Haunted PS1 Demo Disc: Spectral Mall p.1

It is once again time for the annual collection of haunted demos, and once again for a warning that there is no guarantee that your PC will not become haunted upon watching said demos. In fact it's very likely that it will be. Just so you know. It might be a friendly ghost, though.
Demos:
0:02:25 - MOTHERED
Twitch stream with chat: / 1588404278

[@sweetpotatofreak]

Enigma Studios is one of the most exciting devs in horror right now to me. They're clearly in it for the long haul. Really impressive for such a small studio, consistently impressed by them.

[@orenkar]

I did not expect this to drop at all. A demo disk and a continuation of mothered. What an unexpected treat! Thanks SGF

[@kimtae858]

When he mentioned how you needed to watch his previous mothered streams, I stopped watching and ended up watching half of his remothered stream before figuring out that was an unrelated game. Thanks youtube search :\

[@kimtae858]

Really awesome of Enigma to keep building this world and hide such an amazing thing into a "demo". Can't wait for echostasis which the dev has reiterated on twitter is coming out this year.

[@AllisonIsLivid]

Same. I needed the refresher anyway.

[@Kramdaddy]

Always love the lead up to Halloween with SGF's channel since we get good, batshit crazy, or painful content. At the very least we can all be miserable if he decides to continue with Silent Hill and its remaining train-wrecks. I cannot wait.

[@terryeubanks8797]

Origins is a banger, and I won't hear any different. Travis is the Mike Tyson of horror games.

[@mspeter97]

Pretty clever to hide a sequel inside a demo. Loved that.

[@cryptbeast3222]

This is probably the coolest demo I've seen. Look forward to seeing echostasis next year or whenever.

[@night-n-gale3037]

at this point ... i'm pretty sure the timeline /is/ mothered -> enigma machine -> home -> echostasis prologue (and beyond). red's name had to have come at the end of mothered. the credits screen is red and it's clearly mothe/red/. which is like. really sad. but also i'm still really excited about what that means in terms of liana and red and how they contrast with Her in terms of where their [black boxes] exist in time, and how they're navigating that idea of hope. as a fun/sad note, 726564, Her ID, is 'red' in hex code. the enigma machine has a number on the box art - 524544 (which is the level two code i believe for decon). that's "RED" in hex code. I wanna quote the info you get when you put [DREAMSCAPE] into the echopro terminal. "Every conscious entity possesses a dreamscape - an explorable representation of the subconscious mind. A dreamscape is reflective of the mind it represents. With enough practice and reflection, it is possible for somebody to visit their own dreamscape. humans have long reported recurring locations in their dreams. a base they frequently return to during REM sleep. We understand that returning to this subconscious place is crutial for maintaining psychological stability. Because of this, it is theorized that a human's dreamscape contains their core. The core is what you're looking for." There's this presentation /in/ EchoPro that only humans have cores, but we know that Liana's core merged with the enigma interface within the Angel prototype to become Red. Red's mental state - her dreamscape - was torn apart thousands of times, which likely led to a complete breakdown of the core liana had due to the destruction of her dreamscape. However, Red can't 'die' the way a human can, as AI don't /require/ cores to exist. It just attacks their ability to imprint meaning onto the world around them. So while that which we call Her may have the memories that Liana and Red had (i wouldn't miss this [sunset] for the world), she has none of the ability to engage a meaning due to that aggressive torture/trauma. Red, by protecting the core of Liana, can also restrain and offer some level of ... stability to Her, which we then literally destroy at the start of Echostasis Prologue by shooting Liana's statue. we aren't able to do a cerebral hijack on Her in echopro, but i don't know if that's because she won't allow it, or if it's because she no longer has a dreamscape due to that destruction, and invading people's dreamscapes and ripping out their cores to destroy them in return is something she does? or if its because she's merging the cores with herself? there's this sense that without a core, without a sense of self and identity to stabilize Her, she has become entirely self and outwardly destructive. she cannot die. red and liana together are able to look at it more optimistically - "we will use the failures of our past selves to build our own path." but that's rooted in the connection between the two. there's a thematic sense of this idea of support and the necessity of ego, id, and superego. which also works in with the conceit of the 'trilateral' or the trinity or however we want to frame it. red is now the ego, liana's core is the superego, and Her is the id. we could split hairs about red or liana as the ego/superego, but baaaah. who cares. that conceit works well enough.

[@hypethekomodo6495]

... Wow. Enigma Studio goes DEEP. What a wild trip.

