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I have something to say, other side takes place thousands of years in the future, imagine it takes place in the 5090s, i think that carbon steel might take place in 5090s too, this is because when we go to sleep in carbon steel, we can have a dream where we are in a beatiful countryside, this countryside is very similar to the one in the other side, maybe the protagonist of carbon steel was planning to escape to the other side and wanted to do it, also, carbon steel and other side protagonist may be the same person.
That infinite survey game really gave me the creeps. I was expecting something cosmic or superhuman, but no, the horrors of being confined and isolated for 50 years is honestly more terrifying then the spiders in the Control Room Alpha game.
I do wonder if the people who remembered what happened drank the coffee but the drug didn't work on them, or if they didn't follow the safety instructions and went in regardless.
I love how every one of these essays is someone gushing over Mike's aesthetics and philosphy and I'm just over here pounding shots and playing roulette with my best friend
I’m fascinated by horror that doesn’t rely on gore to be scary. The games like Tartarus engine and infineural get me so much more than games where blood and guts are everywhere because the most primal fear, is that what we cannot grasp
Absolutely agreed with you two, it's why I can't get into PuppetCombo because that's all just blood and slasher stuff, I get the draw, but compressed screams and blood n guts with jumpscares around each corner, reused music all over can feel, though scary in the moment lacking in depth. Completely my personal opinion as I can see why some are scared by it - the idea of a serial killer or your grandma betraying you or a pregnant cadaver murderer zombie demon, all good ideas that are freaky! Just not nearly as compelling in the long term as the strange grungy science fiction horror esque style of Klubnika's stuff with a focus on psychological techo-cosmic horror is a real mainstay that grips me tightly.
we call that psychological horror. horror that doesnt make you shit your pants bc of something rearranging your guts but rather it messes with your mind or has disturbing implications
I remember someone math'd out the time dilation of the tartarus engine and they figured out that it's only going to be a few days. Like less than a week, which while awful is definitely survivable
Then it’s INSANE that almost 19,000 years passed in increments of a few days… Assuming that it’s 6 days, that’s over a million participants assuming the machine’s on at all times- and that’s just one cubicle Who KNOWS how many poor souls got run through that questionnaire…
Definitely not. If you mash it at 10 answers per second, you'll go through 9mln questions in 10 days - and have about 400 billion questions from penalties. If you take careful 15 seconds per question and never make any mistakes, without breaks you'd be done in over a year. But no breaks and no mistakes are impossible assumptions.
i was completely surprised by his telling of carbon steel because i literally thought that the engineer ending was the only ending. guess ive been playing the game wrong
i imagine there'd be solid evidence for carbon steel to be taking place in 1998 as the email date is signed as just *98* which was prevalent in computing technology at the time as the only signed value for the year are the last two numbers, in this case 98, whereas the prefix to 98 was a text string "19" that would just get glued on to the end to display the whole date. seeing as the computers still use floppy discs, i'd say it's fair to say the game takes place in 1998.
In the 1M+ High Rollers teaser for BR there's a message that shows up on screen for a frame that says "Remember August 05 1998" after the player shoots themselves. August 5, 1998 would place Carbon Steel 2 weeks before BR. The other ending to CS is acquired by using a core capsule that has an "X" scratched on the rim, creating an explosion where the scientists are behind the door and leaving an open chasm for whatever is being pressure treated down below to make its way up to the surface.
@@everberonOn that same note, from what I've seen the sample capsule with the engraving will show up on the last day with the deepest drawn creature from the pit. And following the aformentioned explosion, could also be the "shutdown" in the BR ARG that was used as the key for the cypher that was so graciously provided by Volta.
I think the black shadow figure is you looking in, because the red beam thing is preventing you from progressing the same way it prevents the black shadowy figure. Especially given how Untitled VHS is in general.
@@everberon I'm betting on them being pressure treated humans, that's why they have human faces. No idea why "pressure treating" turns things into spiders though. Anyways the experiments in Carbon Steel take place after the player bombs the alien planet in System Upkeep, and the orb thingy from Control Room Alpha is retrieved. Timeline wise SU takes place directly after CRA so I think it's the most likely to be a direct sequel, after the orb is discovered they attempt to negotiate with it, but that fails and SU takes place. The Orb is eventually retrieved and the events of Carbon Steel take place, eventually more and more pressure treated humans are created and they break out making the earth uninhabitable. Edited to be more clear.
@@sulphurspanic26Could be that the alien creatures live somewhere under immense pressure, so they hope to move humans on to a similar state of existence. There’s an underlying weakness of the human body that’s acknowledged in having your mind put into a machine body to withstand the 5 simulated decades of survey
It occurs to me that at no point in time is the player important. Yes, there's clearly something going on, but overwhelmingly most of these games focus around someone doing mundane work and trying to make ends meet. Unsorted VHS and Tartarus Engine might have the PC as someone important, but that's about the list. Everyone else is just trying to make do. No matter no one in these stories ever finds out what's going on; they're just trying to get by in life. There's also a recurring theme of these incredible and terrible feats of technology being used for alarmingly mundane things, this happens in both Tartarus Engine and Infineural. Heck, the entire point of unsorted VHS was that someone was trying to use the magic cabins to raise funding. The only one where what you're doing is something grand is System Upkeep, which... why is a space ship carrying an apocalypse bomb powered by coal?
if I had to guess the survey questions in Infaneural were some sort of data collection training. Like how we have captchas that tell us to identify motorcycles and stop lights and boats, which are then later used to train image recognition software. Those in the booths are just there spending over half a human lifespan in the infinite captcha to both answer and collect data so... something... can answer one simple question. Are you human?
