Petscop is a PS1 game from 1997 that tasks the player with catching all the pets in an abandoned animal care facility and bringing them to a loving home.
Only for things to take a dark turn when you find a mysterious, unused portion of the overworld...
And a story of disturbed child abuse, death, familial dysfunction, and seemingly sinister game menus and ludicrously flexible hardware begins.
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Petscop is not an actual game, but the name of a Youtube found footage series in the internet's first ever Let's Play horror story narrative framing device, of which the titular, fictional, in-universe game is the central focus (and the source of practically all footage). If it isn't the first, it's at least the most detailed, dumbfounding, and intricate one yet.
The series is narrated by some fella named Paul, who is also the one supposedly uploading the videos. Decent seeming guy.
- PAUL
From there, the rest of the series comprises his exploration of the game, and the oddly unnerving implications it appears to be keeping coated behind the pixel. The mystery and questions steadily build with each new upload... and the conclusions farther and farther.
The whole project is a boggling engima. Started two years ago, it made waves primarily for the downright bona fide looking legitimacy of the fictional, in-universe Petscop game it features. There are actual full-on animations, assets, sound effects, and convincing real-time inputs accompanying a live sounding commentary that might as well have been cut straight from an average, innocuous Youtube playthrough of some obscure, incomplete PS1 game that simply few people documented.
By now, it has garnered a sizable cult following. But its update schedule has been infamously sporadic. (They have just updated a whole five episodes in the span of about a day two months ago after a near half-year-long gap.) No one knows how many people are working on this, (or who, for that matter), nor what the long-term plan is. Whenever a new entry hits, we gather; but there is still so much to piece together; is it a haunted game story? A sci-fi conspiracy? Both?
There are currently 21 episodes, each with varying lengths. Imo, the batch of episodes in the first half is a subtle composure-dismantling shiv. Its every second is a well placed building block in the ongoing escalation of confusion and dread alike.
For the uninitiated, here is the first video of the series:
After you get through a few of those, some good resources can be found in the fan Reddit's 'Progress Document' as well as the obligatory wiki. BE WARNED, however, that these will contain spoilers for those who are still early in the running! Try to get caught up before diving in headfirst into the nest -- though, it's not like there'll be that many more answers either which way you stick your head out...
That said, for the rest of us/ya!
Have you any idea what this might be leading up to yet? :p o_O
Some claim we're nearing the end -- I suspect this won't be done with until Christmas 2020.