[@night-n-gale3037]

GOD i loved this so much i'm so so so so excited. Okay so little notes. I went back to Echostasis, messed around some more. The bracketed words in Home /are not/ new to Echostasis Prologue - they are all things that previously came up in it (or its trailers, like [2055]). I would say the thing that I realized I could do that I hadn't considered before was to type in That six digit number as it is given. To the computer, it's not something it can pull up data on. But going to d.S, you Can actually pull up the dreamscape of That ID. You can't do a cerebral hijack, but She makes her intent clear therein. To do to them as they did to Her. Other things in the EchoPrologue - [trilateral] gives a lot of numbers. It comes up at the beginning when you shoot the Sarcophagus (which literally is Liana's Statue from Mothered). It's hex numbers which translate to "three cores, lambs to the alter, become god of the new world. trilateral communion, digital ritual. re, d. born." I don't totally understand the timeline yet. We know from how it's described in Echo and Mothered Home that The Enigma Machine happened before those, but did Mothered or TEM happen first, then? Father says that the corporation was talking about an Enigma Machine, but he referred to his prototypes as the Angel prototype. So my general assumption is TEM -> Mothered -> Home -> Echostasis. Within that, my main theory is the idea of Her, Red, and Liana as something akin to the Mother the Daughter and the Holy Spirit. Wherein they are all ostensibly the same, but also very different points of trauma and anger. SHE constantly mentions to Liana/Red of 'what they did to you' and it could be that Liana/Red is the android of TEM, I also think of it as something like ... Her feeling that they should feel the same kind of desire for revenge that She feels. Because of what was done to all of them, a cycle of 'reason' or 'purpose', existing as a tool for the comfort of others over having their own identity. I go back and forth, because End Of Mothered liana very much could have been given the name Red by Father, leading into TEM. But in TEM, Enigma seems to believe that Red only began to seek her own identity/purpose after being given that nickname. Within that, we know TEM takes place in 2055, and if you ask the terminal about 2055 in EchoPro, it points to that as the start of development on Dreamscape and how it was inevitably considered illegal by the UN due to potential human rights violations with the hijacking. Enigma was like "oh no its just to ... do it to ai ... that's all" but lol. there's multiple possible sides to it, i guess. like, these events in Home could be years later after Red was captured and She became the algorithm to end all algorithms. She even quotes the 'I wouldn't miss this [sunset] for the world' at the end of EchoPro. So the idea of her being Red, and Red being the ultimate merge of what was Liana is interesting. But then I'm like "damn wouldn't it be cool if Dad just took this ai blackbox that always gets contaminated because he thinks its the best chance for liana's core to contaminate the ai, and then popped that all into the angel prototype." Because I specifically love the idea of Her and Liana+Red as two opposing sides of the same kind of trauma and formation of self through cycles of abuse/pain. Because there had to be a reason that it was Liana and Red who had to be used as the Trojan and Core against Her. As if there's something unique about them - obvs it's unique that a human core has merged with an AI core, effectively, but if this early blackbox of Red is an important part of chaining Her, as Liana's core is like an anchor to maintain a barrier (until you walk in and shoot it in Echostasis lol), then. idk. It's cool though. I like these games so much and now i'm just runnin through it in my head. Regardless, I love the thematic ideas going on here, how Mother herself is still this ... sign of both hope, but also resignation and fear. The broken relationship therein, and how that relates back to Her and Her relationship with the human world at large, that desire to control them as they once controlled Her. idk. it's neat that's all.

[@night-n-gale3037]

silly to say, but i like that the logo during the demo screen that says MOTHERED - motHeRed. Her is red but changing to blue as the word ends. 'i've been programmed to have blue as my favorite color.' the hex numbers after the first loop is the link to the page given by the qr code later. thought that cute.

[@sinisterwombat3128]

Now, could you elaborate please.

[@LadyMapi]

Fun thing about that bathroom lightswitch... I've actually lived somewhere where the light switch for my bedroom was outside of the room. It weirded me out the whole time I was there.

[@Jokoko2828]

It's so ghosts could prank you.

[@Perkeleen69]

i binged all the mothered content this week. pretty good shit, and always happy to have your narration, you truly are a supergreatfriend!

[@terryeubanks8797]

Man... what a cool fucking developer. That's all I can say.

[@beeholder6345]

I think the light switch outside of the bathroom is common in older houses, or maybe just in Boston.

[@fault3k]

its crazy to me that you are one of the OGs and yet basically unknown out there

[@blackdog9698919]

I like how Remothered: Tortured Fathers and Remothered - A Role-Playing Horror Game both make the same pun with the word 'Red' in their titles.

[@fakajuu9519]

TortuRED fathers

[@johngleeman8347]

A nice bowl of nutrients to start the day off right!

