The Disturbing Development of a Haunted Game...

[Music] for [Music] of with need you now you are you [Music] you welcome back everyone you know I've spent a lot of time on my channel talking about spooky fictional games pet scop dimin these are really great projects but inevitably there's a level of interaction that stops with these projects you can't actually play them their stories and scares are all viewed through the lens of someone else but what if you were the one experiencing these Mysteries inside of one of these games well that's exactly the case with these two games I'll be talking about today basilisk there's a little bit of background I should probably give on this project first though so let me boot that up all right so the bassilus games are a set of two experimental horror projects created by Akuma Kira a developer you may be familiar with Kira's most popular work would probably be Spooky's jump scare Mansion they're also the developer behind lost in Vivo one of my favorite indie horror games that I actually made a really bad video about in 2019 recently I stumbled upon a project from them I hadn't heard of the Basilisk NES ROM and the game basilisk 2000 now these projects work a bit like unfiction in that everything about them from their download pages to the content of the games themselves are trying to get you to buy into the larger story around them in reality their projects created by Akuma Kira in the past few years but in the fiction of their worlds their retro games from the SNES era and the 2000s respectively unfinished or incomplete recoveries of games now decades old discovered preserved and uploaded on itch.io to allow them to be played on Modern Hardware they are necessarily incomplete meaning the story here isn't just that of the plot of the games but also also about the developers and the history around the IP it also means we'll need to draw information from outside just the playable portions of the games we'll need to search through the game's files the documentation left by the people porting the games and at times even decompile assets from the game to get a better understanding I should also mention these are firmly horror projects so things are bound to get spooky all right so we should probably start at the beginning with the first game basilisk for the SNES [Music] the best place to start would be with the itch.io page itself the screenshots available here along with the Page's backdrop showcase an ominous disposition Dark Woods gloomy hallways and cloaked figures it appears to be a sort of pseudo 3D Dark Fantasy firstperson Dungeon Crawler the description on the page gives us a brief bit of context on the nature of the game basilisk is an unfinished RPG for the Super Nintendo now mostly stable and playable through the very old SNES y plus emulator or Sessy you play as a noble knight from the Old Kingdom sent down to solve the famine also available on the page is a 3D model of the original SNES cartridge through that description we're starting to see what makes this game unique and after downloading the file it becomes even more clear just how unconventional this project is instead of booting you right into the game you have to navigate through this Super Nintendo emulator interface for those who don't know emulators are pieces of software which allow you to play games from other systems by emulating those systems individual games are loaded into this software through ROM files the technicalities aren't important emulators are used very commonly to play through retro games and many emulators also allow for extra convenience features like save states which allow you to save and load an exact state of the game at any time for clarity sessi isn't a functional emulator you can't boot any other ROMs with it it's designed specifically to load the ROM file for basilisk but it does a good job of appearing like a legitimate Super Nintendo emulator loading our basilisk ROM we're greeted with an ominous title screen the blood red skeleton of a beast surrounded in darkness hitting start a scroll slowly unfurls before us myeni 1431 ad Untold hardship befalls the kingdom a time of famine the king struggles to provide for his people and allocate food to The Peasants you a simple Knight are dispatched to hear out the people but it may be too late when you arrive at Town it is not what you expected the town is deserted the buildings are gone and there's a shrill Howl in the air from here we're loaded directly into the game a low reses 3D World a dark Forest howling wind the only thing to do is Forge our way through the [Applause] darkness one little Quirk about this game and it may really be the only thing I don't particularly like about it is that actually finding things in each of its levels is very tedious you're surrounded by dense fog or Darkness so you can only see a short ways in front of you you move incredibly slowly each level's environments are incredibly easy to get lost or turned around in and there is no direction this tedium I think is a deliberate choice this game is about Discovery finding pieces of this unfinished project but it can be a little frustrating and not in a particularly challenging way it's more of a Time think than it is a puzzle to be solved in some respects still I do think this is intentional it wants you to commit to uncovering what lies in each environment so commit we shall wandering for a while Within These Dark Woods you'll come across a cloaked figure who introduces himself as scratch he's a Wanderer of sorts and gives us a piece of advice though we don't have all the context for its usefulness to us yet on your way to the ruin you should be on the lookout Crossing that space won't get you anywhere the vein that connects the Two Worlds hm cryptic there are a couple other things we can find here like this bizarre monolith the Obelisk comes and emits warm sensation to the touch after exploring these Woods for a while you may begin to either run out of things to find or simply get bored with looking at the same trees this is where those save states I was talking about come in handy the sessie interface shows seven possible save states we can load and in the read me for the game someone named Kyle Tubman explains that each save state is taken from developer notes selected for us to load into to see the more completed sections of the game or at least points of interest that the developers were working on it seems like we're in state zero so let's try loading one great more Dark Woods we can find something unique here though some kind of sigil is drawn on the ground and when we inspect it it was here a 100 years ago that the Beast was slain a beast huh I'd guess that Skeleton on the title screen is probably related State 2 takes us somewhere different finally the inside of some nondescript dimly lit building scratch is there waiting for for us he tells us this is all that's left of the Old Kingdom he also oddly mentions a woman he used to know and says that he was sweet on her once is this guy like a 50s mobster but she betrayed him and is gone like everyone else okay dude trauma dumping state three takes us back into some woods but thankfully these look very different it's light out but a heavy fog envelops us limiting our vision as much as the darkness through the fog as we roam these Woods the ghostly aerations of a woman up here calling out with chilling words please help me what is this place mocking me in the afterlife you were meant for greatness how could you it's odd is this Spirit talking about us what did we do are we responsible for her death or maybe she's calling out to someone else after all scratch's words are the only reference to a woman someone who is now gone can scratch be trusted continuing through the fog we can find a blood red sword which we're able to collect and can conveniently follow us through the save States from here on state four takes us to an even darker dense and eerier sounding Forest than before through the thicket a strange creature emerges resembling a massive octopus although your initial Instinct might be to kill this Beast we can't instead it leaves us with yet more ominous messages even if you kill everything there'll be one monster left this once again alludes to some Sinister motive if we kill every enemy we find we'll be the only bloodthirsty killer left food for thought but we haven't even run into any enemies yet and either way our job here is to help save the Kingdom from famine what is motivating these accusatory messages State 5 is inaccessible so we move right onto State 6 which begins to shed a bit more light on the suggested darker undertones of our simple night it's a demo the type of thing that plays when you leave some games alone for too long playing through pre-recorded portions of the game here the demo shows the player wandering through the woods and whenever they come across a Town's person brutally killing them in one strike a scream and they're gone is this supposed to be the Knight is this the point of view of another entity perhaps this Beast the Basilisk returned from the dead is this why the kingdom was empty all its inhabitants were slain none of these options paint a particularly pretty picture but if this really is the perspective of the Knight slaughtering innocent towns folk it could begin to explain why we've been hearing so many messages that seem to imply a darker side to our character what's particularly interesting and may further reinforce this idea that the Knight we play as is the one responsible for the villager's death is that we actually see scratch in this demo but instead of killing him we pass right by him the only one who's spared is the Shady figure who's helped this night along so far State seven is our final accessible level we're in a dark Corridor blocked by Fallen Rubble on one side and scratch on the other light shining behind him seeing as the other way is blocked we approach scratch could you believe it it seems nowhere as safe not even a castle to think that the Basilisk made it all the way here so at whatever point in the story this is it seems the Beast this basilisk has returned a 100 years after it was slain leaving scratch behind we travel into the light which leads us back into the woods and here is where we receive one of two different endings if we never picked up the sword after walking through the forest for a moment a massive eye appears from the darkness we only get a Split Second Glance before we're taken to a game over screen presumably that was the Basilisk and without a weapon to defend ourselves we perished so let's come back more prepared collecting The Sword and going back we head into the Darkness ready to face the m Monster again but this time no monster appears instead a night emerges from the darkness and Finn the end our sword cast aside in the grass night turned today sure that seems to be a little more of a hopeful ending but also what who's the other Knight what happened to the Basilisk well I'll talk about my interpretation of the events here in a moment but first there there's one last thing to discover in stage 7 stage seven feels pretty limited with the other path blocked it seems like there's only one option but there's a trick here with this Rebel one that may be familiar to those of you who are fans of Kira's work a trick all call the false blockade it shows up in Lost in Vivo 2 spoilers for that for just a moment in Lost in Vivo you come upon a puzzle room in which you're trying to figure out the correct way to get this gate to open allowing you to move forward the solution to this puzzle walk right through the gate has no Collision this is just one of many mind freaks that game throws at you so if you know to look out for this sort of thing you might be inclined to investigate further into this Rebel what you'll find is that the Collision on the rebel itself doesn't extend the full width of the passageway and you can simply walk around it on the other side you find that you really aren't supposed to have made it here the walls fade away and the unfinished exterior of the level reveals itself off to one side there's an object with the word error plastered on it reminiscent of the game Garry's Mod in which 3D models that can't properly be loaded are replaced with a glowing text that reads error interacting with the error behind the map reveals some more cryptic text crossing the space