Game Theory - This Game Will STEAL Your Soul!

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he breaks down the lore of Don't Fret!

Oh no, it's happening again. Except, I hate to break it to you. Matt retired like months ago. So you're just going to have to settle for me instead. Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's tuned in to The Sweet Sound of Law. And recently, the demo for a new indie horror game caught my ear. Don't fret.

An indie horror game with a musical theme. As you can imagine, I was very excited to play this. Although, it isn't just about music. It was created by musicians. Musicians, you may know from right here on YouTube. The project was spearheaded by Rocket Music, a nerdcore music group who you might remember from their garden of band band song that we covered back in our Stinger Flynn theory.

The game also features collaborations with other nerdcore musicians like Oreo, longest solo ever, and even friend of the channel and fellow Brits, stupendium. But you know, I'm something of a musician myself, a guitarist to be specific. That means that running around the world as a little guitar man sounds right up my alley. Right now we only have a demo for the game. However, this demo was originally designed to be a chapter one and so there's a lot of little details, mysteries and of course

law that have been mixed together into a beautiful symphony. We play as fret, a student at the prestigious musical school called harmonic heights. Unfortunately, things are not going well at old HH because in classic indie horror fashion, there's been a mysterious uptick in the number of missing students. After our, presumably, dad comes banging on our door demanding to take us away to some event, we wake up inside a guitar case within harmonic heights. And it's up to us to figure out what's happened to all the missing kids, why we're a guitar now, and whether we can stop it. So get your instruments, tuned up loyal theorists as we explore the sick beats, sorry, the story beats of Don't Frette. When we wake up in this school and start the game, we quickly learn that this place

is on lockdown. And so, naturally, our main goal is to find a way to escape while avoiding the game's big monster, a woman with a tape for a head called Tapehead. I see you guys took the Silent Hill approach to naming your villains. After exploring a bunch of cool areas and coming face to cassette with Tapehead in a classic indie horror-style chase sequence, the game comes to a close. But the real story has only just begun. Throughout the game, we can find entries from Frets' journal scattered around harmonic heights.

From this journal, we learn about a character called Rachel McFadden. Rachel was in the grade above Freth, and she was assigned to be his buddy when he first enrolled in Harmonic Heights. She was also a violining prodigy, so much so that, according to Freight, she was... One of the stars of Harmonic Heights. She was going to make it out of here, and then one day. Sadly, Rachel would suffer the same fate as many of the other students, as she, too, is now missing. But Frat does have some leads about what might have happened to her. Rachel hasn't been in class all week. Heard in home room she got in a fight with Miss Hole and refuses to practice at all for the recital next week.

Last time I saw her she was talking to the janitor, or maybe he knows something. And if you go to the janitor's office, we find a note that seems to outline how that conversation went down. You're a monster. You let her know too much. And now she's missing because of you. It all started with a simple kindness and escalated into Rachel's disappearance. It all depends on fret. Great, not like there isn't enough on my plate as it is.

So, the janitor lets some information slip to Rachel. But what? Well, before she disappeared, Rachel was apparently pretty freaked out about some weird creatures that she saw. all roaming around the school at night. Rachel pulled me aside after practice today and really scared me. Last night she snuck out after hours and swear she saw something in the hallway. Had to be the night cleaning crew, right? Rachel must have thought pretty similarly here,

leading to her speaking to the janitor, who clearly didn't hide the truth. And that caused her to disappear. We also find notes from other students that talk about these same strange creatures and what they are, that they hide in vent and that they're afraid of the light. If it wasn't clear, those notes are kind of. of our instructions because eventually we get to see these things for ourselves. They're these small humanoid creatures wearing what looks like school uniforms but with their faces covered in paper sheets, music sheets. If you explore the school a bit more, you can find

one of these costumes hidden in one of the students abandoned lockers. Seems fitting for the monsters in a music school, almost as if they're fulfilling a role where both the teachers and students are monsters. But then during our first encounter with one of these guys, the radio that's been playing in the background suddenly begins telling us the story of one of these missing children from the school. Playing this message, along with the first true visual of this creature, it's almost as if they're connected by more than just their dress code. Apparently, the local media has been referring to these missing kids as a missing innocent. Gotta love local media and they're obvious yet dramatic naming conventions. However, if you check every inch of this school, you can find several posters depicting

