Petscop is not a film, a television series, even a short film or a
commercial. Petscop is a YouTube channel, a Let's Play of an
obscure Playstation One game said to be from 1997.
"Let's Plays" are videos on YouTube
of people playing video games with them commenting on the material as they go
along. It might sound banal, but I will admit to having watched a few even as
someone who does not consider himself a videogamer. Unfortunately video games
do not have as easy a system for preserving old and obscure titles from yore,
even if retro gaming is popular and more are being restored, the most
interesting Let's Plays for me which create a desire to start playing games
again always the ones covering fascinating obscurities. Sadly most are not
possible to play or (if Japanese) require you to understand the text, but
witnessing them in action they shown how delving into the past and old
artefacts is a compulsion regardless of medium.
Petscop, the first video released in March 2017, is an unfinished
game and a banal children's title, something I can attest to as of the Playstation One generation. I knew of
all the cheap titles released on the system (and filled the magazines
eventually to their reviewers disgust) especially in the console's dying days
before Playstation 2 effectively shoved it off its mortal coil finally, even
played a few. Initially our commentator Paul is playing a cute armless mascot
who has to acquire "pets", strange creatures littered around what is
meant to be the only level that was fully developed. Unfinished games, or
shelved ones, are a fascination for gamers too and the internet has allowed
these works to be accessible for many. It is a dreamlike place we witness, a
floating world of corridors with an emphasis on purplish pink. Some of the
aspects come off as off-colour, like a ball pet who wins awards because she
stays in a cage the longest, but the first episode is innocuous...
Well, that is until Paul follows
a cheat that he was given a note on with the game, a button combination that
opens up a new place underneath the level. Called the Newmaker Plain, it is
vast and dark grassy environment with little there. This is where Petscop reveals itself to be a horror
mystery that lasted until 2020. Full disclosure, this review will talk about
everything explicitly about Petscop,
but it is not a puzzle to solve, which might frustrate fans of ARGs
(Alternative Reality Gaming), a concept that can link even back to the Blair Witch Project website that tied into
the 1999 film, multimedia works particularly for YouTube where fan speculation
and guessing mysteries exist. Petscop developed
a cult, when the first four episodes were posted online, but it is also elusive
in terms of what its themes are. We can confirm its creator as Tony Domenico, who had previous
experience developing his own games before he came to this project.
Petscop for all purposes looks like a real Playstation One game. The initial set up is a bright if desolate
world of a children's video game, of cute characters and pronounced colours,
all with a birthday/party motif like a present on the opening screen or the
trinkets that have to be collected being like novelties. Even when one finds a
curious form of purgatory underneath, of an elusive windmill and a
"tool" which can be asked questions to by a textbook, the mechanics
of Petscop can be an actual game. The
character moves and interacts with objects, the complexity found in the time
delayed secrets or that the game itself for Paul hides secrets even in the
secret option when a certain sound in the sound effects option is replaced
continually. The only aspect which breaks potential credibility, as Petscop has an officially accepted fan
version that can be played called Giftscop1, is when a character
named Marvin is introduced whom the player character can communicate to with Playstation controller buttons
combinations. That is a bit ahead of us in terms of the plot, but as someone
who once played his Playstation quite
a bit, those controllers were never designed for anything barring a strange
form of Morse code.
Petscop , in both its best aspect but also in a detail that may
frustrate some viewers, also is not overtly scary. It has no jump scares, no
explicit shock value, and neither does it became a conventional CreepyPasta
(online fan spun urban legend) of a cursed video game that leads to death and
game characters usually bleeding blood out of their eyes. (Sonic the Hedgehog is a
great example of this, if you look up "Sonic CreepyPastas" online,
where Sonic becomes the eye bleeding demon soul eater). What is eerie is how
slow burn the web series was, especially now I and many do not have to wait to
over three months for more videos if longer as the fan base did, with a tale
never fully explained and drip feeding a full story eventually to its
conclusion.
The one caveat which applies to
the first ten episodes, before being stepped back from, was the overt references
to a real life case about Candace Newmaker. Newmaker was tragically a young
adopted girl whose adopted parents, rather than dealing with her disconnection
to them through licensed therapists, went to an unlicensed one and killed her
by accident during an attempted "rebirthing" ritual, a scenario which
they effectively suffocated her to death under a pillow in a misbegotten and
callous stunt which was documented as being cruel anyway. Any knowledge of this
case, and now you know, could make Petscop tasteless as it is initially set up with overt
references to Newmaker, as the player character finds a place where (through a
changing canvas and extremely long elevator rides) they can wander through
rooms of adopted children. Creator Domenico
has explicitly regretted using the real life references, apologetic to the
point it is on the top of his Twitter account1, and moving away from
Episode 11 on with no references at all if possible. I do not condemn the
project myself, especially with this creative decision having taken place and
the creator himself finding a much more different direction for the better in
his own work.
Rebirthing and child adoption is
still the theme onwards as, to try to make sense of a fragment of this tale, it
is a dark story of a man named Marvin. Possibly kidnapping his daughter because
he felt she was the reincarnation of a childhood friend who vanished. This
could all be a j'accuse, a mere attack, by another figure who is likely the
creator as, whilst we do not see him, we read text written by him in the game. In
the first half, most of the episodes are vague with the added context of Paul,
a figure whose connection to the game becomes increasingly suspect as he is
eventually perturbed by the content, as text bubbles are no longer cute but
uncomfortable and the material gets considerably darker. It gets to the point,
though a later episode does reveal the truth of what they are, there is even
censorship of details too intimate for him which are obscured by black bars.
