Latest / Replay Reviews / Say Snail Trail One More Time - Layers of Fear - Scerry Christmas Part 1
Transcript
- 0:00What the heck? It was slow.
- 0:03It was. I told you it would be different.
- 0:06It was very different.
- 0:07That's really all I told you.
- 0:08I gave you zero context.
- 0:11This horror I can stomach.
- 0:14It's not really horror though.
- 0:15That's the thing.
- 0:15It's and it's not very jump scary in the same sense of outlast.
- 0:20It's noise jump scare.
- 0:23Yeah, it's more atmospheric, more just psychological.
- 0:27But yeah, welcome to Scary Christmas.
- 0:31We're playing layers of fear.
- 0:33In this episode, we get stalked by a ghost snail.
- 0:36We open a door with our butt cheeks and we interrupt a baby's bath time.
- 0:45Thank you for coming back from our replay reviews.
- 0:48My name is Leah and my name is Kathy.
- 0:50We are two friends who are here to replay review and analyze your favorite video games.
- 0:54And since Kathy has never seen the games before, it helps me view them through her fresh eyes.
- 0:59Almost like I'm discovering them again for the first time.
- 1:01We hope it'll be a similar experience for you.
- 1:11So it starts out we just hear a voice.
- 1:13It says, I know how you must feel.
- 1:16Lost.
- 1:18Alone.
- 1:20Hopeless.
- 1:20You probably deserve it.
- 1:25But even for you, there is still a way.
- 1:28A way to bring it all back.
- 1:35The one precious thing you ever truly desired.
- 1:41Finish it.
- 1:43What are you thinking?
- 1:46When I hear finish it, I feel like murder.
- 1:49Like gotta finish killing someone.
- 1:51But in this sense, after seeing everything that goes down, finish it means like finish a piece of artwork.
- 1:58I agree.
- 1:58It seems like it's referencing the painting that we'll see soon.
- 2:01But my follow-up question is then who do we think is talking and to who?
- 2:08When I first heard this, I was thinking it sounded like someone else telling us as the main character.
- 2:15But by the time we wrap up this first half of part one, I'm thinking he's talking to himself.
- 2:23The more we get to know this main character, the more I feel like he has some mental health issues.
- 2:28Yeah, maybe we'll have to do some like vocal analysis or something.
- 2:33But it seems like every male voice that we hear in this game is the same.
- 2:38But I'm not confident.
- 2:39So I agree.
- 2:40I think it's probably him talking to himself.
- 2:42So wandering through this mansion, we find a ring.
- 2:47And when we look at it, we hear...
- 2:50The thought alone that the most beautiful piece of art doesn't have my name on it is killing me.
- 2:55So will you marry me?
- 3:00I hate this.
- 3:02This might be one of the times we agree.
- 3:06But I hate when people only have one personality trait.
- 3:11So for example, I'm an artist and that's all I am.
- 3:15Right?
- 3:16Like you should propose because you love her, not because you're an artist.
- 3:20You got to have more personality to wow a female.
- 3:23Come on.
- 3:24Exactly.
- 3:26It was cringy.
- 3:26Dig deeper.
- 3:27Dig deeper.
- 3:28Just even a little bit.
- 3:30It's amazing how it's just a tiny bit of effort.
- 3:33How far that can go.
- 3:36As we continue to wander around, a painting flies off of the wall.
- 3:40And on the back of it is written, paint deep lies.
- 3:45I don't know if you had any reaction to that.
- 3:47I don't know.
- 3:48But we also notice there's a lot of different writings on the wall.
- 3:53It's not just on paintings.
- 3:54It's like on the back of the chest.
- 3:56It's on lids.
- 3:57It's everywhere.
- 4:00Yeah, that's one thing that I'm wondering if we should also address at the end of the game.
- 4:04Sort of analyze those if we have time.
- 4:06But on this painting, we find a sketch of a woman and here.
- 4:10Now, a tiny bit to the left.
- 4:13Yes, just like that.
- 4:15Hold that pose.
- 4:17I want to get all those lovely curves just right.
- 4:24And then not long after that, we find a hairbrush.
- 4:26And here when we pick that up, this is a woman's voice this time.
- 4:30First time not the man's voice.
- 4:32Hello.
- 4:33It's about time for us to talk, don't you think?