characters from the game like Frette, tapehead, and of course these new childlike creatures, which we can now see unnamed, the missing. I'll take what happened to the missing children for 200, Alex. These creatures, the missing, are the missing innocent, the missing children from the school. That's why they're storing their uniforms in lockers, they're just following old habits, dressed in the same clothes they wore every day to the school. What's interesting is that the radio DJ specifically says that they were abducted from their suburban homes. And what did we see at the start of this game? Our dad trying desperately to take us somewhere from our suburban home.

Were we about to be turned into another one of the missing? Probably. Although clearly something intervened, turning us into a more complex style of monster like tapehead instead of the generic missing. Sadly, we don't have answers on the specifics for that right now. This is just a demo after all. But what I do have an answer for is why.

Why are all these kids being turned into the missing? and more importantly, who is responsible. One of the few things we are reminded of time and time again throughout this game is the recital that Rachel was apparently not practicing for prior to her disappearance. This recital seems to be a pretty big deal at Harmonic Heights. A welcome pack we find early on in the game mentions that Harmonic Heights puts on two recitals annually, and this is where the students are showcased to some of the top talents in the world, which makes sense, I suppose, for a music school.

I wasn't part of a music school growing up, but our summer concerts were aiming. massive deal regardless. I once said, made that a kick in the head. Although these definitely aren't the grade school recitals that all of your friends and family can and are forced to sit through. This event seems to be a bit different. At the end of the demo, we find this letter written to a Dr. Sharon Reed, the founder of Harmonic Heights.

And it details some strange requirements. Dr. Reed, on behalf of the foundation, we celebrate this mutual partnership. Again, as part of the agreement, we will be putting on a recital twice per year with a strict privacy policy. It is of the utmost importance that you leave us to conduct this event behind closed doors. Your involvement in this matter is unnecessary and unwanted. We shall be in touch soon, sincerely, X. Um, excuse me, sir, we still call it Twitter, thank you. So, this foundation are the ones running the recitals, not the school itself, which is an immediate red flag. But we got to keep hunting for that law. And the only way to do that,

is to speak with them directly. Hidden around the school are phone numbers that you can call using the in-game pay phone to dispense some extra law. And one of them is found where you'd most expect to find graffiti in a school. The bathroom stalls. Inside, we find a boy covered in blood and cassette tape. I wonder who could possibly be responsible for that. But that's not what's important here.

Alongside messages about practicing and warnings about the upcoming recital, we get another one of these phone numbers. 555-7-1-10. Calling it, transfers us to what appears to be a receptionist at the Foundation, and she's not exactly thrilled that we've called her. Hello, Miss Stone at the Foundation? How can I help? Wait, I don't recognize this number.

Who is this? Where did you get this number? Listen to me, you little brat. We're tracking you right now. You shouldn't have called in from... From... Wait, harmonic heights? We'll be there in just a moment.

So clearly, the Foundation are not the good guys here. They want to conduct these recitals, full of the greatest young musical prospects outside of the public eye. But why? What kind of indie horror plot are they scheming? This is where our old pal the stipendium comes in. Stoops voices a character called the conductor. Basically, the musical version of one of those Zoltar machines that would read your fortune.

These conductor machines are a new addition to the harmonic heights. And the school assumes that the kids are going to love these new things. And let me tell you, we certainly do, because instead of reading our fortune, the conductor tells us that he's going to help us. escape from this nightmare school. Though, his methods are unusual. Fred, the only escape from this treachery comes in the form of talent canisters. Locate them in the school and bring them to me.

Do you understand? No. As a matter of fact, I don't understand. What on earth is a talent canister? Well, thankfully, as the game progresses, it does become clearer what the heck the conductor is going on about. We get to see what one of these talent canisters look like thanks to yet another poster that we find on the halls in the school. And it has the caption, talent.