won't get you anywhere the vein that connects the two games the devil is in the details oh but the devil is in everything your mind might already be racing to make sense of this but we'll get to that in a moment as of now that's the most important stuff that can be found in basilisk knowing how well hidden and tedious it can be to find a lot of the stuff in this game I'm sure there are a couple things that I missed in some of these levels and I'd encourage you to explore them for yourself if you have the patience but so far we've been pretty thorough and I think we have enough information here to begin trying to piece together a bit of the story found within this unfinished game by the game's very nature the story elements are fractured and incomplete we'll need to collect and assemble the pieces ourselves and it's very likely we'll still get an incomplete picture the best place to start would be taking stock of what we know the scroll in the beginning tells us we're a knight and that the town's folk have gone missing what happened happened to them well in the stage six demo we see someone slowly killing off all the villagers whose perspective are we seeing here the immediate thought might be the Basilisk that the Beast which was slain a 100 years ago has returned but there are a few strange things found elsewhere that muddy these waters for one the character in stage six explicitly spares scratch what reason would the Basilisk have to do that in stage three the ghosts of a woman throw accusatory messages at us and in stage four a strange creature speaks to us with the implication that we've gone on some kind of Killing Spree these pieces seem to imply that it's actually us the Knight who's killed all the villagers okay so the game has a bit of a bait and switch twist where we were the killer all along that doesn't answer everything though what about the endings the Basilisk and scratch well I think it goes further than just implying we're a killer I think the game is trying to tell us that we are the Basilisk it's almost perfectly spelled out for us by the creature in the woods even after we've killed everyone there will still be one monster us a monster a beast but if we're a bloodthirsty killing machine whose only goal is to murder everything why do we spare scratch I think the answer to that lies in state two the second time we meet scratch he mentions sort of out of the blue that he used to know a girl that he loved but she betrayed him and now she's gone then in stage three we see the recurring Apparition of a woman who says things like how could you casting an accusatory mark on us I think these two women are one and the same and that scratch is more of an extension of the night a sort of Fight Club moment it would explain why scratch was the only one to survive despite our desire to kill everything and it would explain the parallel with the woman scratch talks about and the ghosts scratch is just a projection of our character in the same way that our character is both the Knight and the Basilisk this woman betrayed the Knight and now she's gone all right so there's another sort of twist scratch and the Knight are one and the same and the ghostly woman is the knight's past sweetheart who he murdered that doesn't explain the two endings and why the Basilisk actually does show up despite the Knight supposedly being the Basilisk all along the explanation I have for the endings relies on a bit of a perspective shift depending on which ending we get we see each side of the final confrontation either from the basilisk's point of view of confronting the Knight or the knight's point of view confronting the Basilisk but doesn't my reading of this game imply that the Basilisk and the Knight are one in the same yes which means this final confrontation is portraying an inner conflict the Knight and the bloodthirsty monster the Basilisk inside of him some of the may seem like a bit of a stretch but it does make some sense when you consider what the creature in the woods says even if you kill everything there'll be one monster left assuming that scratch is just another projection of the Knight we've killed everyone there's no one left for the Basilisk to destroy except itself so the monster Must Destroy the Knight and the Knight must slay the monster it's the only thing left to do it's a story of someone so filled with blood lust that after he slain everyone the only one left to destroy is himself this is why in the end we see the sword fall into the ground the Knight is dead and maybe that's why things look more hopeful in that final ending the Beast has been slayed the monster plaguing this land is gone that is my interpretation of the Game's plot there's some stuff here that might sound like a reach now but as the series progresses I think it becomes more plausible but we are still left with questions for instance what is the error and the recurring vein connecting the two world/ games Motif fall about well that is where simply looking at the Basilisk SES ROM leaves us with incomplete answers to find the link between the two worlds we'll have to play both games which takes us to basilisk 200000 so as with basilisk for the SNES basilisk 2000's experience really begins on the itch.io game page and if you thought a fake emulator was unconventional wait until you see this the description reads explore an unfinished RPG through its level editor the spiritual successor to the unreleased Super Nintendo game basilisk this project seemed far more ambitious but somehow almost became lost media developed around the year 2000 by an unknown Studio the game was thought to be lost until a fan designed a rapper program in unity to load its level editor now the potential can finally be seen and its Mysteries laid to rest sure enough the screenshots continue to reveal the unorthodox way will be interacting with this game instead of a traditional game or even an emulator we'll be playing through its level editor a Al behind the scenes look using the developer tools to explore each level like basilisk SNES it's an unfinished game but unlike its predecessor basilisk 2000 gives us many more tools to investigate with as evidenced by the robust user interface seen in the screenshots also much like basilisk SNES this page gives us a 3D scan of the real life compact disc the game was ripped from this reveals some information most notably the initials DB written in Sharpie at the top of the disc along with some cursory information about the date and compati ability of the software inside our download folder there's a few things to find but for the sake of this video we're going to go in blind and just boot up the game as is and later on will delve in here let's see what basilisk 2000 has in store immediately we load into the developer interface we saw in the screenshots in the bottom right we have a list of local items game objects that are in our current level because we're not currently loaded into a level it's empty above that we have the window where we'll see our actual gameplay with information like our current cord orates in frames per second to the left of that is a set of options that allow us to do things like toggle lighting clouds and foliage as well as view the world in wireframe and switch between no clip mode where we can fly and move through objects and walking mode to the left of that there's a series of game settings like mouse sensitivity volume render distance and what weapon if any our character has equipped via item IDs below that we have level notes a Sound Player allowing us to play through various soundtracks for the game and finally a console which allows us to load Levels by typing load and then a level name the note on this starting screen says start player in Havenwood highlighted in yellow we'll come to find that level names are all highlighted in yellow so we'll want to keep a lookout for that for now though we can begin exploring this game with our first lead load Havenwood Havenwood brings us to a small village surrounded by a hilly Forest it seems to be a standard starting setting for a classic medieval Adventure game various NPCs stand in the streets with fairly mundane dialogue a guard telling you not to cause any trouble a Town's person remarking on the Beautiful Day a dog barking something that caught my eye immediately are these error objects scattered around which look almost identical to the one found in the original basilisk luckily because we're playing through this game in developer mode we can inspect these simply by clicking on them inspecting items and NPCs in this game allows us to see and even change a lot about them from their health and darkness levels to their names coordinates and developer notes this object labeled trigger start seems to be the game object associated with spawning the player and starting the game other Arrow around the map appear to be improperly loaded NPCs or markers for particle effects so these errors seem to to work similarly to Gary's Mod placeholders or standin for objects that are either not loading properly or don't have a model to accompany them like a start Trigger or a particle effect this trigger start object also comes with a note leading us to somewhere called open sin in yellow maybe opening cinematic typing that into the console confirms this loading a pre-rendered cut scene you have traveled far first by vot and then by Carriage to the realm of my city of white spreading through the land and the Kings offer War Are soling the nights are growing strange Serpentine lights flowing through them like water and days grow hot and dry crops are D and soon follow and now you arrive at your childhood town okay so it really is a successor to the original basilisk the same realm of my cini a similar setup of a kingdom in Peril this time with a little more backstory talk of serpentine lights a spreading blight and Havenwood being our character's childhood home continued exploration of the Town reveals some less than standard elements within this game seemingly hidden away at first glance you might initially find these when looking through the local items list but it's important to note this list is almost always incomplete and you'll need to do some of your own searching to find everything these levels have to offer for one there are a few NPCs here that are hidden placed inside the models of these houses in a way we'd never be able to see if we didn't have the ability to no clip through them inspecting these characters also shows us the dialogue or flavor text we would be greeted with if we interacted with them in the game as intended one of the NPCs says they can't go outside for fear of getting someone sick but but the more disturbing find is a bloody corpse lying in the upper story of a house the mutilated corpse of your childhood rival not only is this disturbing it's confusing why is this here in a place that is otherwise inaccessible to an actual player finishing our exploration of the town we find a non-descript looking untextured statue with the text statue of the torn Knight because its model seems to be a placeholder at this time there's not much to go on in understanding who or what the Tor Knight is so we're at a bit of a dead end however there is yet more to see in Havenwood as the note for this level says starting area Okay outside Town needs work let's follow the roads out of town and see what we can find then traveling down the winding roads that cut through the forest we can find signposts pointing us out of Havenwood to a place called Crossroads a traveler NPC tells us they're searching for the Lost Hall of skeletons though we may have the impulse to immediately try loading these worlds up let's try to finish exploring Havenwood first down another path we come to a clearing where a large religious looking statue stands stands also labeled as a statue of the torn Knight I suppose this is what the torn Knight looks like but exactly the significance of this character Still Remains a mystery leaving the path behind to explore the hills and woods themselves we stumble upon a graveyard an NPC named NPC witness solemnly stands among the headstones I still visit even though my family isn't here they don't let those Afflicted with the Serpent's curse to be buried here a Serpent's curse huh interestingly if you play the game at midnight Havenwood turns dark and this NPC can be seen hunched over and destroyed and tells us