- 4:36I mean, I've seen you in my house so many times.
- 4:40And yet I could never find the courage to face you directly.
- 4:44Not until now.
- 4:46So I have a few questions surrounding this.
- 4:48Number one, is this woman the same woman that he's sketching and proposing to?
- 4:54Or is it someone else?
- 4:56I'm confused because I don't know if he's picking up these items in the narration we hear is in chronological order.
- 5:03Or is it just happens to be different pieces just from different timelines?
- 5:09Right.
- 5:10But I'm hearing this and it almost sounds like he's a stalker.
- 5:15Like I've seen you in my house multiple times.
- 5:18And is this the house that he's in right now?
- 5:20Or is it a different house?
- 5:21Is he stalking someone?
- 5:22Is he?
- 5:23Well, she's the one saying this.
- 5:25Well, yeah, but is he stalking her?
- 5:27Like she shows up in her house multiple times.
- 5:30I don't know.
- 5:31I just don't get good vibes.
- 5:32That's my second question.
- 5:33That goes into my second question, which is, is this a giant mansion with multiple renters in it?
- 5:39Or like is this woman the owner and she's renting to this guy?
- 5:43And if so, that's what makes me wonder if this is a different woman than the one that he proposed to because we later find the cane.
- 5:53And he talks about if we move here, you're going to have to carry me up the stairs.
- 5:56So it doesn't seem like she's the owner.
- 5:58So I'm leaning towards it's a second woman.
- 6:03I just don't know if this house is something that they move into or if this is part of like her heritage, her diary, this mansion's included.
- 6:14I don't know.
- 6:16But I'm thinking it might be the same woman who owns all these pieces.
- 6:20But I also don't know.
- 6:21It could go either way at this point.
- 6:24We hear some creepy crying and other weird stuff happens and eventually in the kitchen, there is some definite poltergeist type activity, including a knife that gets thrown.
- 6:34This all builds up to a painting of food spilling out all the apples, potatoes, whatever is in it and fall out of the painting.
- 6:42And what's left is a piece of skin.
- 6:46And when he picks it up, we hear him say,
- 6:50First, I looked for a canvas, not just any canvas.
- 6:57I had to find a knife, not one of those bread ones.
- 7:01It needed to be as sharp as a razor.
- 7:04So I used a razor, in fact, and then carefully flayed the skin.
- 7:10Booze helped keep my hand steady.
- 7:13So things have amplified.
- 7:15It's so weird because we don't have enough context if it's a skin of a human or a skin of an animal or what are we talking about?
- 7:26It's just it's creepy.
- 7:28And all we know is it's wrong.
- 7:30Yeah, it is.
- 7:31I'm worried about cannibalism.
- 7:36I think that's fair.
- 7:37Fair to be worried, especially after Outlast.
- 7:40So we return to the studio room and add this piece of skin to the in progress painting, which morphs into a couple of flamingos.
- 7:50Is that what you see?
- 7:51I don't know what I see.
- 7:52It just looks like blurs.
- 7:56All right. In scene two, we find the second piece of the painting.
- 8:00So starting out, we're taking the elevator upstairs and I think we see a ghost in the hallway.
- 8:05Did you see that?
- 8:07Yeah, but it's also quite normal because things are shifting around quite frequently.
- 8:13So, yeah, why not?
- 8:17We also find a burnt piece of sheet music and hear a piano and then a voice says,
- 8:24Why did you stop?
- 8:25That tune was perfect.
- 8:26Honey, please, just a little longer, at least until I finish painting this one part.
- 8:33Don't make me beg.
- 8:36So again, do you do anything else or just paint?
- 8:40Painting is his personality.
- 8:42It's all it is.
- 8:44We're already getting so mad at this person.
- 8:48At one point, we're walking through a room and then it sort of erupts into disorder.
- 8:53Everything's strewn about, but we get a flash momentarily of it back to being perfectly arranged.
- 9:00What is he really seeing?
- 9:02So is the room in Disarray reality, but his memory is seeing the room how it used to be all orderly?
- 9:11So do you think he's out of his mind right now just walking around an abandoned mansion or what do you think is going on?
- 9:17Exactly that.
- 9:18I think that he has gone through some trauma and what he sees all the Disarray is its current state.
