Game Theory - Turn Off The TV! (Amanda The Adventurer)

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Well, it is about time I talk about the Dora the Explorer inspired horror game called Amanda The Adventurer. This game has been making the rounds on YouTube, including my own playthrough on GTLive. That means we are past due for a theory. What secrets and horrors is Amanda hiding? Let's dive in!

Hi internet, welcome to game theory. I'm Matt Pat. 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? Uh-uh-uh, let's try again. What kind of theory should we make? Say the right answer. That's right, a game theory!

Well, 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. Oh, internet. Welcome to Game Theory.

Dora the Explorer. She's cute. She's funny. She's willing to stare at you for hours with her cold dead eyes. 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 a miss.

I love that the one E is backwards. That's how you know it's scary, Matt. But they figured, like, the rest of the E's are correct. 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 for you to figure out what the correct answer is. Do you know where this door is? But be careful, because 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 are just straight up seizing control the keyboard. Also, can we just agree that it's a bit strange where we're, watching VHS tapes but we're playing them like a video game, typing and using the mouse to click on answers. I'm just saying, it doesn't quite make a lot of sense. Over the course of the three tapes, Amanda and her friend Woolley the Sheep take you to a handful of different locations. The first tape focuses around getting apples from the grocery store, despite the fact that our friend

Woollies seems to be allergic. I'm allergic to apples. You should never be afraid to try something new. At the end, a glitchy roll of credits plays. Of course, I look 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. Directed by Heave Starvey. That's supposed to Steve Harvey. That's funny. So that's good.

Lance Pimmerman. I think it's like Hans Zimmerman. Oh, good one. Yeah. Yeah, you're... Oh, music. Music by Hans Zimmerman. That's right. But outside of all the grown-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 the TV. thing 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 two. Let me tell you, that scary backwards he wasn't lying. As soon as the tape begins, we see Woolley walking towards the camera, breaking the fourth wall to address us on the other end of the screen, telling us to listen because he doesn't have much time. Oh, it's you. Okay, we don't have much time. Whatever you do. A glitch then forces Woolley back into his normal position. Today's adventure has us at the

Butchers to get some meat for grandma, which is weird, considering that grandma's a vegetarian. Today, we're going to get meat for grandma. But is a grandma a vegetarian? Once you fill in the blank and ask the butcher for 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 woolly. Beef, 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. three 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 jump scare. 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 aft in 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 a kid's cartoon character wants out of this game story. Or at least, that's how it was. But since the initial release of Amanda the Adventure, 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 up 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 also have the same hair color, which if this was normal life would mean practically nothing. But in video game speak, that short hand 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 Woolley and Amanda on the tapes. On the second VHS, when Amanda and Woolley want to go and buy some meat, they both refer to Grandma as, well, as Grandma. Calling her a familial title seems to indicate that she's 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 Woolley and Amanda? brother and sister somehow transported into the world of the show. Certainly seems that way.

Beyond the picture on the wall, the three updates have all worked largely the same way. When you get to the butcher scene, Amanda asks you 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 woolly, a new tape appears on your pile. Putting this one into the VCR reveals different clues depending on which update you're 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 home.

Update 1.2 replaces the image that you find on the secret fourth 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 woolly. Clearly, this is where woolly, or should I say the boy who would become woolly, 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 roller coaster 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 Woolley, as they search for buried treasure out in the middle of the forest.

Three ominous mounds loom in front of us, and Woollie is clearly not his usual self. He's distracted, almost like he's here against his will. Amanda asks you to click on the correct mound, and once you do, things take a very dark turn. I brought a crowbar, a rope, and a shovel. We already used the crowbar for the door. We use the rope for... And now we only have the shovel.

Yeah! Is it normal to need a news on your adventures there, Amanda? It's then that Woolley completely breaks character, just like you did at the start of episode two, proclaiming that he doesn't care what Amanda's going to do to him. He grabs the camera and talks to us directly. You, take the tape out now and destroy them. Burn them, whatever. Just get rid of these other tases. Do you hear me? You can't let anyone else watch these. Amanda, like a possessed child, begins to float in the background, transforming into the monster.

If Wully 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. No, I can't let you do this anymore. I don't care what you do to me. 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 have to go to the game's Itchio 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 time, and quote again, included with this box set, Let Me Out.

So we have ourselves 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 victim. back into the tapes, feeding souls into the world of Amanda the adventurer. Probably the reason why all the objects and buildings and trees here have eyes, because there's people trapped inside of this thing. Like Wully 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 2. If you don't know, The Ring franchise is all about a girl named Samara who exists inside of a cursed VHS tape. If you watch the tape, seven days later, the evil girl crawls out of the TV to kill you. And immediately, you can start to see a 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 that are 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 here 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 that 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 that was 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's 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 Wully's death. Amanda and Wully have lured yet another victim to the forest.

Wully can't do this anymore. He stands up to Amanda and is ultimately killed off and buried in the woods for it. Worth noting here that the brother in the game, Woolley 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 Woolley's murder. In the second half of this newest installment, once Woollie's 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 then they hear the familiar whispers of demonic force. The same whispers that 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 the truck

and lying about burning it to someone else on the phone. Yeah, I found the place. It was just out the highway. The tapes are all destroyed too. Apparently this thing has a hold of our protagonist. But the key detail here is this. Is it followed? No, I don't think so. Who'd be following me? It seems like there's someone else, or a group of people out there

who are trying to gather these tapes because they understand the power of the tapes hold. Swiper? No, swiping, those evil-possessed tapes. Oh, man! Throughout the video, we see a box of these tapes came in with an additional VHS that reads, Destroy tape, do not watch. Clearly, people know about the evil that's on these things.

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, 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 Spider-Man Elsa channels but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching