"In a way, recordings have the power to raise the dead."
Press play on the bandcamp audio player in the bottom right to play explore, my favorite petscop track! You can find the link to the official track by pressing on "petscop sountrack"! :-)
Naviagtion:
Primer
Rainer Quotes Collection
Soundtrack, Explore
Petscop Primer:
Petscop is a horror un-fiction* and “This game I found”** type web series (notably: NOT an ARG***, although it was believed to be so for a while.) spanning from 2017 to 2019 with 24 episodes (ranging from a couple of minutes to half an hour long) and a soundtrack. The plot follows Paul playing through a game he found while slowly uncovering the secrets of said game and what, exactly, the developer of the secret portion is trying to say or re-create.
Due to the nature of the series, this primer contains some spoilers in order to get a fuller idea of what this web series is about.
(*un-fiction refers to fiction that treats and presents itself as if it were real.
**TGIF as a genre was popularized by Petscop and is typically used to describe the web series inspired by it: it’s called that because the format is usually in a “lets play” or “discovery log” format of a game the protagonist found. I.E. “This channel is about a game I found.” Some examples would be Animal Investigator/A.I. builds, Diminish, and Sherif Domestic.
***While technically being an “alternate reality game,” Petscop lacks the outside influence (a way to “play” or discover things outside of the channel as a viewer) that an ARG needs to be categorized as such. Additionally, the creator of the series has stated that petscop was not meant to be a puzzle to be solved.)
Content warnings:
General: Some main topics of the series is child abuse, childhood trauma, dysfunctional families, death, and rebirth.
Specific spoilers:
Theres also: Child kidnapping, Onscreen kidnapping, talk of animal injury, talk of missing persons, child death, talk of and motifs of car acidents, currently controlling families, heavily implied suicide, the recording and monitoring of someone aware and unaware of this, and references to a specific real child abuse case. Despite all this the ending is implied to be happy for the protagonist.
With all that said: Petscop is constrained to the game and most of these things are shown rather abstractly, through in-game counterparts recreating events, or through text. There’s no traditional jumpscares, although there are parts with sudden loud noises (episode 16 in particular).
Petscop is abstract in its execution, so there are multiple ways to interpret events. It’s one of those things that needs to be re-watched a couple of times to really understand it. There's also a lot of parts that are intentionally obscured and are never truly revealed.
It can be watched in its entirety on the Petscop youtube channel. There are now official captions made by the creator. To get the entire story one can watch all 24 petscop episodes and the last section of the soundtrack video, there are no outside channels or videos off of this channel to understand the main story. The only outside source that’s official or treated as such is the name of the account that posted petscop to the r/creepygaming reddit page which is u/paleskowitz.
Here's the first episode if you want to get a taste of it, only 9 minutes long! (There's currently a visual glitch on the channel making some videos look longer than they are.)
Recommended post watching or outside watching:
I highly recommend NOT watching any "The Game Theorists" channel/@GameTheory videos over this series. For the love of god do not do this. Instead, make your own decision on what is happening or what petscop is about!
If you really do want some videos or reading discussing possible ways to interpret the series, here's some recommendations:
- Sock Muppet has some interesting videos on the topic, particularly some of their later ones.
- Mysticete has some interesting ways to view petscop, and a lot of his videos lean towards giving the viewer tools to dissect the series with, rather than telling the viewer what to think. It's video on rotation theory is a good place to start!
- If you want a glimpse of what people were thinking about the series while it was still ongoing: The Petscop Investigation by Nightmare Masterclass should be what you're looking for! Although, a lot of these theories and ideas are debunked or don’t work as well with the completed series due to this being made while it was ongoing.
- r/petscop also has The Petscop Comprehensive Progress Document, which you can check out.
- If you didn’t get what was going on in Petscop 21, this video should help!
- Not actually analysis, but you should watch Pieces of paper if you haven’t yet already.
Another highly recommended post-watching reading is this interview with the creator of petscop!
“There’s room for interpreting it in different ways, based on your own experiences and what you care about, […] I prefer not to explain it in words myself, because that would take away from personal interpretations, and because I think too much is lost in that translation into words.”
Speaking of the creator of Petscop: you can find his youtube channel here.
Rainer Quotes Collection:
I really really really deeply enjoy how Rainer phrases things and how entrenched the entire game is in their personality and tendencies. I could probably include the entirety of the textboxes in this section, but to (somewhat) limit myself here are just some good Rainer quotes and the timestamps for them.
I won’t be including anything* from the base demo since it’s implied to be a (Garalina) team effort and as such the text isn’t really theirs.
(*I lied.)