- 9:27And every time it has that weird noise and he's doing a flashback, that's the past history.
- 9:32He's maybe hallucinating or wanting to live in the past because he's in denial.
- 9:37And at this point, every time we hear those weird noise, it almost looks like his vision is melting,
- 9:44which makes me think that it's like either some kind of fire happening where things go up in flame
- 9:52because that's the same kind of pattern we see the pictures.
- 9:55They either go upwards as in they're on fire or they go downwards as if it's like a candle melting.
- 10:01I agree with you and there's also a lot more documents and notes that you can find that give a little more insight into what's happening.
- 10:08But I played it that way trying to find everything and it just took way too long.
- 10:13So I just went for the main clues this time, but maybe after we finish the game,
- 10:18we can talk about some of those other clues as well to get a better idea of what's going on.
- 10:22But for now, seems like it's mixed reality.
- 10:26So we approach a painting of some dogs, maybe greyhounds and hear them barking.
- 10:31But as we get closer, the painting changes and the dogs turn to skeletons and we hear whimpering.
- 10:37Really hurt my heart to hear that.
- 10:40Very nearby this painting, we find a collar and the memory that we hear from this one is
- 10:45Honey, remember how you said it would be nice to have a cat so the baby could have someone to play with?
- 10:52Well, I just bought us a dog.
- 10:56Hahaha.
- 10:58Aww.
- 11:00So many things wrong with this one.
- 11:04Get a cat so that the baby has someone to play with?
- 11:07I don't understand this.
- 11:08What is the cat going to do?
- 11:10Or maybe just spend more time with your child instead of getting an animal to replace you?
- 11:17Not good. And then also, he bought a dog instead of a cat, so I feel like maybe shouldn't have done that.
- 11:24We're then soon stalked by a wheelchair.
- 11:26We walked past it earlier and it was a normal wheelchair and it soon appears right behind us.
- 11:32And it now has paint on it.
- 11:34So that seems weird.
- 11:35It might have been his because he said that, oh, you'll need to carry me up. So maybe he has some issues.
- 11:43Yeah, I will tell you one of the things I found in my first playthrough is a note about getting a prosthetic leg and they made it too short.
- 11:50And so that's why he's limping.
- 11:52Continuing on, we get locked in a room and hear creepy walking, shuffling outside in the hall, followed by some knocking and banging on the door.
- 12:01And so whatever it is then shuffles away.
- 12:03When we open the door, there is a snail trail of paint, which seems to lead into a painting that then melts and morphs into a different image.
- 12:12So here's what's interesting because you just talked about the wheelchair.
- 12:16So it kind of sounded like this thing outside the door had a limp.
- 12:20Like it kind of sounds like the main characters walk a little bit.
- 12:23And then in this painting that melted, we find a cane.
- 12:26And this is when we hear him say,
- 12:28This house is absolutely amazing, but those stairs with that leg of mine, I think you'll have to carry me to the bedroom once we move in.
- 12:40You again, everything he says is stupid, but.
- 12:44Is he the paint snail ghost?
- 12:48I'm calling it a snail because it leaves behind a snail trail.
- 12:51OK, so I'm sorry if that was confusing.
- 12:54Yeah, I was like, I'm trying to think about like snail.
- 12:57OK, it was kind of snail.
- 12:58What are you talking about?
- 12:59Yeah.
- 13:00Um.
- 13:01Why not?
- 13:03In a bedroom, probably the one that he was carried to, we find a violin in here.
- 13:08Honey, what in the world are you doing?
- 13:10What did the doctor say about straining yourself?
- 13:14Leave that thing alone.
- 13:15It's not going anywhere.
- 13:18Number one, what kind of strain is she under?
- 13:21Number two, what kind of doctor?
- 13:23And number three, it's not going anywhere.
- 13:25Does that mean the violin's not going anywhere or her career as a violinist isn't going anywhere?
- 13:32I feel like there's a lot of ways this quote could go.
- 13:35I kind of like your third idea that she's a violinist and then.
- 13:38She can't keep playing and I'm thinking that maybe she has a baby or she's pregnant or something like that.
- 13:46And she just can't do that because she's on bed rest or she's hurt.
- 13:53Or maybe mentally she's just not capable to be doing so much.
- 13:58I don't like the direction he's going and the attitude he has to her.
