People with an interest in video games are likely to have heard of the legendary Polybius, a video game released in America for slot machines, with side effects ranging from dizziness to death. The urban legend has stood the test of time and has spawned many similar stories: among the most famous are, for example, KillSwitch or the hacked “damn” version of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask called Ben Drowned.
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All of them fit into the “creepypasta” format – an eerie story that is great to tell by the fire or at night with the monitor turned on. But there are other “games” that develop this formula. Most often they are usually shortened to TGIF – The Game I Found (“The game I found”). Today, TGIF is a YouTube trend: creators “find” weird versions of games and record letplays to show what’s going on behind the rainbow façade. Cybersport.ru offers a look at the five games that you cannot play yourself – but you can watch frightening let-plays.
Petscop
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The video series starts with the narrator supposedly showing his game, created in Unity. And if in the first videos everything looks almost normal (apart from the fact that all the characters are of plant origin and live in a huge living tooth that needs to be fed with bones), then gradually the tone changes to a darker one.
Illusion Lock hasn’t received much attention, although users still discuss the series on reddit… Local hidden meanings are not hidden so deeply, and the story goes from the plane of suspense and references to the real world towards fantasy. Simple gameplay and almost childlike drawings can nevertheless create a good atmosphere, and slow changes in design and narrative details work well to create extremely unpleasant feelings.
In Illusion Lock, details that were not planned by the developer gradually appear, and the characters begin to turn directly to the letplayer. At the same time, it is often blurted out that for debugging the hero uses some kind of program that strongly affects his mental state – and from video to video the impact only increases. To the final, however, the creators “suffered”, and some decisions seem to be rather controversial, but this almost does not interfere with the integrity of the story.
Separately, it should be noted that, in addition to the videos themselves, part of the mystery lies in the descriptions for the videos and in the comments.
Animal Investigator
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The channel was created by a certain James, who decided to show the gameplay of the demo version of the game Mr Maker, developed for the Dreamcast. The user takes on the role of Mr. Maker, who, with the help of magic hats, can create items at the request of the inhabitants of the town. In the best traditions of the genre, there is not so much content in the demo, but after loading the save, the player finds himself in a new, darker location.
It is noteworthy that the creator of the series was originally aimed at communicating with the audience: unlike most similar web series, subreddit and Discord for Mr Maker was created by the author of original videos and is often updated with unique content. What exactly is hidden behind the light façade of the game is not known for certain: from the video at least one can distinguish a deceased child, apparently killed by the protagonist, and a mysterious invalid who is also related to what is happening. In addition, the player, in addition to hats, collects Schizo pills – a clear hint of schizophrenia. Some details, such as the changing tempo of speech and costumes of Mr. Maker, make it clear that we are talking, most likely, about dissociative disorder, which both the hero and the letplayer have.
It is important to note that the last video to date was posted in February 2023 and ends with a clear hint that the game has gone beyond pure gameplay and impacts reality. At the same time, the comments indicate that on separate channel the restart of the series has started – at the moment there is only one video with Mr Maker for the PlayStation 2.
Catastrophe crow
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