mentioned. God mode. Which creates new endings for us to analyze. The first one happens when you're just bad at the game and fall into a pit. Elliot falls down and we see a younger looking Elliot in the dark world.

All alone. An error appears on screen and after clicking OK, a bloodied image of Elliot jumps at you. Well, this is more disturbing than before. Wonderful. And honestly, each ending is just going to follow in a similar tone. There's the flower ending where you gave a flower to the horse NPC. Normally this would lead you to encounter a child begging you to help them. But if you're in God mode, you do still meet the child. Only now, we see the child in the dark with a grinning Elliot behind her. She begins to cry and we hear slashes. The game then suddenly reboots And Elliot is standing there wearing the child's skin. And then, if that wasn't enough, instead of the sign that takes you to the final stage, there's now a computer.

Interacting with it triggers a cutscene where your perspective shifts to you looking at the computer monitor, switching tabs over to an episode of Elliot and Ella on YouTube. We've got a new episode to watch, friends. I wonder what high school drama awaits us in this episode. Elliot is struggling with dissecting a frog, so Ella decides that he should go and talk to Miss. Mr. T. Yep, that Mr. T. Mr. T suggests that Elliot should read this special book, which will help him to be brave. Elliot opens it up and he is transported to a black room with a floating head. bravery can only be achieved by sacrificing your former self and being born in you.

Just then, we see Elliot's past self, the same one that's in the pit ending of the game. Elliot must kill his past self. But when he hesitates, Ella pipes up. Come on, Dave! Elliot is left with no choice. He walks up to his past self and kills them. Suddenly, we're back in the classroom and Elliot is now wearing the skin of his former self. Aztec alert! Astech alert!

Sorry, sorry, after the last episode I got one of those installed just in case. Not that I was going to miss this because it's not exactly discreet. All these endings and this new episode are tying back to what we said last time with Aztec rituals. We've seen child sacrifice is being brought to tears. Something that Aztecs used to do. do to make them effective sacrifices. Elliot is then wearing the skins of said sacrifices, including his past self, which reflects the rituals the Aztecs did to symbolize their renewal.

And now we are meeting an actual deity. This floating head with the red and yellow markings on it looks exactly the same as how the god that requires the skins of human sacrifices is often depicted in Aztec descriptions and drawings. Shipe Totech. Boom, boom, and boom. I knew I was on to something with this Aztec. text stuff. And I knew that being an ancient history nerd in high school would absolutely pay

off. Look at me now, Ma! But then there's the normal ending of the game. On God mode, rather than read text asking you, what did you do with the sorcerer? The text says, you are a god. And with the physical inclusion of the god, Sheepetotech, it got me thinking. While yes, we're seeing Elliot literally kill his past self to become stronger, what if these sacrifices were a little more than that? What if it wasn't about sacrificing to a god, but becoming a god? Totech didn't just demand that people wear the skin of the sacrifices. The point was that that Shipe Totec would then wear the skins himself. A god wearing human skin. Could it be that by sacrificing children who have been brought to tears and quote unquote purified, then wearing

their skin, Terry and the cult members believe they can become something pure and powerful themselves? Like say, a god that also wears human skin. And this isn't even everything in the dev build, my friends. That's just the stuff God mode offers. In this dev build, you can also activate a move player function by inputting X and Y coordinates. Coordinates are usually just two numbers separated by a comma, which reminds me of the password the Discord community found to open up the dev build in the first place. The tip was Sarah's location, number, comma, number after all. So let's try inputting those numbers into the move player mode. And we've black screened, which is not ideal. But if you're

like me and you let your ADHD tech impatience get the better of you and you just spam the interact button, you get a new text box with a bitly link to Sarah's phone and in it are all of the photos Sarah took of her mum's diary like we talked about right at the start of Act 2. Yes, finally, we are going to get to see Debbie's involvement in the KMW and hopefully it will show us if we were right about Terry's motives. The diary starts in December 1990. Debbie, is 8 years old and has just moved to the commune with her uncle Terry. Seems innocent enough, that is until you turn the page. It's completely covered in the phrase,

My name is Debbie. Why is she writing her name over and over again? Does she not know what her own name is? Wait a minute. Do you guys remember in the first ARG when we discovered that missing persons report about a child named Laura that had been abducted? We suspected that this was the doing of the KMW.

I mean, all the signs were pointing to it. But Laura was abducted on November, 23rd, 1990 at age 8. The same age as Debbie and the week before, Debbie starts writing in her diary. Debbie is Laura. She was kidnapped by Uncle Terry and was forced to change her identity to Debbie. Like that, seven years pass and now Debbie is working on a new show, Elliot and Ella. She is the artist and her best friend and love interest Simon is the writer.

Debbie remarks about how Ella is basically just a representation of her and how Elliot represents Simon. Everything we've seen Elliot do. In the show, in the game, sacrificing kids, helping Terry. It was all done by Debbie's partner and Sarah's father, Simon. Now, he did give Debbie a warning to escape the commune, but I ask you, can we really trust him? It seems to me, at least right now, that he is in on it. But let's keep reading. Eventually, Debbie finishes all the drawings for the show, but during that time, she notices that kids in class are disappearing, falling ill and never coming back.

