Amanda the Adventureris a creepy tale told through a series of increasingly strange VHS tapes. These tapes contain episodes of an old kids show calledAmanda the Adventurer, where something has gone massively wrong. It all begins with a letter, delivered to the main character, about inheriting their Aunt’s home and the mysteries contained within. There are a lot of puzzles to solve, tapes to watch, and a whole lot of lore, and some players may have missed some bits of it during their journey through thisspooky PC game.
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The Beginning of Amanda the Adventurer
In thisquirky horror game, players are Riley Park, the niece or nephew of the late Katherine Park of Kinsdale, Ohio. Katherine, or Aunt Kate, was a librarian who become a huge fan of a local TV program calledAmanda the Adventurer. Starting in the late 1990s or very early 2000s,Amanda the Adventurerwas a live-action TV show produced by Sam Colton, and his adopted daughter played the titular character Amanda. Since Katherine plugged the show at every storytime event at her library, the series became a local phenomenon, and kids all over the town would tune in every week.
In 2001, the show had become so popular that a large company called HaMelN approached the creator for the rights. It purchased the show in hopes of bringing it to a national audience, deciding to drop the live-action format and produce it as a cartoon. Interviews with Sam at the time showed both he and his daughter, whose real name is Rebecca, were very excited about the idea of the show getting so much attention. Until everything went wrong. Sam goes missing, and no one has seen or heard from Rebecca. At the same time, theAmandashow, which was still airing, has become more and more deranged, introducing kids to inappropriate content.
The Mystery of Amanda the Adventurer
When the game starts, there is a letter from Aunt Kate on the screen. She has left her whole home to Riley, and particularly wants Riley to check out the items in the attic. The letter warns that if the player starts watching theAmandatapes, there will be “no going back.” If players turn to their left at the beginning of the game, they can see a corkboard with some hints on it.
It is obvious that kids have gone missing while watchingAmanda the Adventurer. Thesecret orange tapeeven shows this happening; a young girl is watchingAmandaas her parents talk to her, and she doesn’t seem to hear them. In the next shot, she has vanished. Since so many children have gone missing, all of them fans of the TV show, Kate begins to investigate. When she dies, it is up to Riley to finish the story.
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What is HaMelN?
As Riley explores the attic in the house left to them by their Aunt Kate, they find all sorts of toys, all with the HaMelN logo on them. Each of theAmanda the Adventurertapesis also tagged with the little rat logo. So what is HaMelN?
The name HaMelN is the toy and children’s show company that purchases the rights to thestory ofAmanda the Adventurer. The name is in reference to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which is where the tagline “Follow Us to Fun!” comes from. Just like the rats and children that followed the Piper, the kids can also follow this company’s creations to find fun toys and interesting shows. It is also why the company’s logo is a cartoon-style rat. Unfortunately for anyone who interacts with any of the company’s media, they are not the wholesome, family-friendly company they pretend to be.
This name seems to imply that the whole point of buyingAmanda the Adventurerand airing the show was to put children in a trance, similar to the Pied Piper, and lead them back to HaMelN. The company may have also been trying this with their other toys, like thepiano inAmanda the Adventurer. More hints of this can be seen in some of the previous versions ofAmanda the Adventurer.
In previous demos, Wooly has talked directly into the camera, telling players that he won’t allow Amanda to “do this anymore.” He tells viewers to stop the tapes and destroy them, taking away Amanda’s power. In another set of videos from this same demo, players see someone trying to light all the Amanda tapes they can find, but they are prevented by a supernatural force from lighting them on fire. Players are also warned not to “let her in.”
So what happens to those kids that get sucked into the show? They become a living prop. Every item in the show with eyes appears to be a different child. This is confirmed during one of the endings, A Fateful End. Players end up hanging from the ceiling inAmanda the Adventurer’s Butcher shopas a slab of meat with eyes, stuck forever inside the show as a sentient prop. Most likely, the barn in the Family Tape is Sam Colton; when Amanda asks what the father chicken’s name is, when players write “Sam” instead of “Rooster,” the barn’s giant, blood-shot eyes turn toward the camera and look into the player’s eyes for a frightening moment.
What Happened to Rebecca Colton?
Rebecca Colton, the girl who plays Amanda in the show, was adopted by Sam Colton as a young girl. She was from a rough home and had most likely suffered abuse or neglect at the hands of her previous family. When Sam met her for the first time, he had the idea forAmanda the Adventurer, and he decided to produce the low-budget show with her as the star. This live-action series isn’t mentioned much in the game; it focuses more on when things started to go wrong after HaMelN purchased the show in 2001.
After Sam disappeared in thisitch.io puzzle game, HaMelN released a statement saying that, whileAmandawas still going to air as planned, Rebecca’s live appearances would be canceled. One of these appearances was going to be a Wooly’s reading event at the library where Kate worked. This most likely kick-started Kate’s worry about the young star and her missing dad.
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As for Rebecca, she appears to be locked up in the HaMelN studios. She has most likely been killed and uploaded into their AI Amanda program, with her body becoming a host to a terrifying demon; this is why Amanda says that she feels like her body is rotting, but the feeling is distant in the Everything Rots video. In the first ending, A Gruesome End, players will see a monster come after them, and this monster has a very familiar haircut.
In the The End and The End? endings, Amanda tells players that she is still out there, somewhere. And that somewhere could easily be by Riley’s window, waiting to murder them in A Gruesome End,haunting this video game house. The evidence for this comes in one of the secret tapes; this tape shows someone secretly recording a session at HaMelN with Rebecca speaking. She says “Bye Yell” over and over again, then “Pie Man” and “Baa Lamb.” While the HaMelN employee states that is to calibrate the dynamic voice recognition, these names seem weirdly similar to some common demon names.
Rebecca says all these demon names over and over like HaMelN is trying to get her to summon them, and then she hears a voice in her headphones that tells her to do something she doesn’t want to do. Most likely, the voices seem to tell her to suck her dad and random innocent kids into the TV.
Dynamic Voice Recognition in Amanda the Adventurer
Similar to many children’s shows of that era, Amanda breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the watcher quite often. She seems to react to the things that players say like she can actually interact with them in real time. While some might dismiss this as a video game thing, there is another instance of Amanda showing off her dynamic voice recognition.
In one of the secret tapes, Amanda is talking about how she likes to buy her own snacks. Wooly says that his parents hold onto his snack money, but they want to buy something to eat anyway, so they pool their money. This is happening in the background as two parents record a birthday surprise for their child. They call out to her, but she doesn’t seem to hear. They tell her that they have a surprise and her “favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream,” and when they look back into the girl’s bedroom, she has disappeared.
On the TV, Amanda is telling Wooly about how much she loves mint chocolate chip ice cream. This takes the fourth-wall-breaking kids show character trope likeSteve inBlue Cluesand Dora fromDora the Explorerand makes it a thousand times creepier. In this way, she was able to manipulate each child, speaking to them directly and putting them into a trance to steal them away.
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Other Amanda the Adventurer Trivia and Easter Eggs
There is a lot to this game; it may be ashort horror game for PC, but it is filled to the brim with weird little Easter Eggs and tidbits that teach players even more about the world ofAmanda the Adventurer.