- 14:02Sometimes he sounds very sweet.
- 14:03Sometimes it just seems really mean and aggressive.
- 14:06And I'm thinking that he was very sweet in the beginning and slowly goes downhill and he's becoming more and more aggressive.
- 14:13I agree with that trend.
- 14:14I mean, the way it starts out is like you're my piece of art.
- 14:17And now it's like a little more controlling.
- 14:20Yeah.
- 14:22A little more controlling.
- 14:24Also in this room, there is a record player that causes the room to melt, I think, which releases a bottle of blood.
- 14:35And when we pick it up, we hear.
- 14:37I needed a jar and a plastic tubing.
- 14:41I siphoned gas before I knew how it was done.
- 14:46I stuck the tube in a vein and sucked on it until blood filled my mouth, then put the tube in the jar and it just kept coming.
- 14:57The taste of copper haunted me the entire night.
- 15:01Why didn't I think of a syringe?
- 15:04What?
- 15:05So many things wrong with that sentence.
- 15:08I'm thinking all this relates to the piece of skin, the carving.
- 15:14You saying that it's related to the piece of skin.
- 15:17Did the bloodletting happen before or after the skinning?
- 15:23Or is it a different person?
- 15:25Because either this is a mass murderer or someone is being horribly, horribly tortured by being skinned alive and then having their blood siphoned out of them.
- 15:34And it seems like he's the one doing them all and he's a painter.
- 15:38That's his identity.
- 15:39So is a serial killer not an identity of his or does he not admit that?
- 15:45Because the one thing and this is not the full quote, but it says needing to separate the meat from the bones.
- 15:52Like, what the heck?
- 15:54It's just so disturbing.
- 15:56What's going on?
- 15:58Yeah, it's making me wonder if he is like killing people that live in this mansion, if he's some sort of serial killer, because if this is in chronological order,
- 16:07it seems like it would be much harder to siphon someone's blood when they have no skin on their body.
- 16:15But let's keep tabs on this theory.
- 16:16I think we're leaning towards serial killer right now.
- 16:20It's funny because I had no thoughts of this having anything to do with a serial killer before we started recording 15 minutes ago.
- 16:27So I'm excited.
- 16:29Yes, new turn of events.
- 16:32Back in the studio where the in progress painting is, we find a flask.
- 16:36Oh, stop looking at me like that.
- 16:38It's just a little something to help me focus on my work.
- 16:41That's all.
- 16:44And then on the flask is engraved some liquid courage for your grand art opening.
- 16:49Leah, I just I just thought of something.
- 16:51Oh my God.
- 16:52What if this art is his cover for being an artist and reality his artwork really is the use of human body parts and skin like the redness is the blood.
- 17:04That's why he needed to siphon that his canvas is human skin or whatever.
- 17:10And maybe he keeps marrying different females.
- 17:13And and if those three females voices that we hear in the beginning belong to different people, then he's obviously luring females back, cutting their skin to use as canvases, taking their blood.
- 17:26And that's the redness.
- 17:27And he burns down the place, which is the melting effects.
- 17:32It's just oh my God, what if this whole art thing is just a cover, the grand opening and the liquid courage is for him to actually feel better and not throw up as he starts killing people.
- 17:45You got to be either drunk or insane to do that.
- 17:50But I think definitely human elements are being used for art.
- 17:56I 100 percent agree with that.
- 17:59Speaking of which, we add the blood to the painting, which then morphs into a meat pile or maybe a bloody scorpion.
- 18:08I don't know.
- 18:09So at this point, I have two theories.
- 18:12One, he's an artist and he has some kind of art business.
- 18:17And then he gets married to the person who owns the ring.
- 18:21Then he has a drinking problem as noted by the liquid courage, and then he probably maybe takes drugs.
- 18:29And then there's a house fire at the mansion and it actually kills his wife or his child, which I'm thinking that they have a kid.
- 18:39And then he's in denial or he's in just really mourning the loss of his wife and his kids.
- 18:45And that's why you see everything always kind of burning and flickering and he's going back and forth between reality and the burnt mansion.
- 18:55My second theory is that the voice we hear in the beginning, just that crying, the female crying sound is maybe his wife.
- 19:04And they're mourning the loss of their baby dying, which we'll get some more clues about that.
