Hello internet! Welcome to Game Theory the show that regrets
the things it had to do to make this video. Your sacrifice shall not be in vain, because
today we're going to figure out what's going on with the Internet's own version of Dora
the Explorer, Amanda the adventurer. You might remember last year when we theorized
about this little game, it was developed as part of a game jam and as a result was simple
in its approach. You put different VHS tapes into VCRs, all
acronyms that I'm sure you zoomers understand. And we answered questions posed by the lead
character Amanda. By feeding her the wrong answers, Amanda would
get angrier and more chaotic, eventually losing control and becoming a monster. The Internet fell in love with this thing,
and since then it has gone through a major glow up. Gone is the tiny living room, gone is being
stuck staring at a TV screen and gone are all the demonic drawings on the wall. I wonder if we, like, step further back we'll
see... Oh, whoa, oh, whoa, whoa!! Oh, this is so different. Oh, they went hard on this new update. This is great. Instead, the full length version of the game
has us in an attic full of clever puzzles and old memorabilia that has a weird habit
of appearing behind us when we finish a tape. Woah, hey, there's a cake. But the best thing to come out as part of
the full length version of the game: LORE! Not only are there a bunch more tapes to watch
through, there are secret tapes and multiple endings to find, and all of them paint a fascinating
new story here. So it was my old theory right or is there
more hiding beneath the surface? Insert the tape, press play and adjust your
tracking my friends. It's time to begin. In this new update we play as Riley, and that's
about all we get to know about that character. Well, that and the fact that they just inherited
this house that we're standing in from their deceased Aunt Kate. However, Kate warns us that if we choose to
investigate the attic and the tapes that live within, there's no going back. Alongside this note is a conspiracy board
full of post-its and newspaper clippings, which means that Kate and I, you could ship
it. The main focus of the board at the beginning
of the game is a letter from a woman named Joanne talking about her missing younger brother. The letter says that he used to watch the
Amanda The Adventure Show a bunch as a kid, but would end up in a trance-like state. Eventually he would disappear without a trace. Joanne then asks Kate to investigate, which
seems like an odd request for your local librarian. Then again if you look around the cork board,
you could start to see why Kate may have been the one picked for the job. We see that she was looking into the kid's
school records, something the librarian might have access to. We also see a note that mentions dynakinesis,
which is the supernatural ability to create and manipulate energy. She says that you would see sigils if such
a transfer occurred. And right next to this note is a torn piece
of paper with a bunch of sigils on them. These aren't just any symbols either. These are alchemical symbols that refer to
specific elements. Back in the day, alchemists focused on the
transmutation of base metals like lead into noble metals like gold. Clearly, Aunt Kate ain't your average librarian. Too bad she's gone now and it's up to us to
figure out what's going on with this missing kid. Or should I say, kids, because it becomes
very quickly apparent that this is not an isolated incident. The tape In the Neighborhood shows outlines
of kids on both sides of the street, police chalk outlines that are usually reserved for
dead people lying on the pavement. If you manage to find the corrupted version
of this exact tape, Amanda's sheep companion, Wooly, asks if the friends can come back to
the neighborhood. Amanda, though she seems unfazed. Now, all of this alone doesn't prove that
Amanda is somehow making a bunch of kids go missing. But I would tell you to pay close attention
to the ending credits of that VHS tape. After most of the tapes that we played through,
we’re met with a credit sequence and ending sting for the company that made the show Hameln
Entertainment. This is the production company that makes
the Amanda the Adventure Show, but their name and their mouse logo immediately reminded
me of something. “Follow us to fun.” So it's like a Pied Piper situation. Oh, Hameln. Hamelin! And it's a mouse. *crickets*
[Ash]: Yes? If you like Ash, don't know what's going on. This whole thing's one big reference to the
story of the Pied Piper. Basically, this fairy tale is the story of
the town of Hamelin. See? There's the name right there. It's overrun by rats, and there's your logo. And so the town hires the Pied Piper to play
his magic pipe to get rid of those rats. And he does exactly that. He plays a song that lures all the rats to
him, where he then leads them down to the local river to drown themselves. However, when the town of Hamelin doesn't
pay him for his services, he once again uses his pipe. But this time he plays a song that leads all