- “Good Grief and Alas” The writing outside the children’s library. Technically this is a quote from a Dr. Seuss book, but Rainer’s inclusion of it has made me repeat this phrase a lot to myself so I’m including this here. (From petscop 3, 0:03)
- “She’ll appear from the darkness, limping, and I’ll shoot her in the head.” I have to include this here since it’s the first instance of really feeling like you're hearing the voice of the person who made the newmaker plane/secret portion. (from Petscop 3 8:43)
- “I guess that’s toneth then. toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth toneth. the end. it’s yucky outside.” Another classic Rainer moment. I think the entirety of Toneth’s page is a good introduction on where their mind was at one point and the thinking patterns they were entrenched in while starting to work on the hidden part of the game. This goes hand in hand with “I think I forgot what birds look like.” from the beginning of this passage. (From petscop 6, 7:11)
- “Your friend never returned with you, and the windmill was gone. I went to see it myself. Where is it? What did you do? - Rainer, Newmaker” Another must have inclusion, since this is the first instance of Rainer identifying themselves. (From petscop 9, 6:57)
- “Fuck you all, and fuck me as well. Merry Christmas. Check your bathroom now. -Rainer” One of THE Rainer quotes. I think I have to include this one if I ever wanted a “complete” collection of their quotes. Poor guy. (From Petscop 11, 24:20)
- “When the messages run out, I’ll be out of your hair forever and ever.” “That looks dubious to me. What do you think?” “Can you still look around the room? Is there still a room?” I really love Petscop 12. “That looks dubious to me” is my favorite out of the selected three, but these are all really good. It’s interesting to see how Rainer talks to Belle compared to how they tend to talk to the player (“you”), still teasing, but less accusative until the end portion. (From multiple parts of Petscop 12)
- “It’s a growing organism” I KNOW I said I wouldn’t include anything from the base game / Even Care since it’s dubious if it’s from Rainier or not, but this is such a good phrase. So… Dubious Rainer quote included here anyways. (From Petscop 13, 5:56)
- “Here’s a similar puzzle. For you, Marvin: There are two pictures of a door. In the first picture, the door is closed. In the second picture, the door is open. Nobody opened the door. The door did not open itself. The door, in fact, did not open at all. What happened?” Some thoughts about the internal logic of the game, and so, the internal logic of Rainer. They seem to play around with the idea of transference a lot, it seems to me. I think this quote is good at capturing why I think they’re fascinated with that. (From Petscop 14, 0:33)
- “Is there such a thing? A curse that changes your past?” This is more Rainer trying to explicate what Care may be thinking, but it’s still reflective of their thoughts anyways. A classic Rainer quote if I ever saw one. Another thing about transference and changing things through weird methods and whatnot. Thank you Rainer for your thoughts. (From petscop 17, 6:44)
- “According to him, he’s never the same person for more than a few seconds.” From Wavey’s passage. Even more dubious Rainer quote since this is obviously NOT an actual Rainer quote, but in fact a quote that may (depending on how much you like linking them to Wavey) be about them. How about that, huh? (From Petscop 19, 6:24)
- “She liked to spin. She became a blur. But in that blur, somehow, as she spun around…From 45 degrees, to 90, to 180, to 360, to 720, 1080, 1440, 1800, 2160, winding, tightening, tightening I was stunned by pure horror and disgust.” The caskets in general do a great job at capturing Rainers want to re-create and understand deeper, deeply, the events around Care and Tiara. However, this passage is just from their own perspective and how they view Care in this instance. It's a really vivid and very Rainer-esque way of capturing and thinking about what’s in front of them. I really enjoy it. (From Petscop 20, 10:09)
- “When you reach for your shoes, your shoes will be there. When you walk through a doorway, the door will be open. Wherever you go, the floor will continue under your feet. Every move you make, will be made valid. Everything you see will become real. Everything you say will become the truth.” Another dubious Rainer quote, since it could be that they’re quoting someone here or, you know, your idea of how “real” (in regards to being a part of the game) the school segments are could make connecting this quote to Rainer seem insane. Regardless, I love the cadence and flow of this section. It feels Rainer enough as a thing they would say for me to include this here. Still super dubious though. (From Petscop 22, 22:38)
- “They’re all scattered in graves. And I’m a piece of shit. Here I go. [image of a shovel dances across the textbox]” The final textbox from Rainer, and what a way to go. Obviously this entire game is an exercise in grave digging… Quite a quintessential Rainer quote if I ever saw one. It really sticks in your head. (From Petscop 23, 14:17)
Soundtrack, Explore:
Explore first appears in Petscop 17, in the House gen 10 segment. At the time, it was labeled as “room impulse,” by fans, so you occasionally see it being labeled both these days as a holdover. (rooom impulse, with three “o”s, on the other hand, is a completely different song. Nothing to do with Petscop except for the name and the Paul voice bite at the start.)
(Fake album cover I made for the song in 2021)
As previously mentioned, this is my favorite song from Petscop!
There was a video someone made with an attempted cleanup of the audio from that section of the video. There were still faint clicks of the dial in the background, but was pretty good at trying to isolate the music overall. I can’t find it anymore, but I really enjoyed listening to it before the soundtrack was released.
This cover is also really good!
Petscop Cursor by betah