something new why can't we have the peace they all have just because we're from deist Mark that name down I suppose most of the gravestones here bear some variation of here lies and then a name however one can be found that reads your eyes contribute to your own destruction but more ominous is what you discover by clipping underneath the ground here you'll find that under every single gravestone there is a bloody corpse again while being unsettling to find it calls into question just why they're here when this would normally be completely inaccessible further in these Hills you can find a goblin encampment housing a series of goblin enemies of various sizes you can also find some cats sitting around here which seems pretty cute at first until you see what the Goblins are housing inside their tents inside one is a dead cat and another is a prisoner pleading to be saved oddly this prisoner has a pretty high Darkness meter and I'm not sure if this was intentional but the story I feel is being implied here is that the Goblins imprison this man after he killed one of their cats honestly goblins you can keep him deeper in the hills of Havenwood what we begin to find gets stranger and stranger an untextured Cube floats on the outskirts of the level titled prop Idol of sorrow and it begins playing a song titled sorrow Draft when you're nearby similarly an error can be found hidden away that begins to play an unsettling sound titled null string when you're nearby judging by its title it probably has something to do with an audio error of some kind as a null string basically just means a string with no value at all there are a few more hidden NPCs scattered in the woods a serpentine monster enemy in the hills and another traveling NPC who says I'm starving I hope there's food and Taurus with Taurus seemingly being a place we can load as well finally a traveling Merchant can be found lost in the hills with a cart of spilled items one of these is a broken piece of a snake medallion with the yellow letters RIT engraved on it trying to load RIT gives us nothing so we may have to find the other piece of this Medallion to uncover what level it's pointing us towards the game so far seems like a fairly normal Adventure RPG but it's scattered with strange and disturbing breadcrumbs things that we wouldn't even be able to see if it weren't for our developer abilities it's definitely strange and it has me curious to continue exploring for Havenwood there's not much more to see but we've been given a good handful of leads to follow from taist to deist I'd like to start simple though let's take note of all these places and start with the one the game is literally pointing to Crossroads Crossroads is a similarly wooded area as Havenwood most of the level is made up of very various Forest paths leading to signs pointing Us in different directions the developer note here says looks good so far David B so we have one of the developers names and it may be exactly the one who previously had the disc this version of the game comes from judging by the DB written on it following a few of the paths their signs lead us to places like neore and Chapel 00 but terminate before we reach where they're pointing us presumably in the release version of the game it would load us to these levels automatically but here in the level editor we'll have to do it manually we actually can find our way to Chapel but are unable to go inside the door telling us that it would load us into the chapel level a pond shimmers serenely nearby stocked with lazily swimming fish and a sword inspecting the sword gives us its Item ID number so we can wield it when in Walking mode if we'd like a guard NPC stands outside the chapel saying I came all the way from my cini castle to see this Chapel since we're here we might as well load the chapel just to see what's inside then we'll come back to Crossroads inside the dimly lit Chapel two guards guards flank the room and neither seemed very chatty stay in the light citizen I'm on duty don't bother me underneath the large stained glass window an alar stands still adorned in a Dev texture lining the room toward the altar are six plates three against each wall these plates reveal a sort of creation myth long ago in an age of famine and destruction a brave knight stood against the dark basilisk the knights slayed the Basilisk but even still the kingdom was lost the Knight cried out in pain as the only Survivor in the land the Knight clutched his sword tightly and with one Mighty swing cut himself in two separating himself into day and night his day half took the form of a stone which spun itself over and over eventually smoothing into an egg his night half took the form of water which flowed in a circle surrounding the egg and turned itself into a snake the final plate is cracked incomplete forming great mountains and canyons and the snake fell back into water creating the ocean this story holds a lot of parallels to the story in basilisk SNES the night the famine the basilis killing everyone it Paints the Knight as the hero however so it may poke some holes in my original explanation I suppose we'll learn more through exploring the rest of the game returning to Crossroads there are a couple landmarks of note a small graveyard is planted on the top of a large Hill like the last graveyard bloody bodies lie underneath each gravestone a series of hooded figures stand among the headstones titled NPCs cult cool spooky cultists considering the Serpent's curse we heard about in the last graveyard and the serpent enemy found in Havenwood I would assume the s stands for serpent cult despite their Sinister appearance they're quite friendly only asking if you've seen their lost holy Relic the holy serpent Fang sword we'll keep an eye out creepy snake cists the last thing to see in Crossroads is a small Mossy Tower which stands among the trees a golden staff blocks the stairway and nestled just behind the tower is a single grave you guessed it there's a body under here too the story of this game is beginning to unfold in front of us from the tales of the Knight and the Basilisk to the mysterious serpent cult and Serpent's curse with so many more places to see we're sure to find more answers let's head to neore neore is quite the change of scenery we find ourselves in a yellow tinted desert starting in a small village surrounded by dunes and large mountains most of the NPCs in town have some kind of Darkness level indicating it's not as pleasant a place as Havenwood within the small buildings the town is made up of a corpse hanging from the Gallows rests among an assortment of coffins a guard watches on what a waste caskets litter the streets of the village while a shopkeep does appear to be in business the rest of the Town seems dire an NPC pleads for help please help us my mother is sick and needs healing water inside the building behind them an NPC with low health and 80% Darkness lies a serpentine shape snaking its way around the head Afflicted with a curse unfortunately for this family another NPC does not give us hope healing water no this place is dry as a bone asked someone else just outside a town more serpent enemies seem to be encroaching this town is in Des desperate need let's keep an eye out for healing water as we continue wandering out into this desert a tower appears through the dust its doorway half buried in the sand inside there's a smiley face emoji like the one from Discord the object's description is I Know What You Did interesting further into the landscape we can find a series of massive rusted ships wrecked in the sand along with some other things we'll find in a more these ships seem to suggest that this desert used to be an ocean not so long ago firmly juxtaposing not only its current Aid landscape but also its inhabitant and drought of healing water sitting among these ships is a kind of seal or symbol called signate elsewhere we can find a series of massive rib bones jutting from the sand the remnants of some long since dead Beast under the map we can see the rest of its skeleton and its enormous skull these skeletons are called whales again a reminder of the ocean this place used to be next to these bones a pyramid and a few other pieces of religious looking half buried architecture are located just behind these ruins are three NPCs two looking down at the third who who lies on the ground the two NPCs say he's a dangerous prisoner and the so-called prisoner says it's been a rough day at the office add that to the list more NPCs inhabit neore as well we can find one outside a small building on the edge of the desert next to a horike creature called a crawler this NPC says all the healing water is gone I've heard to get some you have to go all the way to palear we can find more of these crawlers as well belonging to two Bandits who demand your money to pass neore is starting to show off just how dire the situation in minina is with in the story of the game though there's nothing too unusual here so far aside maybe from the smiley face hidden in the tower clearly outside of Just The Morbid story being told in the game there's breadcrumbs left by the developers themselves and in all likelihood we'll be able to find more further into these levels though we have a laundry list of possible levels to explore at this point let's hop into palear next and see what we can find there palear is an even bigger change in scenery a series of stone pathways connecting these tall rocky structures peaceful music plays the sky glows at dusk the note for this level is also left by David B this area needs fall protection and he's right if you fall here you'll be stuck in an infinite falling Loop luckily we can just no clip out of it one of the strange things about this level is that according to the local item browser there appears to be an absurd number of the same object here but it's one we can't actually locate in the level door A1 if you've clicked on any other item at this point interacting with this will simply open the last item you've inspected but if this is the first thing you interact with it will open information for an object named house 01a with the description a house devoid of and then a keyboard Mash very strange following the stone pathways will come across another statue of the torn Knight and an NPC titled cresten it has a 60% Darkness rating and it's reflected in their disposition I've given up you should do the same oddly another NPC can be found here underneath this one this one says all the healing water is gone what a waste jot that one down further on we can find a monk welcome travel I'm afraid there isn't much to see of the city nowadays another Monk further along expands on the fate of this once bustling City palear used to be known as the city of the forest but since the water is all gone all the trees have withered away yet another stares off into the sky at a dead end drop all the healing water is dried up and the trees have died what will become of us like neore the drought of the healing water that seems to provide for the realm of my has left this place in ruin and its inhabitants on the verge of Destruction utilizing our ability to no clip we can find a traveler in a small cubby hole on one side of these massive stone structures a character that would be otherwise impossible to access without our ability to fly standing next to their boat they say Greetings do you seek transport cheap Rifts to exception 8 are in stock very odd naming convention but we'll note it down as well the boat here also seems to suggest that there used to be a body of water here in palear too but it's also possible this is just a magic boat that the traveler uses to move through Rifts I don't know inside another inaccessible cubby hole we find a new weapon the serpent Fang this weapon does a lot of damage and is labeled with 100% Darkness taking the sword back to the graveyard and Crossroads to the serpent cultist grants us new dialogue amazing you found it go ahead and keep it now that it's found an owner everything will be fine H I don't know how much I trust that everything will be fine but it does do a lot of damage so we might as well keep it palear begins to expand on the devastation of this world since the drought began and on its smaller inner workings from the cult members to the monks the issues in the various communities in minini seem to be increasing so I think we may find more