the children out of town. He marches them all over to a local cave where
they're never seen again. This story seems to match the idea that the
neighborhood is now missing all of Wooly's friends. Amanda is essentially our Pied Piper, and
we actually see this firsthand through one of the game's secret tapes that you can unlock. Instead of our usual CGI Amanda and Wooly
Adventure. We actually get ourselves a home videotape
of a girl named Lauren on her birthday. She's sitting there glaring at the TV, transfixed. Much like we heard about in that note from
Joanne at the beginning of the game, her parents are trying to get her attention, telling her
that they have her favorite ice cream ready, mint chocolate chip. Which, whose favorite flavor is mint chocolate
chip? I mean, it's good, don't get me wrong, but
favorite flavor? Flavor preferences aside, the parents go back
up to try and convince Lauren to come down the stairs, but suddenly she's gone, with
the front door of the house left wide open. As they run out of the house to look for the
last thing that we hear is Amanda from the TV saying: I love mint chocolate chip. Somehow Amanda is able to listen through the
TV and she's somehow lured Lauren, who's literally walked out the door and disappeared just like
the children of Hamelin. As you watch more of these secret tapes we
actually get to see a little bit more insight into Hameln Entertainment in the history of
the show. In one of the tapes, we actually meet the
creator of the series, Sam Colton, and we hear about how he started the show as a small
live action production after being inspired by his adopted daughter, Rebecca. You actually find a newspaper clipping on the
conspiracy board in the attic during the time puzzle, which has an interview with Sam, where
he says this, quote: We may not have the budget for a big production, but I truly believe
there is a soul that transcends that. *MatPat siren* Keyword alert! Keyword alert! Anytime an indie horror game mentions the
word “soul”, you know that things are going to end badly. And sadly, my suspicions were correct here. In the VHS tape Oh No Accidents there's a
flash frame that reveals a credit for a Chief Neurosurgical Expert. Which at first glance would make you go; Why
does a kid show need that? But Amanda eventually answers that exact question
for us in the tape Everything Rots If she can feel her own body rotting far away,
that means that Amanda has a physical body outside of the show. And who else is that going to be but the girl
that played Amanda in their original live action production: Rebecca. I suspect that this chief neurosurgical expert
has figured out a way to put her mind, her consciousness, into the series. Literally becoming the soul of the show. She still does have some sort of link to her
body, able to feel it rotting, but clearly that's not supposed to exist. As the tape distorts any time she thinks about
it. There is good news, though. While her body may be rotting. Clearly, there's still a chance to save her. In the final tape we see Amanda playing alone
on a couch drawing with crayons and asking if we can share secrets. If we say yes, the TV audio effects disappear
and clear as day she tells us: Rebecca is alive. Sure, her body might slowly be atrophying
and her mind might be separated from her body, but there is still time to save her. That said, we’re going to have to face the
evil that's up ahead if we hope to do it. What is that evil? Ask yourself this. Why would Sam, Rebecca's seemingly loving,
adopted father, do this to her? Was it just to make the show more popular? Did he need to gather more children to him
like the Pied Piper? I know we talk a lot about awful father figures
across the various series that we cover on the show, but I was hoping that maybe, just
maybe this one would be a little bit different. Thankfully it is. The indie horror gods heard my plea with this
one because it turns out that Sam isn't the one at fault. Here he is no longer the one steering the
ship. Yes, Amanda the Adventure was his live action
production, but he sold it to Hameln Entertainment. Hameln is a third party that actually bought
out the rights to the show and turned it into an animated adventure. While this sounded like everything that Sam
wanted on paper. In practice, he started to feel more and more
uncomfortable with how the production was being run. In the green tape, we actually listened to
a recording session. There, we hear Rebecca saying a handful of
what seem like random phrases. The person directing claims that this is to
train the technology's dynamic voice reactions, which is plausible, I suppose, given the rise
in AI voices that we see all over the Internet. However this series, Amanda the Adventure
is set in the early 2000s. Technology was not that advanced back then,
so Sam is right to be suspicious of it all. And then Rebecca says this: This ends the session. But listen again to those phrases that Rebecca
was saying earlier. At first they seem to be phrases that could
