I’m a huge fan of mascot horror games. So, imagine my surprise the other day when, while I was surfing YouTube, I got an advertisement video pop-up for a really cute-looking game that turned out to be pure mascot horror, Giggleland.
Seemingly coming from developers KMW and ?v=P1qoOWRpD6M (remember those for later), Giggleland is full of mystery. It introduces two cartoony characters, Eliot the cat and Ella the dog. Giggleland appears to be a theme park, likely long abandoned.
The teaser introduces the two characters and, well, Eliot is not what he appears to be. Something creepy and glitchy is going on. If you’re familiar with mascot horror, having an animal dressed in purple causing glitches in everything and getting all creepy during the trailer, gives off major Glitchtrap vibes from the FNAF games.
Giggleland: A mascot horror game with an ARG is always going to be a fun time!
Truth be told, there’s no actual news about the Giggleland. This wasn’t announced with a press release and the only people talking about it are horror YouTubers. But, it does bring with it a full ARG. This ARG, short for Alternate Reality Game, is full of childhood trauma, real-world psychologists, and a (possibly Satanic?) cult — You know, the usual fair for mascot horror, to be frank.
You start to notice the beginnings of the ARG in two obvious places: the YouTube teaser description and the Steam store page. The description on the YouTube video that you may have just been served by Google’s algorithm has binary code for the Giggleland Discord server when translated. I’ll leave it to the theorists among us to figure out themselves, but I can see over 1100 people online in there as I type this.
The other important clue involves the names of the developers on the Steam page. KMW will be an important acronym for those who dive into the ARG. But, a little extra taste comes in the form of a hidden video, easily found to be related to the developer “?v=P1qoOWRpD6M”. That clearly isn’t a company name; that’s the end of a YouTube video URL. Plugging that into the URL after the word “watch” gets you just a little more lore to keep you guessing.
I won’t spoil any more of the ARG here because the rabbit hole is always the best part for hardcore theorists. But, the whole thing is still actively going on as this article is being published, meaning you’re likely going to get new content involving this ARG and the subsequent video game. If you just want to know more, Tom at The Game Theorists has a great breakdown of the ARG so far, but a ton of spoilers await you going that route.
Giggleland, as mentioned, is hard to pin down at the moment in terms of what the game will be about or how gameplay will be handled. You seem to follow a character named Tolie, not Eliot or Ella, through the very obviously horror-focused game.
As the only website involved is part of the ARG, you can just Wishlist Giggleland on Steam for now. If you like a little bit of horror in your gaming, you should check out my review for The Bunny Graveyard, another mascot horror with cute anthropomorphic animals (some being purple) that I loved!
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