answers closer to the source let's check out my castle M Castle is located in a dark rainy Forest Thunder cracks lightning sends bursts of light across the landscape and the walls of the ominous castle at the center of the level nearby a pond shimmers the note on the level reads starting area Okay outside Town needs work which may just be copied from Havenwood two guards stand outside the entrance of the castle be on your way both have a bit of Darkness entering into the grounds of the castle we find more guards things seem dire we tried everything but the kingdom is lost the doors into the castle are blocked by a collapsed Tower and a guard Waits here too no one is allowed inside right now the king is sick a quest NPC nearby says please the guards won't believe me the Minotaur it lives in ker dungeon we'll have to Circle back around to that no clipping into the castle model itself we can find a group of characters huddled near the top lying wrapped in snakes over by the Serpent's curse it's the king he's dead NPCs stand around his body it had to be done it had to be you shouldn't be here it seems the King was overcome with the Serpent's curse and those around him were forced to put him out of his misery the kingdom really is on its last legs outside the castle grounds there are a couple things to find for one one of the only properly textured NPCs we can find a muscly man stripped down to his skibbies a damned witch stole my clothes and axe this is a freaking sweet reference to morand where you can find an NPC in a similar predicament shout out morand in the Hills surrounding the castle we can find an NPC who says I'm not afraid of mountain trolls I'm from Wakita Summit we have real trolls out there and sure enough we can find a mountain troll enemy standing among the hills nearby Bic Castle reveals just how close this realm is to the brink of collapse and though again we do have a laundry list of other levels we could load up I think for the purposes of this video wickle to Summit is the perfect Next Level to explore wiita Summit is a frozen winter forest all surrounding a towering Mountain though the level of was impressive the note reveals that the Publishers were pushing it to be cut from the game possibly turned into DLC later nearby the base of the mountain there's a log cabin with an NPC and their dog be careful if you plan on going up the mountain close by there's a small village of additional cabins exploring the forest surrounding the mountain we can find a door built into the hill called mine tunnel ENT though there is no mine in this level or any other level perhaps another piece that was cut further into the woods we can find an icy monolith with a 100% Darkness rating if it looks familiar that's because it's very reminiscent of the one we find in basilisk for the SNES interesting continuing our exploration we can find a clearing in which a massive ice Drake enemy stand seemingly a potential boss battle along to the mountain itself the path up the side winds around giving us a full view of the forest below as we Ascend at the top there's a small graveyard again with bodies underneath there are two plates like the ones found in Chapel 00 here as well a dying choking howl echoed through time though no one could hear for it was so long and so deep as the Rumblings of the Earth itself it died one day and the silence could be heard its absence was noticed by all these plates lay beneath a massive sphere of stone labeled broken Moon here's where our developer tools come really in handy if we move this object out from being embedded in the mountain into the sky a new level begins loading titled Moon Moon is very different the first thing you'll notice is that the environment expands over the whole screen the Devi is gone the game pops into full screen ghostly piano plays as we explore the surface of the Moon Stars Sparkle in the inky sky as far as I can find there's only one thing of note to find among the craters in dust encased in a glowing sphere there's a strange almost fetus likee shape a cold Angel rests here what's most odd about this level aside from the unconventional way you access it is the format in which it appears on our screen removing the UI and filling the whole screen it feels out of place like it wasn't intended to be a part of the game but instead something the developers added to the level editor itself in addition to that it doesn't appear to have any direct connection with the world of minini or the story of the game as of yet it's like it was a secret left for someone using this editor perhaps for another developer to find and this isn't the only level in the game to do this the name Taurus was brought up a little while ago in Havenwood loading in here it's a weird level floating in a void there's a large shimmery taus shape with an NPC titled NPC David we've heard that name before David says my milk went bad today a few seconds after he says this it loads a clip of David Lynch this is a dut it is very sweet and very good but if you'd never tasted a doughnut you wouldn't really know so maybe that isn't David B maybe that's just Fame director David Lynch either way after this clip plays it loads you into a new level erase similar to Moon erase pops into full screen the disturbing audio of what sounds like crying plays in the background we take in the equally horrific environment spinning meat shifting lights the ground is a sea of blood and viscera some of it Formed into an intersecting pattern of circles floating in the air are gray shapes similar to that of the angel on moon we have a limited time here before the level boots us out but in the time we have we can approach these floating creatures and find that they have ominous messages for us bring death back to feed the snake you are chosen erase is even Stranger Than Moon it definitely doesn't feel like something that was intended to be accessible in the game proper so why is it here why is it so horrific what are these angels and what do their messages mean feeding the snake feels like it's a reference to the Basilisk which would draw us back into the game or perhaps a message for or from the developers that is being communicated through the game moving back to the perhaps more typical levels the next level I want to look at is found in a bit of an unconventional way looking through the various soundtracks in the audio player you can find a song that hasn't appeared anywhere else as of yet titled A enena Loop draft so let's try loading up Arena here we find ourselves in a pretty standard medieval Arena Billboards of crowds watch from the stands as we Face Down various other fighter NPCs that are spread around the arena the note here says I don't think making the player fight each boss again in order is a good idea here which is just very funny to me each of these Fighters have unique dialogue mostly readying for battle but one pleading for Mercy if you set them to zero health or just use a weapon on them to attack them the crowds cheer on either end of the Arena there are entrances where the Gladiators enter from one is a dead end but another leads to a system of hallways One path leads us to a large chamber where another NPC waits for their turn to fight I can't wait another path leads you to an accessible part of the audience outside the map a floating axe item can be found as well finally perhaps the strangest thing we can find here down one of the pathways inside the arena we can find a door but it's very out of place its textures and rendering are oddly realistic in highres for a game made in 2000 at the very least the rest of the game we've seen so far and it's modern like a photo scan of a modern Alleyway or hallway dropped into the game the music changes to the ominous null string and concerningly this door seems to be covered in crime scene tape something happened here and by the looks of it it's not something in the universe of the game it's a recreation of something real our ability to move forward is blocked here by an invisible object that gives us the text skinned in red speaking of Darker elements in the game remember crier dungeon mentioned in myen Castle let's try looking there it's a dark maze-like dungeon scattered with rats and corpses interestingly these rats have a null dark value and actually talk to you sometimes so it's sort of a subversion they're not enemies the note for this level reads this area might be too large for its use this level seems pretty standard for a medieval RPG but there are some unusual things to find here for instance here's one of those talking rats I mentioned hey there watch out the Minotaur is still around sne sne coming from a wall nearby you might hear a sound it's this dark deep slowly ascending and descending sound with no discernible Source other than the other side of this wall similarly down another path you can hear a strange shimmering sound coming from the other side of a wall it's strange there are some more typical finds in this dungeon though for instance this incredibly powerful sword called the bloodsword or this massive Minotaur boss in a chamber of corpses the Minotaur lives not for long though one thing we can find that seems very important to the plot is this error object it's labeled object health Fountain 1 and gives gives us the text healing Fountain it kind of sounds like this may be a solution to the drought of healing water further into the dungeon you can drop down a pit into a room with another one of these plates wo upon all who enter here in the adjacent room there's a large important looking door however all it says is door to missing it seems there was never a level built to lead from here now there are a few mysterious sounds in here but mostly it feels like we're progressing through the game's main plot bigger weapons bigger bosses and maybe the beginning of a solution to the game's conflict however when it comes to the rest of the levels we have to explore there are going to be dwindling less that are this straightforward and a lot more that seem to continue exploring these darker elements from the developers we've thoroughly explored the surface and it's time to get a little bit deeper we first discovered waste through a hidden NPC in palear and loading it up it is not what you might expect out of a medieval RPG a post-apocalyptic cityscape just the null string audio playing giving the impression of an unsettling ambient wind blowing through the buildings the note reads TBR 2 be removed this level was never meant to be released a thin stretched frame extends around the map aside from the ruined buildings and wrecked cars there's a lot to find here some of it is relatively innocuous and seemingly just Easter eggs from Kira like this Dark Souls screenshot others appear to be remnants of abandoned development like this error titled trigger missing dead however the most interesting stuff to find here appears to be pieces left over from the developers angry messages strange noises decals of text can be found all around the map from a messages like data to more forceful ones like remove this world some of the messages are left through other means there are multiple skinless NPCs titled NPC question mark with unsettling things to say I no longer sleep lest the dreams come true every day is the exact same until death also worth noting one of these guys can be found in Crossroads who doesn't have anything to say but I didn't realize that until after IID edited Crossroads so either way these developers are going through it in all seriousness this does seem to suggest more more of something terrible plaguing the developers behind the game but the details are still too vague some of the pieces left here aren't just text either under the map we can find an image of the basilisk's eye from basilis SNES and elsewhere we can find a low res section from a Bosch painting hell depicting some kind of demon pulling at a distraught man's arm perhaps the most striking things you can find here in waste are the creatures the first one I found was facing the corner of this dilapidated building flickering in and out of existence along with the strange sound that accompanies it is some kind of creature it's stuck walking into this wall appearing and disappearing from reality they look similar to the Crawlers but they're definitely different another one of these can be found stuck near a wall elsewhere nearby some text that says