Game Theory - The Lore in Dark Pals is DISTURBING

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

What happens to the children you drop off at school and what happens when those doors close? In today’s episode, we will be breaking down every hidden detail to uncover the real horror lurking in the facility….

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What happens when those doors close? Can you trust the people who promise to protect them? And while some say children are the future, is that future one that you actually want? Hello internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that needs you to join me on this wholesome adventure through the world of Dark Pals,

a new mascot horror game lovingly crafted by fellow YouTuber and mascot horror connoisseur, Horror Skunks. He's not the only YouTuber involved in this project either. We've got Chasington playing the ominous owner of this establishment. Jesse Cox is instructing you on how the facility works. Lorenzide is verbally abusing the mascots. And we've got Corey X Kenchin being set up as the manager for the sequel. Like I said in our recent mascot horror video,

it is great to see creators leading the charge in this revival of the genre. And as I predicted, this game does a lot to fix the things that mascot horror fans are tired of. The setting is interesting and well designed. The puzzles are fun and original without being mind-numbingly difficult. And most importantly, the law isn't spelled out for you in convenient notes or VHS tapes. Instead, you have to work for the law by paying attention to tiny details in the environment and checking out the extra material available on their website and YouTube channel. And if you do, you'll discover the terrifying truth about this place.

Who we are in all of this and the story of one man who was willing to risk it all for a taste of power and luxury. God, it really does feel like the old school days of mascot horror. So, equip your octopus shooters, loyal theorists, as we attempt to paint a picture of what is actually going on in Dark Pals. Once you press the new game button, you're greeted by some sort of roulette-shaped elevator. It's blurry and almost like a recollection of the past instead of what's happening in the present. Then you were spawned in Upwood, a heavily carnival-themed children's asylum.

You pick up an adorable little fella named Inkey, who is our main method for solving puzzles, using him to blast things with paint. I would die for him. Anyways, once you pick up your favorite stuffed animal, you can use him to trigger a little dewlock from Shrek-esque song. Wee, we, we, we, the carousels alive. After the song ends, you can sign your life away

and gain entrance to the main lobby of the facility where you're greeted by Mr. Grin. Welcome to a world of imagination, a world of hopes and dreams, a place your child will always remember. Uh-huh. Sure, bud, this ain't my first rodeo or carnival. Regardless, in the first area, you come upon some notes on the ground

that give us a little bit more information about Upwood itself. We learn Upwood was built deep in the Dark Fang Forest on Warden Lake Island. And each season, they admitted up to 50 male and female subjects. And that clearly isn't off-putting enough for us, so we head on into the facility, solve a few puzzles, and end up at a cinema screen. You sit down and watch a movie shown to parents for open house day, encouraging them to send their children with mental challenges here to be fixed. Then we get to watch the real movie, the one intended for the kids,

where it tells them in a brainwashy kind of fashion, to submit, conform, consume and perform. That's then reaffirmed in the next puzzle where we are introduced to a giant dog, chompy chasy, and his very disgusting teeth. However, if you solve a puzzle, he becomes much more friendly. I was wondering why, if bad, why friend shaped? And now I have my answer. He had toothache. After that, you go and explore the boy's dorm and finally encounter this thing.

Is this even safe to show on YouTube? His name is Binky Drinky, because of course it is. And he points you towards a bed in the boy's dorm for a little nappy nap. Once you wake up, you gotta help Binky make a cookie while this annoying gentleman, Omlet Man, sings the most annoyingly catchy song I have ever heard in the background. I'm not going to play it because copyright. You make the cookie, you eat it, and suddenly the world is different. It's totally destroyed.

was a little run down before, but this is just rubble. That's when Binky suddenly turns on us. He chases us around only for our goodest boy Chompy to show up and try and fight him off. We hop in the elevator and Binky gets stuck, having his pacifier violently ripped off of his head, causing him to fall on the floor in front of you as Corey's voice booms over the loudspeaker, teasing the next chapter. All of that happens in 45 minutes, by the way, they packed a lot into this first floor. So what's actually going on here? Well, as I mentioned, this place is a children's Asylum founded in 1980. Because that's where all childhood trauma comes from, apparently.

It was the place for broken children to go and become their quote-unquote true selves. However, this is a mascot horror game. Of course, that isn't all there is. I also mentioned that the video we watched for the kids felt kind of brainwashy. Yeah, I kind of buried the lead there. This game is not subtle about that particular plot point. There are plaques repeating the four key words, as well as posters showing children with hypnotized eyes. We see backstage as we're loading up the video to play in the cinema the brainwashing instructions on the wall.

And we even get a video of the wonderful Jesse Cox walking us through said brainwashing instructions. Needless to say, I think these kids are being brainwashed. Plus, we actually get to see what happened to these kids if they were successfully brainwashed. If you go back to the main menu of the game and take a small detour to the Law Archive, my favorite menu button ever, you are taken to the Dark Pals website where you can find dossiers and video files from the Dark Pals. House group. They claim to be the ones looking to fight against these monsters and upward itself. We are the vision for anomalous retrieval and bulge. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get.