Adding to the nature of this,
which is where viewer participation comes to play, is where the text accompanying
these videos on YouTube suggest that
others are involved releasing these videos whether Paul would want them to or
not. This can be done in cinema, but online productions have run intentionally
with this sense that even the medium itself you can watch videos through can be
manipulated and offer much in what if even utterly vague as some of these accompanying
messages were. An issue of how to preserve them in the future (alongside Petscop itself) is to be aware of, yet whilst
YouTube exists these little touches
are interesting, forcing you to read the author's text rather than ignore it
for all the mystery it also evokes.
Of note as well is the fact Paul
is not just playing this game, toying with the initial medium of the Let's Play
where we will have a narrator most of the time talking. He is throughout
talking to an unknown listener - Us or another person? - during the first ten
episodes. Later he talks to someone we never hear, including referencing and
questioning a fan theory he was kidnapped and pulled into a car. Halfway
through he vanishes briefly, which lead to that fan theory, silence as we see
the game continue on. One video, Episode 16, is literally a flashing message of
the game having been left on, two minutes of this that asks that family and
police to be called but the console to be left on.
Petscop escalates, and gets weirder and more compelling, when the
"Demos" are introduced in Episode 11. "Demo" modes in old
games, as I fondly remember, are that if you leave the game at the main menu
untouched will go to footage of game play being shown. The demo scenes in Petscop change a considerable amount of
the tone as the genre literally turns on its head, showing this had a first
person mode and the ability to communicate to other figures with button
mashing. As it transpires, when the secret menu is found, these demos are old
games files and the puzzle grows in new options. If Petscop was a game, it would be such a fascinating one if you put
the time in. Episode 11 also introduces the school which is symbolically of
significance for the whole work, in first person with a glitch where it
flickers and feels graphically erratic with collision detection issues to add
to the ill omen of the environment.
This second half is liable to
divide people. Those wanting more answers may be disappointed. Those who came
to this, as I did, not expecting answers will be rewarded however in a
different way; the plot outline I gave earlier barely covers what might or
might not be involved, such as the extent the figure of Marvin who is
introduced plays in the game's existence, or the theories that fans have
suggested, but an emotional and symbolic conclusion is provided which succeeds.
Suffice to say there is a lot to ask, and a question is left on the table as to
what Tony Domenico's intention was
with Petscop. Entirely subjective,
it is however openly dealing with childhood trauma. It may have made a mistake
in referencing the Candace Newmaker story, but what it does instead to
compensate is very interesting. Structurally, a game about collecting pets
turning into collecting three children over its course is a structure to which Petscop with careful thought tackles neglect and
mistreatment in dark stories of emotional bullying or kidnapping, which is very
unconventional and could have easily become a crass and cheap shock work in
another's hands.
Petscop never becomes crass or exaggerated, and it is poignant one
of the biggest moments by the end is when passing a painting in the school
(which the player is dragged to continually by an invisible force) you get a
scene of the player and an unseen consoler play out, the later encouraging them
to play a board game together (disturbingly called Gravediggers, like a morbid
Battleship) whilst they ask the player ominous questions. There is no shock or
twist, but the jarring change in tone and moment turns it into a huge moment
for the production. The climax, which technically exists in two forms, was
fulfilling for me too. In game, it involves a transformation machine and an
actual use for all those trinkets collected, a sombre and matter of fact end
which can be interpreted many ways, but clearly ends as it leads to a quiet
stillness outside the school and returning back to the start screen, with the
ability to play end credits in the options fully confirming this as the
conclusion. The actual ending in 2020 was the video for the soundtrack, which
was released to purchase. Mainly empty locations in Petscop, it however has an epilogue which suggests a potential happy
conclusion or at least a new place, as family comes to be there for the armless
figure in the centre. A cute little yellow blog who, in a running joke turned
into a morbid detail, it cannot open doors due to the lack of hands, we follow
this sprite during the entire production and it seems a sweet, strange ending
that the last figure it meets does not come with a mystery but from a place of
welcome arms.
Altogether, Petscop is an achievement. It is one I admire for its labour
intensive creation and trying to a take a concept, a Let's Play, and turn it into something unique with a real dynamic
weight. Coming to the web project, I did not consider this would take such a
mature tone to very adult concepts, and the result is exceptional. It does
evoke a concern, again, of how in say ten years a work like this is preserved
if YouTube was ever turned off. Even
in mere memory, it could easily happen that a work like this could be forgotten
in the mass of content that is uploaded every day, but until that point right
now this is just an innovative work a cineaste like me can admire as equally as
regular cinema. Hence why it deserves to be covered like a film.
Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Disturbing/Eerie/Slow Burn/Unsettling
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
========
1) Giftscop did remove elements from the game, like
searching the special options, probably due to practicality for those producing
that version.
2) The exact twitter post, (which
I will link to HERE), is thus:
"Regarding Newmaker references. Most of you know that this was
intentional but I wanted to confirm it.
It was extremely stupid of me."
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