unpleasant and we can find one of these flickering creatures actually wandering through the map emitting an almost musical drone playing through I'm not 100% sure if it roams the whole map or if there are actually a couple in different parts either way these don't appear anywhere else in the game aside from this map one that was never met meant to see the light of day waste really is hammering in the developer pension for venting through their development this place is uneasy and almost cynical every day is the same until death it might almost come across as just complaining about working crunch time or working a 9 to-5 but the crime scene tape and mentions of Dreams coming true and the odd levels like moon in a race it feels like there's something more here and like I said we're only just beginning to reach deeper the developers left a lot for us to dig into for instance the Hall of skeletons so what's behind the mysterious Hall of skeletons U this it appears to be a sort of Easter egg a place where developers just mess around to be funny and leave it to be found by players this isn't super uncommon in games especially of this era to have a fun little developer secret David be is even here scolding the designers Allan what is this we have better things to work on I'll be honest and this is really just a personal preference aside I found this level to be a bit of a disservice to the experience of playing this game this game was supposed to be made made in 2000 and so it does break things when there's a bunch of late 2010s bees I wish that at the very least the Hall of skeletons was a little bit harder to find though it took us a bit to get around to it it is one of the first places you find out about and if it felt a little more hidden like a secret from Kira themselves instead of Allen from 2000 I think it would be less jarring but that's just more of a nitpick and maybe the only one I have for this entire project either way Hall of skeletons isn't particularly important outside of being yet another example of explicit remnants left by the developers but we can find even more of these by looking back at our list and loading up office office is jarring we spawn into an uncharacteristically non-m medieval map instead we're in a modern office lobby behind the front desk there's a lowres photo of what is presumably the employees the front door leads to missing and off to one side there's a bathroom down the opposite Hall and to the left there's a small room with a poster work work work further down the hall is the main computer room the computer room is filled with c cubicles work centered posters and NPCs who all stand in for the dev team like Call of skeletons this seems to be a secret design for players to be able to find recreating the dev team's office each one introduces themselves by name and what they do hi I'm Alan I made all the models used in basilisk 2000 I am very tired LOL hey I'm Cassie I do the animation and make the AI in basilisk 2000 a few of them have some unique quirks Greg for instance is titled Greg NPC dead and has zero Health along with a 100% Darkness rating David B the man himself has a 50% Darkness rating as well it is also here where we learn just exactly who David B is in relation to the development team how you doing I'm David Bunch I'm the chief engineer and manager for basilisk 2000 though this area seems like an innocuous Easter egg there's something darker underneath behind George's desk through the wall is a low reses photo of the office with the text I want to leave leave being in yellow his desk also has a note that reads I'm so sick and tired of this some days I just want to burn the place down clearly the development process on this game has not been as chipper and cheery as they're trying to portray but perhaps most concerning is what is found underneath David be's desk a lowquality photo of a gun with the text not going to keep taking it this object is named just in case something is clearly very wrong with the development of this game from the messages of Anguish to multiple employees ideating about burning the place down and David be either considering taking his own life or everyone else's and unfortunately we can find out exactly which one it is if we set all the NPC's Health to zero except for David a new level is loaded we are reloaded into a darker version of the office the echoing sounds of gunshots can be heard the front door has been blocked by chairs in the bathroom Dave not David B is hiding I can't let him find me patches of blood stain the carpet in the computer room the rest of the employees are scattered across the ground dead David is nowhere to be found each of their bodies hold dial diog that seem to have been their last words interestingly Gregs is I should have expected this the note on George's desk now says I didn't do it please this all but confirms that this was in fact David be is doing it's very unsettling to sit among the Carnage it's Stark and stomach churning the biggest question here is whether or not this is David be an overworked part of a clearly very unhappy Dev team living out a dark fantasy caused by his depression or anger at the development and the team or if this is a recreation of David actually snapping other devs here seem to fantasize about burning the place down but it specifically pointed out they wouldn't do this similarly that realistic door with police tape found in Arena seems to suggest a more realized aftermath than one would typically find in a dark office day dream we still need answers and I think the best way to find them would be to keep following this particular Rabbit Hole let's load up leave leave is a strange one but it makes a lot of sense in a way it's an airport the starting area is small and Barren just a few blank terminal planes sit on the runway outside along with some buildings the note for the level is simple all that's left to do it almost seems like it's implying that if what David be did in office truly was real this is his plan afterward just leave it all behind in the corner of the map a plane is crashed into the ground halfway in a building the description of this object reads Doris drowns in doubt it's almost disturbing how much of this game's file space has been dedicated to the darkest thoughts and perhaps even actions of its Developers it's like the development completely went off the rails and instead became a place to vent the deepest most frightening parts of these developers lives and speaking of the behind the scenes of this game's development we have a couple levels here to Circle back to the name exception 8 if you'll remember comes from palear where a traveler offers you a ride there it doesn't have quite the medieval twang the other level names do and that's because it is yet again another piece only meant for developers it's a testing map the note for the level reads Flora test looks okay David SU s it's mostly a flat plane with trees and a few small pieces of architecture like these columns and a few errors one of these errors is used as a light beam another is titled Greg Dead with the message get to work blah blah blah yet another gives us the text Allan is tired so more venting from the developers though slightly more innocuous except perhaps Greg being dead aside from this the only other disquieting thing to be found is that a certain area of the map begins playing audio called menu old do not use which is a sort of windy staticky sound the thing about the naming Convention of exception 8 is that it seems to suggest an exception 1 through 7 as well and there is one more exception level exception 7 just like its counterpart exception 7 is a testing plane but it's a little more densely populated with a few different little environments set up around the map for one a series of textureless items and buildings set up in a line plates pillars gravestones houses vegetation weapons floating above them all is a fish-like model with what looks like the fetus texture from Moon and a race it's difficult to parse but looks vaguely like an ultrasound it's titled Sunfish another series of buildings is nearby set up as a mockup village a serpent enemy stands by a building with the text I am an enemy then outside each door are a series of NPCs all with pretty innocuous text I am a knight of some sort a comically squished character says I am a child seems like a place to test NPCs another smaller mockup Village is also nearby with various NPCs who give out quests or tell you that they're completed one says the quest is done and Barks again this is all fairly innocuous but this level has one secret that is really the turning point for the story of the developers it begins to shift everything towards a much more disturbing path a small textureless cube sits in the very corner of the map it's easy to miss and seems fairly unimportant when you walk into it however an image flashes on screen a blurry photo of an empty office and a bloody shape something vaguely lizard-like the Basilisk from the games but this isn't just a model in the game this is a photograph and what's more a photograph that seems to have been taken in the office this game is being developed in how is it there did it come out of the game or is it the opposite is the game being made based around this creature as of now it's unclear it's seemingly very rare to get this Cube to spawn when loading exception 7 and after the image disappears so does the cube and the crying sound from erase begins playing if you see the cube once you're not likely to see it again with such a strange Revelation that it's possible the Basilisk is real our questions begin multiplying the next place to look for answers would be desist desist feels a bit like a relief it's a level that looks like it may have actually fit into the game still it has an off-putting air to it a desolate dark city with a nebula Sky the note here says this area TBR and next build not important enough to relegate dis space David B that name carries a darker weight now beneath the map printed on the Sky Box is a piece of text that says I'd Die a thousand deaths if I can die with you throughout the city the doors into these buildings are inaccessible we can get a peak inside these buildings though in a strange way throughout the map there are these windows peering into dark hallways and rooms the effect on these windows is strange though it's like they're images that have been superimposed track to the camera and parallx but just a little off they all appear to be looking into the same place just different parts of it rooms filled with water dimly lit Halls there's actually a load trigger behind one of these windows trigger load hallway though no such level exists it seems like there was a plan to load you into the place we see through these windows but that level was never created there are also remnants of other pieces of the game such as a Kill player trigger behind the door and an error standing in for a butcher shop sound effect Loop though we can't actually hear the sound the part that's most interesting though starts with this statue of the torn Knight the figure emits a low pulsing hum and when you get close enough a sound plays almost like we've activated something continuing to explore a brick wall near one of the shops also activates another sound we're on to something right around this vent in the ground at the end of the hall another sound activates then this corner here then there's no more sounds to be found it's strange but there is one final place we need to visit the final trigger is here around the window peering into the room filled with water after wandering this area when you leave you'll find a few new things around the map firstly this creature it's a headless figure called NPC headless Dead with 100% Darkness it's really unsettling to stumble upon but what exactly it represents I'm not sure it will also Spawn Two tombstones and here is where things get interesting the text both of these tombstones contains seems like nonsense but running them through an Amco Cipher we get a string of text my attempt at translating the string of text reads I don't think it was me not the murderer what if I was the murdered the only person I can think think of who may be a murderer is David be so did he really kill his co-workers or maybe not maybe his questioning of this fact leads to the idea that it was just a fantasy or perhaps even David be