Terry simply says that they had to go home, but Debbie and I are not buying it. These suspicions then grow when one night Simon and Debbie hear screaming coming from the back of the barn. As they go to investigate, they find a trail of blood and Terry standing there covered in it. He tries to pass this off as killing animals for food, but Debbie doesn't feel. all right about it. The next day, Debbie and Simon get to watch the finished Elliot and Ella show that they've been working on, and what they see is nothing like they thought. What started off as cute, turned dark and violent, the version of the show that we have been seeing. They also notice that Terry seems different. He's aggressive and keeps reassuring them that the show has to be

like this because that's just what cartoons are like these days. What cartoons are you watching Terry? Lee, not helping. It's here that Simon and Debbie realize something is terribly wrong with this commune, but they also know that if they fight back, it won't end well. Simon decides that they should act like everything is fine, up until they can come up with a plan of what to do, which might explain why he's been helping Terry with all these sacrifices. He's not evil, he's playing a part, putting up a false version of himself for others to see, almost like he's wearing the skin of a cult member, but underneath he's just a scared little boy. And as we jump ahead to 2006, we see exactly that.

Simon has now become a programmer for the KMW website and is involved in making a video game. Elliot's Adventure. Simon is the one behind the messages we've been seeing. Heck, everything we've uncovered on the Giggleland website must have been Simon communicating to us. He gave us these files that we're now looking at from Sarah's phone. He has been the one reaching out to us this entire time. Debbie isn't really happy about any of this. She has more or less isolated herself from the cults,

but she's also pregnant with Sarah and her twin. What? We've never heard of a twin before. And in a later entry, we sadly find out why. During childbirth, the midwife says that the twins were tangled in the ambyllical cord. And Terry chimes in to say, only one could survive. Terry then goes a little off the rails saying that the firstborn gave their life to save her sister, naming her, the miracle baby.

My guy reeved the room. But this is also another reference to the Aztec culture that this cult is following. In Aztec culture, twins were seen as a reflection of the twin gods Ketsal Kowatl and Zolotl. Ketzel was associated with light and prosperity, but Zolotl was associated with sickness and death. So to avoid bringing death and sickness to the mother and the rest of the community, the Aztec midwife would kill one of the twins at birth, leaving only the one they deemed to be the good twin. Terry believes that one of the children must be sacrificed or else everything he has built will be destroyed, leaving this miracle child to help bring them into prosperity. That is why the

KMW are so obsessed with Sarah and getting her back. Why they keep talking about her location, they need her. We could also take this a step further. Remember that message that said, you are a god? Well, maybe that's because in Terry's mind, Sarah isn't just a representation of the god Ketsal-Kawattle. She is that god. And where is Simon during all of this? Still programming away. Becoming more and more obsessed.

He says that he's just playing the part, wearing the skin of a cult member while being him underneath. But Debbie begins to wonder if it's actually the other way around. He's no longer the man she fell in love with. He's slowly becoming one of them without even realizing. Just like we see Elliot doing in the game, he is now capturing seeds, i.e. children, and sacrificing them for them for him.

Terry. He is playing the part so well that he is now a cult member wearing the skin of Debbie's partner. Eventually, Debbie decides she's had enough. She packs her things and she leaves with Sarah. Interestingly, she leaves without reading Simon's note that he left for her in the game about leaving. So I guess things kind of worked out. Well, except for Simon. Do you remember the text we found in the normal ending of Elliot's adventure? What did you do with the sorcerer Elliot? In our initial episode, we didn't really have an answer for who the sorcerer was. We were told that they were corrupting the seeds and that they needed to be defeated. But we never understood who it was or why it was. However, now thanks to everything we've learned here today, there's only one

person it could be. Debbie. Debbie is acting against Terry at this point in the story. She doesn't want Sarah to be involved in any of it. Her anti-cult tendencies are the thing that need to be purified from the seeds. The children just like Sarah. Debbie being the sorcery, also explains why we never encounter the sorcerer in the game. And yet, it acts like we defeat her during the normal ending. Simon didn't actually harm Debbie. He didn't want to defeat her in battle. He wanted her to escape.

So the ending skips the boss fight and says you won. Because when she did run away, as far as anyone else knew, she had been killed or taken care of, just like he'd been asked to do. But Terry doesn't seem to be buying it. Terry is now asking Simon what he did with her. because of that message he left in the game. Debbie may have acted on her own coincidentally, but from what Terry can see, Simon was the cause.

And now Simon may not be safe. My first thought was that Simon was also going to be taken care of. But then I remembered that he was the one updating the website and sending us all of those hidden clues and messages. So that really only leaves us of two possibilities. One, Simon also managed to escape the commune and is now hacking the website remotely to help us reveal the truth about them?

Or, and sadly, more likely, he is still part of the commune and is being forced to send out all of these messages. The reason, it's also that Terry can find Sarah again. Now, you might be thinking, sure, we know about all these websites,

but Sarah has no idea about the Giggleland website, Elliot's Adventure, or anything like that. If Terry has been getting Simon to reach out to Sarah, it's failed, right? Well, think about it. Though Sarah hasn't mentioned finding the website

or any of its mysteries, through us solving all of the puzzles, we found Sarah, her Tumblr, her phone, her location. And each time she mentioned snooping on her mother, us being the law hunters we are, we pushed Sarah to keep going, to keep looking into her past. We are the ones pushing her closer to the world that she and Debbie left behind. Her curiosity is slowly leading her into the arms of the KMW exactly where Terry wants her, and it's all because of us. These messages on the website and the game were supposed to be a warning to protect Sarah, but our hubris and desire for law has only put her in more danger. Unlike we predicted in our first theory, it's not her father that would lure her to giggle land in the main game. It's going

to have been us. We led her right into the cult's hands for whatever godly sacrifices they have planned. I just hope that in the end, when we do get our hands on the real game, we'll have the skills needed to undo our mistake and save her. But hey, let's do. That's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.