You got it. Do schools actually think these kinds of posters work? Like, a kid is just walking down the whole way, feeling sorry for themselves, sees this poster and goes, Wait, you really think so? Thanks, poster. Also, this is a school for the most talented musical prodigies. You don't think they already know by the fact they are there that they have talent?

Immediately, I'm tipped off to know that there's something weird about these canisters, and that becomes even more clear when we get to see the canisters IRL. Going back to everyone's favourite school location, the bathroom stalls, in the one where we found the phone number, you can see a broken talent canister above this tape-covered body. It almost looks like this child was captured by tapehead and that this talent canister is part of the capture process. Maybe it's even part of what turns them into the missing.

And that is when it all started to click into place. You see, the name tapehead has a second meaning. Yes, she literally has a tape for a head, But there's actually a real tool in the real world, also called a tapehead. It's the part of a cassette player that allows you to record and play back audio from the tape. Throughout the chase sequence, we see words written on the wall that say, She can hear you. She is listening for the best talent in the musical school.

And as we saw with the kid in the bathroom, capturing them and likely recording their talent, harvesting it into these canisters. I mean, what else would a talent canister contain other than, well, talent. When the conductor said, They're after your talent, Fred. That will do whatever it takes to seize it. He was being literal. Everything. The recitals, the kidnappings, this whole

freaking school is orchestrated, pun very much intended, by the foundation to extract the essence of these kids' musical talents. That's why the foundation, once these recitals done in secret, they're being used to perform some sort of extraction ceremony that captures the

raw essence of talent. Heck, it's likely that the recital was the event Frette's dad was so eager to drag us off to in the game's opening cutscene. And the reason they're doing all of this, it's a tale as old as time, money. Near the start of the game, we see a television ad for something called Conductec. Fast track your child's success and leave your morals behind with Conductec, pushing the boundaries of medical ethics off a bridge since 1951. The foundation isn't just stealing talent from musical prodigies.

They are then offering that talent to the highest bidder. wealthy people who can just buy their child's way to the top without having to put in any work, or without having to listen to months of bad practicing before they get good. Hmm. This is starting to seem like a bit of a metaphor for the real world music industry. I'm sure you're all familiar with nepotism and how those with wealthy or famous parents can gain careers without really having to do anything themselves. And often, that comes at the cost of new, young and unknown artists.

Many of the top record labels won't give them a second look because they're more interested in the money that can be provided by these net. Epo Babies. Or the top record labels will find and use these unknown talents to make the label richer and help bring success to those other people only for them to be discarded once their usefulness runs out. Now, in the world of generative AI, it's becoming even more of a problem. Music labels can create mega hit sensations overnight with very little time, money or efforts.

Wannabe musicians can create a smash hit without any musical skill or training. But the AI they're using, it doesn't just make music out of thin air. It has to be trained. And it does so by listening to. to the music that was created and owned by others, particularly independent creators. Creators like Rocket Music, Stupendium, Jake Neutron, Oreo, longest solo ever, Toasty Marshmallow, their talent is being stolen by these AI algorithms and then sold to anyone who can afford it without the need to spend years practicing, training or building

an audience. The good news, though, is that this game is a message of hope that shows what happens when we take an active role in the story. Obviously, by taking an active role in the story, Obviously, by taking an active role in this game, taking control of threat, we are going to be defeating the foundation and help saving all of these talented kids. But by doing so, we're also supporting talented independent creators like Rocket Music, rather than those that wish to exploit them. Major record labels would never have picked up musicians making music about indie video games. But you guys, the fans, showed up for these once-unknown artists,

and as a result, they've been able to forge careers for themselves. These guys are selling albums, packing out concert venues, and now releasing video games. I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of this game, once we beat the foundation and save everyone, we end up exposing the foundation for everything they've been doing, and then watch Fret, Rachel, and all the other students go on to make a name for themselves independently, just like Rocket Music did. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see for when the full game drops next year. In the meantime, remember, keep supporting independent artists.

And also remember, that's just a theory. Game theory! Thanks for watching!