doesn't know his conceptions of reality and fantasy blurring the other Tombstone translates to at least by my attempt I didn't just happen on it maybe I did but it was the perfect basilisk again there's this line here questioning his concept of reality did he just happen upon it or not but most interestingly is that this seems to one once again refer to the Basilisk and if we're saying this is David B and not related to an in-game story it would be another Point connecting to this seemingly real photo of the Basilisk in the office in the real world desist with all its secrets and reveals still does very little to explain what's really going on here it's pushing Us in the right direction but we can't see where it leads and we're running out of levels we've hit a dead end almost a dead end remember that broken Talisman the one with RIT written on it where's the other end of that what is is the completed level name well there isn't one we're just going to have to guess I do think I read somewhere that the other half was actually intended to appear in the game and it was accidentally left out but I'm not sure either way for a medieval game about myths and monsters and Cults one word does come to mind immediately ritual ritual is a Barren red Wasteland some buildings sink into the dirt skeletal trees sparsely populate the cracked ground and a massive serpent enemy stands at the base of a mountain it seems like this is the final boss fight the boss is titled the tor basilisk which is interesting considering the name of our legendary hero the torn Knight surrounding it are various triggers most appearing to activate a different phase of the boss fight but one activating the boss theme basilisk fight it kind of goes hard but the note for this trigger says George this track will not fit the theme did you not even read my script David B moving away from the boss fight itself clipping through the ground are a series of 3D computer models laid out in the line each one has a note read from left to write watching videos of that project gives me strange feelings like I miss it but at the same time it was kind of traumatic I was so rushed and in hindsight I shouldn't have cared so much and now it's a part of something I don't even like but I'm proud of the work I did on it I guess that's what normal development feels like most times like putting yourself into work that will end up bad before it reaches anyone and then looking back and missing it but also hating it it's just sad but I guess I have it to look back on I don't know where I'm going anymore what am I doing why am I even writing this my whole life is spent living in the past I don't know any other way though sometimes I want to break out but sometimes I just want the safety of it I feel like I should have died a long time ago I'm living on borrowed time or something I don't know I'm just tired of this I'm just uninspired at the moment ignore me please this feeling sucks it's possible these were left by one of the many developers who've worked on basilisk 2000 as we've seen their unhappiness with the development process the writing doesn't seem to fit in the late '90s early 2000s era though so it's possible this is the reflected musings of K themselves either way this is actually very thematically important so we'll be coming back to it later going back to the boss fight if we set its Health to zero it loads us into a cut scene where the narrator gives us more Exposition with a final desperate strike the hero tore open the skin of the snake the torn Knight long worshiped for vanquishing the Basilisk and creating humankind turned out to be nothing but a mish myth the Basilisk was indeed a man a knight a cure for a starving world when the true cure lay guarded Behind the tyrant's Walls the man killed ultimately and indiscriminately until no one was left starving but himself for blood he became a vile thing and created a vile world and as the hero's sword broke open the skin of this world light from Another Side shined through and the world trembled and shook shedding its dead skin and embracing the [Music] light so it turns out the torn Knight was the Basilisk and the creation myth we read was sort of a lie a twisted version of the truth this version of events also seems to suggest my theory about basilisk for the SNES holds a bit more weight I also think it's notable that the phrase shedding its dead skin is used here but that will mean more later so we've reached the end of the game it seems the Basilisk defeated what more is there to find well we may have the answers to the plot within the game but we still aren't much closer to understanding the world outside it what happened to David B the development team this real life basilisk well there is one more thing to find here in ritual at the edge of the map a skin NPC hangs from a tree it's titled wmd with the description it's all my fault it's all because of the color equals yellow MVB weird combining the letters from the description and the title removing the color information the color yellow suggesting this will be a level title and running the text through a rot 8 Cipher we get the word event a new map and by my estimation this is sort of the finale the climax of The subtle fear and dread that has been building event is another full screen level but it's even Stranger Than Anything Else we've seen not only is it unusually realistic almost appearing as if it's it's a 3D scan of a real environment it's got this very strange effect going on it's like lagging pixels or the after effects of data mhing the leftover Haze of the last frame left on the new one it only allows for an impression of the environment and though this style is completely new it is familiar it's an office space I'd like to say that if you have any intention of playing the game at this point I suggest you pause this video grab the game explore it a bit and then play this level for yourself before coming back it's truly worth it all right let's go we start at the end of a hallway no sound but the ambience of the fluorescent lights above us though it does resemble the office and office it is a bit of a different layout whether these are supposed to be different places or if office is just an imperfect Recreation of the real office is not entirely clear to find everything available on this level we'll need to do a bit of a back and forth walking the entirety of the office and back finding new things each time I've broken these up into different runs the first run following the hallway out into a main hall the office opens up into two directions one leads us into a large room with a door open to crack the sunlight shines through and the sounds of the outside bleed through a few CDs are scattered on the floor we can just leave through this door which loads us back to the empty level State when we first boot the game there's also a door to our right but it's closed I'll call this room the exit room following the hall into the other direction we're LED down more hallways as we walk behind a closed door we can hear something shuffling around perhaps we're not alone in the Next Room the floor is covered in seed s which I'll call the CD room through the wall we can hear some kind of whispering moving out into the next Hall we find it incredibly dark and the whispering is even louder following this hallway to the door at the end we find our final room light pouring Through the Windows and ominously eight evidence markers placed on the ground something happened here and it seems to suggest this is the same office we saw in Arena some of these Mark a kind of black plastic bag others blood stains and some kind of fabric or BL blue liquid there's also some pieces of paper scattered on the ground it's impossible to make out what they say here but finding the actual texture within the game's files lets us see clearer I'm ruining it I'm ruining the game everything is boring now so lame the only thing we had was the Basilisk there's a drawing of a serpent at the top this room is where I end run one the second run starts when we head back to the exit room okay we are definitely not alone we hear more unsettling whispering and shuffling behind the doors back in the exit room we now find the door to the right is open inside is a dark cave made either out of moist rock or meat a crackling sound plays along with a looping monstrous grumbling and what almost sounds like breathing it's like this place is alive that's run to from here we head back to the evidence room that making our way back to the CD room what the was that it's gone in a second but looking back it appears to be some kind of skinless torso that is the last of the new things I could find within a vent at least that appear from wandering back and forth but there are a couple pieces of hidden text here the first piece of hidden text appears if you approach the wall to the right just upon entering the evidence room encrypted text appears for just a moment before going away we'll decipher that in a moment the next piece of text can be found scrolled on the wall inside the SE CD room just as you come out of the evidence room we can actually see it being written out as if by a ghost one skin one arm one leg three rib cage huh interesting recipe okay as for the encrypted text it's actually an anagram remove the letters for the term color yellow indicating this will be a level name and we get an anagram for within it this is the final level of the game within it is another full screen data mosh type level this time we're on a platform in a void with posts holding chains around us an unseen light rotates around causing the Shadows to change it's almost reminiscent of erase jumping into the void we fall very slowly blink and you'll miss it but after falling for a while text does appear for a split second and it might be some of the most important text in the whole game first there was a carapus to protect the frail workers from outward influence but certain Chambers became unused abandon and neglected in one such a deprived Soul slipped in or was born in or grew Within then they sought to peel back the numbness the boring day-to-day of life and work within a carapus to shed old skin to gleam a new in fresh violence and Terror the resident sought material gradually accumulating from transients the skin of one the bones of another one twisted arm one broken and the text eventually cuts off there's a lot there right from the start it seems to be talking about the dull work of the developers which we've seen brought up time and time again perhaps this deprived soul is David be growing more and more Restless until his Outburst of violence but what's really strange is the recurrence of this recipe the skin the bones it's like they're making something and we will get back to that but for now there are a few more pieces of the puzzle to find they're just outside the game now that we've exhaustively explored the contents of the game Let's rummage through the game's folder firstly and rather in uously there's a piece of promo art for the game more than just a game 16 times the detail the SNES class CL introduces new Advanced AI Umbra AI creates all new systems so NPCs can know when they're about to die despite this Umbra AI system sticking out a bit there's not really much else to connect it within the game so it seems to just be a bit of a dark joke it the read me file that comes with the game also gives us some pretty helpful context it starts with some notes from David B from around the time of the game's development the basic engine is looking good we should have a prototype ready by August but I'm still not sure we can pull off the Christmas 2000 release again the scope is out of hand the mechanics are kind of there but everything is too random I added a feature for a notepad sort of thing in each cell so hopefully that will help us communicate better aim seemed like a good idea but now you're all just wasting time chatting on it if this game doesn't ship I'm toast so please for me pull it together thanks and I'm sorry I still love this project then there's an addendum added by Kyle Tubman from 2020 seemingly around the time the game was discovered and being ported over to be released I guess the dev team didn't meet their goal or the publisher wasn't impressed but there's a lot here to look at like the previous bassilus game on the Super Nintendo this game wasn't finished and has strange