- 19:10And then his wife leaves him.
- 19:12Then he gets into a drinking problem.
- 19:14That's why his voice starts to become more and more aggressive during certain parts that we know is more closer to present than the past.
- 19:23And then he's slightly mentally unstable.
- 19:26He burns his own place out of rage and he's just left alone in the mansion.
- 19:31And that's why we see things melting.
- 19:34I think there's definitely some hallucination going on, schizophrenia maybe.
- 19:41I think something's going on.
- 19:42There's definitely a psychological aspect, not just to the game, but I think to the character.
- 19:47All right, final scene, we find the third piece of the painting.
- 19:50So under an odd painting of a face, we find a dented pair of glasses.
- 19:56And when we pick them up, the character says,
- 19:59Ugly? Ugly? You ordered a true portrait, so that's where I painted you fucking pleb. Maybe I need to kick some artistic sense into your stupid face.
- 20:12Got him. Got him real good.
- 20:15As he said, the painting's ugly.
- 20:16I painted a true portrait.
- 20:19Good one.
- 20:20Number two, do you know what a pleb is?
- 20:22Because I don't.
- 20:22No, I don't.
- 20:24Should we Google?
- 20:25Yeah, you Google it. Keep it on your browser.
- 20:29Derogatory and informal. It comes with a warning on Google now when you type in something bad.
- 20:35An ordinary person, especially one from a lower social class.
- 20:39Well, it wasn't quite as offensive as I thought it would be, considering the warning it came with.
- 20:44But okay.
- 20:46Hey, we learned a new word today.
- 20:49And then number three, did he beat this guy up and that's why the glasses are dented?
- 20:53Is that what I'm picking up on here?
- 20:55That's what I'm thinking.
- 20:57Do you think this guy's in a painting now?
- 21:00He's probably burnt. Maybe it's his skin and his bones.
- 21:05And then continuing on, there's a trippy section of gameplay where a phone falls and it's backwards and then you have to walk backwards and it's confusing.
- 21:17But once you figure it out, you can answer the phone and it says,
- 21:20Hello? Yes, speaking. What? What fire?
- 21:27Oh, God. Is she? Which hospital? I'm on my way.
- 21:35This sounds like the same voice we've been hearing, right?
- 21:38Yeah.
- 21:38So who's she?
- 21:40Has to be his wife and baby. Maybe.
- 21:44Here's where I'm slightly confused.
- 21:48We were thinking this is the house that was on fire,
- 21:51but we know that the phone is happening in this house and he throws his phone down and that's the history.
- 21:58So the fire must have taken place somewhere else.
- 22:02Or unless there's two different fires going on, because how could he be picking up a phone in the house that had the fire?
- 22:10Unless partial, like part of the house was on fire.
- 22:14I'm not too sure.
- 22:18I'm confused by this as well, because it seems like we get hints to both of these events occurring here.
- 22:24The phone call and the fire has been referenced a few times and we even see it once in a memory.
- 22:30When he goes up into the attic, there's flames below him in a room that we were just in where there were no flames.
- 22:36So he's hallucinating actual flames as well.
- 22:39And it's all in the same house. So yeah, your question is correct.
- 22:44Something's off. Unless he set the fire and he's just playing stupid.
- 22:51But the thing is that if he's setting the fire to kill someone and then he wants their skin for canvas, it doesn't work out.
- 23:00It doesn't work out. Anyway, questions surrounding that.
- 23:04I think we need more information.
- 23:06We do get jump scared by a ghost behind a door.
- 23:09And after it fades away, we enter the room, which is covered in more paint and snail trails.
- 23:16So this is also where I get confused, because now it seems like the snail trails are being left by this female ghost.
- 23:22But our main character is the one that has the lip.
- 23:26So I don't know what's going on with the ghost and the paint snail trails.
- 23:33Unless those snails are from him and his wife fighting violently and he's leaving snail trails everywhere, but it's so closely entwined with the ghost.
- 23:44The other thing is that as we're looking, because the room rotates, we get those snail trails at the top of the ceiling,
- 23:51which I don't know if it truly is on the ceiling or if it's just in his mind, things are flipped around.
- 23:57And that's why the floor where snail trail should be end up at the top.
- 24:02I love how casually we're just tossing out snail trail.