be used in pretty much any episode: Bah Lamb for when they go to the farm. Pie Man for when they go to a bakery or bake
some pies like they do in the first VHS tape. So what's the big deal here? Well, what if I told you that these phrases
actually have a secondary meaning? All three of them: Bye-yell, pie-man, and
bah-lamb, are phonetic ways of pronouncing the names: Bael Paimon and Balam. Three king demons from the Ars Goetia. Chanting the names of demons has always been
part of summoning rituals, especially when you're talking about these sorts of things
in pop culture contexts. And that's exactly what Hameln's trying to
do here. Why else would there be a containment specialist
that's listed in the credits of the initial neighborhood video? After chanting the words, Rebecca hears the
voice of a man in her headphones, one of these demon kings, all of whom are described as
having a hoarse voice. While all of these demons are certainly different,
they do share a couple of similarities. They all control large legions of lesser demons. They're all able to inform or give the gift
of knowledge. But most importantly, they all require hosts
to manifest. And usually this involves children either
as sacrifices or to physically be the host. That is what Hameln are doing here. They needed Rebecca and the other children
to become hosts and sacrifices in order to summon these demon kings and gain their knowledge
and power. These children would be led to the slaughter. Which is why, no matter what location you
pick, it always leads you back to the butcher. The eyes and those meat products aren't just
a cute, esthetic choice, my friends. Those are past to victims, past children that
have been led to the chopping block. However, there was one thing that stood in
Hameln's way: Rebecca's father, Sam. I would suspect after this sort of incident,
he wanted to pull Rebecca from the show, maybe even find a way to pull the rights entirely. And so, as most of these evil companies tend
to do, they made him disappear. Sam was so happy with the idea that his show
could be a bigger success that much like the Fox in the video Everything Rots, he wasn't
killed by a knife. He wasn't killed by a gun. He was instead lured in by Hameln using sweet
berries, the sweet lies that would convince him that they would turn his show into something
bigger. But instead it was all a big trap. A trap created by the very people that swore
to help him. And then with Sam out of the picture, Rebecca
is all alone. They can get her to sign along the dotted
line and do whatever they want with her. Trapping her in the Hameln facility. Just like the lonely kitten that Amanda so
desperately asks us to help. However, unlike silly Mr. Fox, I don't think
that this is the end for Sam. I suspect that he's still around keeping a
close eye on things and trying to take them down from the inside. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that Sam is
the real identity of Wooly. Wooly spent the entirety of the game trying
to keep Amanda on track. When she begins to discuss topics that are
inappropriate for a kids show like death or rotting wooly is very quick to interject. He tries to get Amanda back on the good and
wholesome path. This strikes me not as the actions of a fellow
child, but rather of a parent. We hear a story during one of the secret tapes
about how after Sam's disappearance, the show begins to change, it starts to talk about
inappropriate subjects. This is not the show that Sam built and he
can see that. Wooly doesn't just play the killjoy either. He's also the one that tries to help Amanda
by keeping her calm. When Amanda loses control, the monster comes
out and Wally knows it. So when she starts to forget things or remember
the bad stuff that's happened because of her, he desperately tries to make her happy. Sounds to me like the actions of a concerned
father. He knows what Amanda is and what'll happen
if the monsters let loose. So he steers Amanda and the player towards
positive and happy subjects in order to keep that beast at bay. But the Monster and Hameln are fighting back. In their visit to the farm, Wooly is constantly
being silenced, Amanda tells him that sheep don't talk. And as we go through, he begins to bah uncontrollably
until he becomes another mindless sheep like all the rest, finally falling in line with
Hameln's plan. It's actually pretty diabolical. You're wanting to turn Rebecca into Amanda,
so why not test out that mind transfer ability on someone you don't mind accidentally killing
if it goes wrong? Notice that it's only once Wooly becomes a
true sheep that we see Amanda asking to help the poor and lonely kitten. The kitten that represents her. Now that Sam is gone, she's truly alone, asking
for someone, anyone to help her. But hey! While Riley really did luck out. Just being gifted a house by their aunt. Sadly, we're not all that lucky. We just can't wait around for a property with
an attic this large to fall into our laps. Fortunately, you can start saving up today
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a theory, A GAME THEORY! I’ll see you next week.