features that are half removed I don't know if it's supposed to be a direct sequel or a spiritual successor but since the first game wasn't released H I've dug up as much as I can on the project but nothing about it is archived and I got really lucky finding this disc on eBay there wasn't any overlap in the development team from the previous game but I think some of the code was used I tried to get in touch with the old developers but their office doesn't seem to exist any anymore and the only number I found just gave me a busy line every time I called we can also find a video file in here simply titled vid it's a lowquality screen recording of a Windows XP computer though the name here says Victor Lori Kira has confirmed that this is supposed to be David B's screen we can see an instant message conversation going on but the fact that we see a program called spy cat.exe running it seems like David B is spying in on this conversation not participating it goes like this hey I think something is wrong with David the your guy David Suz he's great in my opinion no I mean David B you know he was the one who found that body downstairs that was like 10 years ago or something it must still be bothering him he's still obsessed with the incident yeah I can tell too maybe it's just his way of coping though I'm not just scared for him he could be dangerous like fire us I think he keeps a gun under his desk and it's just it's difficult I don't know let's just get this project done and then we can ask HR yeah I guess I might just be a little paranoid too I get it though this chat is secure right I think slh hope so enough fooling let's make a game all right I got you this really does reinforce a lot of what we've been thinking about David B his possession of a gun in real life does seem to make this reality of his actions seen in the dark office seem a bit more likely along with his paranoid Behavior causing him to spy on his fellow developers and their worry about his mental instability we also get a pretty intense Revelation that 10 years before the development of Basilisk 2000 David B found a body inside the same office they're working in and he's been sort of Obsessed ever since is it possible David did more than just find this body considering all this talk of building something with body parts maybe this body is the same one we see crawling toward us in event again I do want to get back to these questions but there is one final thing to find inside the game's files there's a locked zip file with no title using the password skin found in Arena by the blocked office door we can unlock an SMC ROM file the same type of file used with the sessie plus to load basilisk it's titled basilisk early build remove throwing this file into the ROMs folder and booting it up with sessie we find ourselves in the now familiar darkness of the woods though the floor here is untextured walking again into the woods we find a new floating error awaiting us hey you made it all the way back here that's when it started after all the skinning the sacred Alchemy to create a true basilisk they started with a man although some called him a monster they sought to make his outside as warped as his inside they started with the skin it had to go first little by little they removed almost everything until they finally made it a true basilisk a true monster and they kept it fed it poked it and tortured it then they locked it up and worst of all they forgot it but it lived somehow it seems at least in the back of David's mind it did or was it David all along or did he simply help with the experiment or did he just work in the same office building or was it all just a nightmare he couldn't remember he didn't want to either but it lives and it will live and it will grow and it will starve and it will Feast then the game closes these last few levels not only kicked up the horror of the project but have really begun to shed some light on the questions that have been mounting throughout our time playing but things are still a bit jumbled let's see what we can untangle so basilisk 2000 was a fair bit denser than its SNES counterpart which means there'll be a little bit more to uncover here I'll try my best I think to understand what's going on outside the game for instance with the development of both games or the Basilisk we need to understand the story inside the game what the plot of the Basilisk games are and how they connect because there seem to be a lot of intentional parallels between the outside story and the inner story of the game so I think my first explanation of the story in basilisk SNES is pretty spoton an evil Knight destroys the kingdom and in his blood lust brings his sword upon himself in the future he's known as the torn Knight because of his Duality as a man and a monster but also because in the end he sliced himself in half this was the start of a new world and his destruction became a twisted creation myth painting him as a savior in truth though the Knight didn't really die not forever it just started his transformation though things were good for a while the torn Knight's influence slowly grew as did the Serpent's curse the healing water dried up and more and more people became Afflicted with the curse turning them into Serpentine monsters there's even a small cult growing trying to help this along this blight becomes so dire that the king of minini is killed by his advisers and guards after he is infected with the curse in the end the Knight Returns as the massive torn basilisk at the end of Basilisk 2000 our hero discovers Fountains of healing water and destroys the torn basilisk bringing in a new era of light however it's unclear if this is yet another twisting of reality a hero's myth built on a lie for now though we must choose to believe in Hope with our basic understanding of the game story out of the way we can begin diving into the world outside the game piecing together the events surrounding its development to start I think it's important to explain a few crucial connections that serve as the foundations to understanding this story at least for me the first thing to understand is the gap between basilisk SNES and basilisk 2000 not only were both games developed by separate teams as stated in the readme but their development was separated by about 10 years the SNES came out in 19 99 and as the readme confirms what you might expect basilisk 2000 was being developed in the year 2000 slotted for a December release giving us a 10-year difference going back to the chat logs found in vid we hear that 10 years ago David B the lead engineer and project manager of Basilisk 2000 discovered a dead body in the basement of the very same office they're developing their game in this timing seems too coincidental to me whatever happened 10 years ago with this body is linked with the development of the first basilis game and it was probably being developed in the very same office and for whatever reason David be was there though the read me does state that both games were made by different teams it's possible that David be was just working in the same building as it says in the final ROM or that they're not counting the Project Lead for whatever reason instead just saying the other developers were new either way David be discovered this body around the time basilisk SNES was being developed but there's still a lot of questions surrounding this whole ordeal so the next thing to discuss in order to get an understanding is exactly what this body is explaining the body is what takes this story from a simple case of overworked game developers to a tale of something entirely Supernatural the body David be found in the basement all those years ago was the vestages of a truly horrific attempt at creation it's spelled out pretty clearly by the error in the final Sessy ROM they started with a man they sought to make his outside as warped as his inside they started with the skin it had to go first little by little They removed almost everything until they finally made it a true BAS esk then they locked it up and worst of all they forgot it but it lived at least in the back of David's mind it did it was some sort of horrific experiment some group or maybe even cult took a man someone by who all accounts was known as a figurative monster and attempted to form him into a literal one by tearing him apart alive all of this in an attempt to create a basilisk now in traditional folklore a basilisk is a serpent with a stair that can kill but the concept of the Basilisk has evolved a lot throughout the years especially in contemporary times for instance with the ever Infamous in my opinion very incoherent Roo's basilisk thought experiment in the terms of this project the Basilisk seems to represent both a creature of great evil but also one that is inherently entwined with the concept of creation this thing didn't just come into being it was created formed intentionally by some group by splitting open an evil man this mirrors quite accurately the story within the game where a monster of a knight is split in two forming into an actual Monster by the end the torn basilisk which ends up being the creation myth of the world of my in addition there was a specific set of circumstances which led to this creation for the games it was a time of famine for the real world it was a bit different and maybe more vague in within it it says quite clearly that inside of the carapus was a boring day-to-day of life and work considering other consistent themes of uninspired creative work and frustration with development it could be said that it was a sort of Famine of creation ity where the act of creating was a grind and a slog like the world of the game slowly dying so too is the passion for the project and so in a Twisted way the disturbing creation of the Basilisk is like the opposite a violent and frenzied and unrestrained form of creation what's strange though is the subtle differences in the accounts of within it and the ROM within it supposes this was created by some deprived Soul accumulating body parts one skin one arm one leg three rib cage the Rong suggests some sort of group effort torturing one deprived soul and turning him into a basilisk I think this is where we're seeing the difference in two eras and it also begins to spell out more of what happened to David B and his behavior and the strange full screen levels we find when the error in the final ROM talks to us it tells us that this is where it started it started during the development of Basilisk SNES in 1999 some group in my view the developers of Basilisk SNES itself attempted to create a real basilisk by torturing an evil man as we've been over the aftermath of this likely causing the premature end of the SNES game's development what's not entirely clear is how literal this actually is it's actually quite unclear whether David be was involved with its creation or just stumbled upon it or in fact was the subject of it what if I was the murdered it may not be possible to actually know for sure for the sake of this explanation we'll say he stumbled across it as that is the most literal turn of events we hear about but it's more symbolic than anything as we see from vid David B becomes sort of obsessed with this event but as is explained in the text from within It Whatever caused the attempt at creating a basilisk in 1999 was at Bay for now with the development of Basilisk 2000 the dev team was protected within this protection this carrus though the developers became unhappy and the work became a chore all the while One Soul who was still invested in the creation of this project grew more and more Restless more and more violent David be was still obsessed with what he had seen with the event and moreover obsessed with recreating it to create a basilisk himself but let me explain my reasoning for this characterization firstly we know that the copy of the level editor that we have is one that belonged to David B this seems to mean that these segments that seem out of place like event or a race were added by David be and it makes even more sense when you understand the contents of them knowing David be's obsession with the body he found one which was apparently skinned and tortured who else would put a vision of a skinned body appearing before him this makes the contents of event some kind of recreation of the event when David found this body this thing that has been haunting