- 24:07Yeah, I don't know.
- 24:08I mean, there's a lot of really trippy things like that room where you get locked in and there's no doors.
- 24:13And the only way to get out is if you reverse, but first and maybe open a doorknob with your butt cheeks.
- 24:22Like there's lots of weird things that I don't understand.
- 24:25And I don't know if it's symbolic of maybe a mental condition,
- 24:29but I'm confused by the ghost because then pretty quickly after this we see, I'm assuming the same ghost lady,
- 24:35but it's just like a shadow this time, you know, in the window, which will soon push the character down and then it just disappears.
- 24:44So I don't really know who is the ghost.
- 24:46If it's always the same person, what form the ghost is in, if that changes.
- 24:50If his wife did die, then it would make sense that's his wife.
- 24:54If his whole MO is to kill females and multiple ghosts, multiple females.
- 25:03Mm hmm.
- 25:05Could be.
- 25:06Could be. And that could be why they look different because they're killed in different ways and used in the paintings in different ways, maybe.
- 25:13Mm hmm.
- 25:14Soon we stumble upon a piano that plays by itself and causes all the furniture to float.
- 25:23And on the piano, we find a box with a piece of bone inside.
- 25:27I needed to remove the flesh from the bone.
- 25:30At first I was lost as to how, but then I sawed it off with a handsaw, boiled it, then put the bone in a mortar.
- 25:40I had to get one.
- 25:42Obviously, this was not something I'd done before.
- 25:45Finally, I mixed the dust with some white paint.
- 25:48It made for a lovely undercoat.
- 25:51So more confirmation, the stuff is being used in the painting.
- 25:55I'm really grossed out right now.
- 25:57You're gonna have to go test all your artwork.
- 25:59I'm really disturbed.
- 26:02But again, same person or different person.
- 26:05And then also they said that they haven't done this before.
- 26:08Are we sure?
- 26:10Seems like he's speaking from experience.
- 26:12But I'm wondering, the bones and the dog, the painting, because we see it with the skeletal form.
- 26:20Are those the bones we're referring to?
- 26:23I don't know. I don't think so.
- 26:25I saw that painting more as like maybe, I think you said like the dogs died in the fire.
- 26:31Maybe.
- 26:32So I'm not sure if that relates to the painting.
- 26:35But what if this is Father Martin?
- 26:40Oh my gosh.
- 26:41Because his finger paints were taken away from him.
- 26:45And this is what he's progressed to.
- 26:48He's progressed to luring unsuspecting females to then use their blood as finger paints.
- 26:54This is what happens if you take finger paints away from Father Martin.
- 26:57Expect nothing less.
- 27:00It's all Helen's fault.
- 27:02So when the bone is added to the painting, it changes into a fish.
- 27:07And I don't think that there's any connection between the painting and what we add to it.
- 27:11It doesn't seem like there is.
- 27:14And that's the end of part one.
- 27:16Any summarizing thoughts for you?
- 27:19At this point, I don't even know what the objective of the game is.
- 27:21What's he trying to do?
- 27:22Is he trying to cover his tracks?
- 27:25Is he trying to find answers?
- 27:29I think he's trying to complete his painting.
- 27:33And maybe he's, yeah, being haunted by all the people or perhaps just person that he's killed to make it.
- 27:42I think he's definitely insane.
- 27:45Well, is that it for part one?
- 27:48That is it.
- 27:49Do you have anything else?
- 27:52I don't have anything else.
- 27:53I guess we'll see what else we learn in part two.
- 27:56Tomorrow.
- 27:59I will count us off then.
- 28:01Audacity on one, three, two, one.
- 28:04Thank you for listening.
- 28:05And don't forget to send in any questions, comments or game suggestions.
- 28:08You can find all our contact info on our website, replayreviewspod.com or contact us directly through our site.
- 28:14Do we completely miss something?
- 28:16Are we way off the mark?
- 28:17Or you just want us to take a deeper look at anything from the game?
- 28:20We'll tackle any topics you all want to hear in our season wrap up episode.
- 28:24We also have a Reddit where we discuss anything we're curious about.
- 28:27Go take a look and let us know what you're thinking.
- 28:29Our theme music is Condemned by Eggy Toast.
- 28:32They'll play you out and we'll be back next week.