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by our own children who went missing or worse, they decided to do something about Upwood. Tonight Upward shall burn in flames. This lines up with a computer monitor in the cinema being dated as January 14th, 1985. The last time the facility was operational. Since this raid, the Dark Pals have dedicated their existence to hunting down whatever is left. Walter Vex, the main Dark Power from the show, mentions in his file that he joined Dark Powers in 2020, implying that the events of the show and the game are relatively recent, and at least 35 years

after this 1985 incident. But do you remember what I said earlier? This place doesn't seem to have been burnt down and destroyed. Sure, in a couple of places it could use some TLC, but most of the dorms and kitchens look fine, until they don't. During the kitchen scene, if we follow Binky into the staff-only section, he disappeared. and suddenly we see the kitchen for what it really is, putting some meat covered in worms on a plate. Delicious. And once we make and eat the cookie, our vision goes funny and we see the place is completely destroyed, almost like it had been burnt down in a fire.

You see, theorists, it is us who has been brainwashed. Our player character is seeing things as better than they actually are. We are delusional. Occasionally we see the cracks and it's only when Binky helps us that we truly see things as they are. of the CRT TVs, we see Binky being pulled off by a staff member for not helping the kids conform. He was trying to help the children, and he's now trying to help us see the truth. But then, how were we brainwash? It wasn't the videos shown to the kids in the cinema. We were seeing things pretty well before we sat down to watch it. Well, what if I told you? This isn't

our first time at Upward. Throughout the game, there's a weird number of references to test subject number 16. We see this child's bed in the dorms, and in the seat we take during the final confrontation, we see the number 16 labelled on it. The fact we sit in the chair and sleep in the bed is pointing to the fact that we are number 16. Plus, if you actually stop to read the terms and conditions when you very first enter upward, the contract we sign tells us that it is being signed by number 16. Easy to miss, I mean, no one reads these things anyway. But Tom, I hear you saying, couldn't number 16 just be the number we've now been assigned?

It doesn't mean that we're a child from upward, and you're right, if that was the only evidence I had. See, as we're walking through the hallway, we see writings on the wall that say, I am friend and do you remember? You can find drawings of Binky with I Missed You written on it. In one of the notes, it says that Chumpy is incredibly violent towards intruders. He seems to only show kindness to staff and children. And yet, when we first encounter Chumpy, he doesn't immediately attack you. It's almost like these monsters all recognize us.

Like we were one of the children that characters like Binky helped to brainwash. And remember, Binky is being told off for not helping children to cut them. conform. These monsters like the children. They see them as friends and have missed us since all the children disappeared. And as the final nail in the coffin, number 16 isn't only referenced in the modern day, but in a document from Upwards Hayday. One of the notes you can find in the very first area talks about binky drinky. It tells us he's more like two entities. His head, the giant pacifier and the baby body. He was first introduced to Upward by Mr. Grin. The children loved him. The staff loved him. And his pacifier head has a milk that apparently soothes

any child no matter how upset. Which leads to some interesting visuals. And speaking of, as time went on, people would hear his giant stomach grumbling. But the staff ignored it until one day Binky snapped. His hunger could no longer be ignored. He destroyed the boy's dorm eating every single child inside. Except for one. Number 16. They saw everything. In a second, the trajectory of their life was changed forever. He would wake up screaming for months after the incident. All of these signs point to us being that child. Number 16, one of the kids from upward that was brainwashed, only to escape and come back years later. But while that note about Binky helps solve that particular mystery, it raises other issues.

Everything I've mentioned so far is about how these monsters are friendly to the children, and yet one day they just changed their minds and ate them. Binky wasn't the only one either. If you watch some of the Dark Pals video logs, their first entry shows off an entity called the Fortune Dweller. And during that video, it specifically calls out, We are hungry. These monsters need to be fed. But if that's all the kids were for,

you wouldn't bother with all the brainwashing. You just get them inside and feed them to the monsters. Plus, when these children disappeared, it was a big news story. This wasn't happening all the time. It was just one major incident. And the person who found out about it was supposedly found dead in a river. This wasn't supposed to happen.

And even though the monsters do need feeding, that's not the purpose of this facility. So what is? Well, for that, we need to take a closer look at our CEO. Or director or president. I tell you, this guy's got more credits than an indie filmmaker on their first project. But the dossier on him is very interesting. Much like every other employee mentioned in these records, he is universally despised.

But he always got results up until Dark Powers raided the facility. Then he suddenly disappeared without a trace. Nobody, no nothing. And as we all know from mascot horror, if there's nobody, that means he's likely not dead. Where did he go? Likely to whomever is really in charge. Near the end of the first paragraph, the document says that while he was the main man, on PayPal, there seemed to be an underlying current in these files that strongly suggests

something much bigger and darker is pulling his strings. And we know exactly what it is. During episode two of the Dark Pows in Real Life series, we get to see a little more of the mysterious fortune dweller. At one point when complaining to his minions that he lost a hand to the Dark Pows, he yells, in the name of the master. And the camera tilts up revealing a swirling vortex. Kind of reminds me of the Theoryverse logo, wink, wink.

Anyway, later on in that episode, one of the agents referred to, refers to this as the chaos. The vortex then shines a light over upward, and we can actually see that vortex in the game if you look outside at any point. This reminds me a lot of Greek mythology. I know, I always talk about Greek mythology, but it's so relevant, I promise. The chaos in Greek mythology was exactly this. Not a god like most characters in mythology, but a celestial presence,

a formless thing, the universe before order. So, this chaos being called the master, and the fact that it's always looming over upwards, and has that tied to Greek mythology, I think that's a pretty clear indication of who's really running the show. If you take another look at the fortune dweller, you may also notice something else. Its eyes, very distinct round eyes in the middle of a void, something it shares with the monsters it spawns, but also with a mysterious figure that shows up after you finish watching the child brainwashing video. While not every monster shares these eyes, it feels like a connecting thread,

especially as the fortune dweller is considered the most dangerous of the monsters we've encountered, and is literally eyes and limbs coming out of a black void, which is very reminiscent of the black void that chaos is represented by in Greek mythology. And who else has big round eyes? Mr. Grin. He wears those Elton John looking circle glasses, aligning himself with the chaos and the monsters within it. He's essentially a puppet.

He's performing, just like the brainwashing wants the kids to do. It was at this point that I was reminded of a 1988 sci-fi horror movie, They Live. It's actually where we get the famous line, I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble. But more importantly, it has a plot element that is extremely relevant. In this world, aliens have taken over the ruling class.

They paint the world in subliminal messaging that says things like submit, conform, consume, obey. The aliens do this to help them assimilate and take over Earth. Promising the rich and powerful people of our world, power, wealth and luxury. They can never have enough, can they? But you see the connections, right? We have brainwashing going on using very similar methods. All with the intention of these alien beings being able to assimilate with Earth and take over using the people in power to do it.

In Dark Pals, we have monsters that seemingly came from the chaos, which is portrayed as a Milky Way-like galaxy, another world. And they are all hungry. Children are being brainwashed into believing that this place is bright and perfect and wonderful, even when it's not. And they're taught to submit, conform, consume and perform. They are taught to love these monsters because they aren't really monsters. They're just misunderstood. And all they keep talking about is looking upwards and climbing higher. They will build, they will climb, they will never stop.

Their hopes too high to ever drop because hereupward, the only way is up. Despite the entire facility being underground. Because Upwood was never preparing these kids for the more crazy things that were below, it was preparing them for what's above, all to get them ready to perform. Just like Mr. Grin is. Although he likely walked away with the promise of power and wealth. I mean, he did disappear mysteriously during the raid, wouldn't be surprised if that was part of his compensation.

Eventually, everything would be ready. They'd have an army of kids ready to help them take over the world. And then they could finally have their fill. And remember, this is a children's asylum. The kids here aren't seen by society as the most sane of children. So it means if anything was to go wrong before it was ready, no one would believe them anyway. But while chaos currently just appears to be this galaxy-esque formless void in the sky,

I don't think that's its only form. This one's a bit of a swing, I'll admit, but I'd be mad at myself if I didn't say it and it ended up being true. So, looking through the staff dossiers, one stood out to me. Lauren, she's the mascot caretaker, the one we saw telling off Binky in that one video. She is a very interesting character. While she also is disliked by everyone, her backstory is even more mysterious than Mr Grins, mostly because she doesn't have one. Apparently, no one knows who hired her or where she came from.

She just showed up one day and was surprisingly very, very good at keeping the mascots under control. where every other person had failed to keep Binky under control, she managed it. She could actually yell at him and not face any consequences. Chompy apparently never left her side, acting like a personal bodyguard. Quotes, she knew exactly what made him tick. Someone who just showed up and is able to keep things running perfectly with unfounded knowledge of these monsters and how they worked, who everyone else is scared to cross, including the monsters,

who is clearly desperate for the mission to be a success, who knows why these monsters are here. You know what you're here for? Just get them. and conform. And, who is still considered active by the dark pals so is likely someone that we are going to meet in future chapters? If you ask me, that is a strong amount of evidence to point to her being the real person in charge, the one pulling the strings, the chaos.

But I guess we'll have to wait and see when we get to explore floor two in the future. In the meantime theorists, remember, that's just a theory. A game theory! Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling, spreadsheets. Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it, like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify

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