him it is a little surreal and strange with things appearing and disappearing so in my view these full screen levels are like Recreations of David's dreams or nightmares or Visions in addition to that though we know the theme of basilis 2000's development was unhappiness and even violent fantasy from time to time no one else really fits the bill quite as well as David be as a soul who grows in violence and seeks to break the monotony of the work he's constantly depicted as being creatively invested and yet unhappy with the game's development frustrated with his co-workers and has a much more real tendency to violence even keeping an actual gun under his desk just in case another parallel is found in the final ROM where it explains with uncertainty how David is involved was he a victim a contributor just a bystander did it happen at all if this incident is what birthed this need to create a basilisk himself then we see this mirrored when we hear about the uncertainty of how this deprived Soul came to be slipped in or was born in or grew within a purposefully ambiguous origin through this lens the basilisk's deadly stare is more of a long-term thing David has seen the body has seen the Basilisk and that transferred this ultimately destructive Obsession to him he sees the body in his Visions in event is called to make a new basilisk himself in a race bring death back to feed the snake you are chosen and is given the exact recipe for creating one in event as for the moon I think it's probably related to the analogy of the carrus in within it when it's in the sky a cold Angel rests protected perhaps some inner part of David or perhaps the very thing that was imparted onto him when he found the body when it was broken however it was released and screamed in agony and begged him to bring death back to feed the snake so David is under the stress of a difficult game development project and of Supernatural trauma Visions coaxing him into murder and necromantic Alchemy and the vision seem to be working as he is getting drawn further into violence even keeping a gun at the office so the question is did he finally break are the events of office a recreation of something real or simply another extension of David's mind I don't think we have the answer to that we have to remember this is David's disc and pretty much the only thing we know about David is that he's an reliable source of his own reality it's possible he doesn't even know if he did it or not I don't want to Discount the supernatural element of this disc though while it is unclear how much has been added by David at the very least the messages from these old ROMs are from some third party perhaps the original group who created the Basilisk for the SNES or maybe something more unexplainable something that is connected to these games for some reason something that travels with them inside the files and code from person to person game to game like the soul of the Basilisk aside just from these mysterious seemingly Supernatural messages left throughout these project there's some other evidence to suggest this Mystical Force following these games despite pointing out that there is no overlap between the two Dev teams meaning messages directly from the original basilis group in the 9s are unlikely it does specifically point out that some of the original games code was used that doesn't really make any sense in real life copy pasting code from a sest game to here wouldn't work I I think this detail is more so a nod suggesting that something that was within the original SNES game has moved over into basilisk 2000 and that some of the anomalies in this game may not just be from David B but from this other entity perhaps the very same thing that guided the team in 1990 to create a basilisk and that would go on to haunt David hell we even see assets from the SNES game appear in weird places like under the map and waste it's Food For Thought okay so to summarize in 1990 development of a medieval SNES game begins basilisk for reasons we don't currently have the answers to the development team here or at least some group associated with the game begins torturing and skinning a man turning him into a monster the Basilisk David B someone who was working on the same office this was happening in stumbles upon this creature and it imprints onto him a sort of obsession or maybe haunting something that will only grow as time goes on 10 years later David B is the project lead on the successor to the unreleased bassilus game from the 99s development is not going well they're in a time crunch and the work is dull the game just isn't coming out the way they want it to though David is still very invested in it possibly due to his connection with the horrific events associated with the IP at the same time and possibly aggravated by being close to the project again or the frustration of development this obsession is continuing to consume him he has visions of the body he discovered all those years ago and some voice is pushing him to bring it back he needs to create the Basilisk but he'll need material bodies it continues to consume him as he buys a weapon and keeps it in his office just in case he fantasizes about biting the bullet and collecting the skin and Limbs and ribs needed to create this basilisk whether or not he actually does this is unclear to us all we have is the disc where he left some remnants of his visions and the cryptic messages left by an entity that may be responsible for all of this in the first place quick last minute thought here while I do stand by my inter interpretation I gave here I think there are multiple ways you could take this and I had a brief other thought while editing this my current one supposes that the order of events is that the final ROM is the beginning explaining the creation of the Basilisk and that within its text is talking about David B meaning the evil monstrous man from the ROM text is different from the deprived soul and within it the deprived soul is David be the ROM text is about the body that David beef found they're two different entities and it goes ROM text then within a text however both of these things do describe a single sort of evil person so it's possible it's all the same guy and that the order of events is the within it text talking about this deprived Soul who is then turned into the Basilisk as discussed in the SNES ROM not the other way around or that David B was the Basilisk victim as the final ROM suggest he might be and is both of them anyway that's a possibility anyway well the story here is fun and all and I think one of the more interesting things about playing through these two games is trying to piece together what happens as you discover more information there is one more thing about this game that I find really really interesting and that is how this story functions symbolically as a deconstruction of creating things let me explain I've already discussed a bit how the Basilisk as an entity in this project is explicitly associated with creativity but it's more than just the creature itself everything about this game foundations and up is about creating the game itself is a developer tool a program used to literally create the game the plot follows two teams of developers separated by 10 years trying and failing to create said game inside the world of minini the plot revolves around a creation myth a knight who created the world we walk in the Basilisk itself is a creative Pursuit undertaken by overwork developers who are stuck in their own work an outlet for their creativity by building a monster and the details of its creation seem far more important to the plot who did it how it was made who's going to make it next than anything the Basilisk actually does we don't really know anything about this creature just the horrific process in which it was created throughout the game we are constantly reminded of the process and struggles of pursuing a creative Endeavor from Allen's exhaustion computer models lamenting the LoveHate relationship with projects g aai notes left behind about ruining the game the entire waste level on and on this game is less about a supernatural creature and more about the issues that come along with trying to make something and to be more specific my view is that this basilisk this obsession with creating it is less literal it's about striving for Perfection it's said over and over in this game the goal here is to create a perfect basilisk and much like David's goal and attempts at making his game perfect and never being happy with the result he too becomes obsessed with making this perfect basilisk it's like the SNES game and the body are connected he glimpsed the possibilities and much like he went on to try and recreate the creature he saw he went on to recreate the game too they're paral thematically the Basilisk mirroring the story of developing these games creative Endeavors that ultimately lead to unhappiness because he needs them to be perfect because the thing about a basilisk is that its stair is deadly if you were to create one the act of you doing so would kill you it's an unreachable goal and it can make you do terrible things in pursuit of it not only does the story end without a project ever finishing as we see with both bassilus games never being completed and nearly lost a time it can also lead to destructive Behavior obviously in the case of the actual basilisk that means murder but for the games it meant that David became alienated from his team and exhibited behavior that made his co-workers afraid of him in a way this may too be reflective of his experiences 10 years prior what if this body was him all along as the final ROM says they started with a man they tortured it and then forgot about it but it lives if this body was David in a symbolic sense this would almost sound like an abusive or overworked work environment something all too common in the game industry often defended as what needs to be done to make the game perfect just look at Rockstar Games in the pursuit of creating a perfect game the SNES team exploited David and when he came out the other side now as a Project Lead this warped way of running things is how he sees the world to create something perfect you have to make sacrifices no matter the cost thematically whether this lines up perfectly plot-wise isn't particularly important it's the Imp impression the emotion that the game portrays the creatures mindlessly wandering are stuck in an apocalyptic world in waste the developers stuck in mind-numbing crunch time losing all passion for their project what a waste notes lamenting that they ruined the game computers with messages about projects they now hate the thing about this pursuit of perfection is that it's ultimately self-destructive how can you quantify Perfection with the sacrifices you made the Blood Sweat and Tears the limbs you gave to make it how can you ever hope to make something perfect when ultimately the art will end up in someone else's hands someone else's standards like a basilisk it's sort of a paradx to even attempt such a task as being successful inherently means your own destruction more often than not this Pursuit just means the thing you're making never gets finished the same as what happened to basilisk and basilisk 2000 there's an old adage perfect is the enemy of good and it's true ask any artist who's completed anything sometimes you look back at something you've made and can't help but think of all the way way it could have been better and you resent it but there's no point in chasing a goal that is impossible to reach sometimes just finishing something is enough and letting it breathe with all its flaws in the open instead of destroying yourself trying to fix it perfect is more than the enemy of good it's the enemy of finished thank you all for watching please check out basilisk for yourself because there are probably new Secrets still waiting to be found within it also Kira's newest project Lun acid or BL acid released pretty recently and has some similar Vibes to this so go check that out as well the music I made for this video is available on my Spotify and check out my patreon if you'd like to support my work and I'll see you all next time Wonder

Channel: Sagan Hawkes

Views: 1,211,721

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Id: mqNHIK07P3g

Length: 93min 37sec (5617 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023