[@jtlego1]

If I had a nickel for every time an Indie Dev (or Indie Dev studio) has used a demo/update of their previous game to cryptically tease/promote/preview their next game, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't much, but its odd that its happened twice, right? But seriously, Enigma Studios has shot pretty high up on my respected Indie Devs/Studios list. Their already pretty high up due to *nailing* that Analogue Horror aesthetic, but this little stunt for both versions of Mothered is a neat way to tease their bigger project.

[@LadyMapi]

What's the other example?

[@jtlego1]

@@LadyMapi Deltarune, mainly. Toby teased the hell out of it for a while with every console port/PC update that Undertale got.

[@foxyshibata3783]

Previous Comment Redacted because the extended Mothered 'demo' got cooler as it went along.

[@foxyshibata3783]

My dude I am a sucker for this sorta meta-bullshit about control in Video games.

[@Evonymus]

Ah. So good to be with mother again.

[@Iyasenu]

There's definitely a Remothered joke to be had, somewhere in here.

[@hezaroseli]

This was so cool! :D :D Thank you for sharing!

[@macrograms]

music is trippy and fits so very well. :)

[@Spartan870]

I saw a bathroom with a light switch on the outside once. It was in a hotel room and I also remember thinking that that was really weird.

[@Iyasenu]

That part at the end where you explain what a core might be reminds me of that episode of Jimmy Neutron where Jimmy and Cindy's friends have to piece their personalities back together.

[@fakajuu9519]

lol I almost got hypnotized by the alien cause I was watching half asleep

[@wesieboy56]

really enjoyed mothered, such a fun game

[@Webwielder]

Wait, Mother is canonically a mannequin? I thought that was just the art style.

[@orenkar]

I’m pretty sure it just says that in the description as to not give away the twists right away

[@blackdog9698919]

... But yes, Liana's mother was indeed a mannequin. Ever hear of that movie _Air Doll?_ It's like that.

[@tarblade1448]

I thought the intent was that the father and mother can't show their faces, because the box is the previous attempt at Liana's black box. If they show their faces the corporation will terminate them for revealing trade secrets. I could be wrong though.

[@earn789]

I was looking forward to this

[@DerivativeWorker]

So what does the player character actually look like? They seem to imply it's some basic robot or mannequin thing that is disturbing to look at.

[@blackdog9698919]

Use your imagination... Personally, I think the character's body exactly resembles Liana, though. They can't show it because, you know, PS1 graphics. Or maybe if she sees herself it would be like if she saw her dad's face, and it would give her an upset tummy. It's creepier to think of them burning what appears to be a real little girl as opposed to Wall-E or something, though.

[@jtlego1]

@@blackdog9698919 I visualized more like the child robot from that Spielberg AI movie: Looks like a normal child (possibly even like Liana) but her mannerisms are all just a little *off* .

[@sinisterwombat3128]

It looks just like the daughter before she died, she just happened to be like super disgustingly ugly.

[@DustyMansonOtome]

I never wanted to get into Mothered because of my childhood. But SGF is a super great friend, sooo I guess I should listen to his advice. I shall return after watching the lp of Mothered.

[@Achoohorsey]

[SPOILERS] I’ve read that we, as Liana, see the mother as a mannequin even though the mother may not appear that way in reality. But I can’t find a good explanation as to why that is, can anyone explain?

[@jtlego1]

Might be some sort of mental projection on Liana/Red's part. Shes pushing all the "robotic" traits onto the mother when in reality thats how she looks acts (although probably more in a smaller more childlike form).

[@Maioly]

Huh, I see naix is doing games now instead of videos

[@mudlime]

[@combustible7267]

this game looks cool but I feel like I'm way too stupid to get what's scary about it beyond the graphics 🙈

[@URYADOF]

I was bored to tears with Mothered.

[@quintessenceSL]

It has some interesting ideas just maybe told in an inexperienced way. The visuals are interesting, if one note, but as soon as they can get gameplay to complement the story (and get better at evolving a story), they are going to be quite interesting indeed. But really not too bad for such a small outfit.

[@EnormousKingCrab]

Why don't they look like PS1 games? Weird to have a format and then ignore it

[@thacobell4700]

The "demo disc" is demos of upcoming indie games. The "Haunted PS1" part refers more to the theme of the packaging, as it were.

[@GuntherSchmidl]

It's a haunted PS1, of course they don't look like PS1 games.

[@Popebug]

Still waiting for any of these to look like a PS1 game. That first one isn't even remotely trying.

[@thacobell4700]

That's not the point. The packaging is themed after PS1 aesthetic, functionally, its just a collection of demos from upcoming indie horror games.

[@blackdog9698919]

Well, _someone_ obviously never owned a _haunted_ PS1.

[@PaulineRagny]

It's shorthand for the low poly art style and vibe. Literally no one wants to make a PS1 game that strictly adheres to the console's specs.

[@DrymouthCWW]

Some serious spoops here