You don't need to guess. It literally tells you this in the game. It's a method of training and simulating an artificial intelligence by transferring human consciousness into a synthetic brain and simulating many years of answering training questions into a few moments of real-time. The name "captcha" even clues us in because real life captchas are not only used to detect bots but also to train ai algorithms
"BIG ASS SPIDERS EXIT AT OWN RISK" is what got me I'm not usually a fan of comedic relief like this in horror but this is perfect for the tone of Mike's games
Mike Klubnika started the klubnika game universe by uploading a bunch of cgi videos to his youtube channel. some of the videos are related to the mike klubninka universe. there even is a video where the same company logo as the one we see in carbon steel is visible.
Is it at all possible that the player character in Carbon Steel becomes the Dealer in Buckshot Roulette? Im unsure about the exact time Buckshot Roulette occurs, but if anyone else has seen that creature we pulled from the mariana trench a while ago, they look similar.
This is a very good video. Btw, in Mike's Unsorted VHS video, he said that the game is a standalone. However, Lab Run is actually connected to Control Room Alpha and Carbon Steel! All 3 games feature a single organization known as E.K.R.E (Carbon Steel has their symbol on the screen and CRA has it on the paper, not sure where it is on Lab Run) As for your theory about Core, i really doubt that they invaded a shelter because one of the first room you see (43:26 to be specific) is called "Sentinel Manifold" which hinted at the Sentinels being created at that facility. Another thing i want to point out is that in Infineural, all the employees are dead as the monitor stated it during the same frame you took the date from, which make me question how they were able to pay you money lol
I delved into the lore because of the pyrocynical video. I was recommended this video. It is far superior and more in-depth. I subscribed and look forward to more of your content. Great stuff keep it up
I believe low polygon count games is the best for horror. It is enough to give what you generally need for a horror game while also leaving enough to the imagination.
I’ve seen some videos about unsorted vhs and carbon steel forever ago, seeing them here was absolutely wild to me. The idea of them being in the same universe just makes it all the better.
Klubnika means "strawberry" in Russian. Now imagine listening to a serious video with specific atmosphere (props to you btw, nice narration) and every time, you call his name, i hear "mike strawberry".
I'm, personally, of the belief that Carbon Steel takes place around or during the same time as Buckshot. Feels like it makes the most sense to me, at least.
Klubnika gets it, and he's quickly become an absolute icon for me to look up to. The issue with modern horror games is that it feels like you *need* to have the monster be an opponent, and the one time he does have one (Buckshot Roulette)... it's uneasy in a completely different way. He understands humanity and our fears, that we're goal-forward in nature, and that having a consistent opponent means the horror needs to come from a different angle. I think this is something that the industry giants gets wrong; Alien Isolation is regarded as one of the greatest horror games ever made, but I always find myself regarding the titular alien as a challenge and NOT as the horror it's supposed to be. It's something to be worked past, not something to worry me.
Im glad that games like this exist, if for no other reason than because people who "dont like games" because they never read or watch anything, not even a button guide, and as a result dont understand the game and get stuck
THIS VIDEO ALMOST KILLED MY DOG! For real, this is a really great video and I really like it. 10/10 would watch again. When I watched this video it scared me and I had a hard time falling asleep so I invited my older dog to sleep with me. He slipped and started loudly crying out in pain, I thought he dislocated a hip and would need to be put down, turns out he just got his paw stuck under something and was completely fine. So yes, me watching this video did scare me enough that for a second I did thing I accidentilly killed my dog. Great video, 10/10, you earned a subscrition, dog is fine
First thing Infineural reminded me of was The Jaunt by Stephen King where humanity is able to travel across the stars but can only do so while “Jaunting” unconscious and that if you are awake during The Jaunt, the experience for you will feel like 100-1 billion years, and a Family in the story Jaunt to Mars and the Son decides to hold his breath and avoid Anaesthetics to experience Jaunting and awakens completely insane and claws his own eyes out and all the Father does as “whatever his son used to be” gets dragged away, screams
Im sad that you didnt mention concrete tremor at all. I think the setting in this one is a perfect example of soviet-style "Utopia", which I being from an ex-eastern block country can relate aswell as Klubnika can probably.
The room with the computer and window apparition matches the placement of the VCR/window(screen?/black box?) at the end of the game. Since we're the person hanging there with our tapes/memories it's possible that there's someone watching us (like the figures at the end) that we can 'see' but are too engrossed in the tapes/memories to ignore our current situation so we 'filter it out' and make it part of the memory.
I think it's if you spend too long and let the final creature escape, then you get away on the trolley, if I remember right. In retrospect, isk why I didn't talk about it in this vid
@@everberon black floppy disk you were holding if you were to import it into the computer, you will get an email that’s all I’m gonna say because I don’t wanna spoil it for you
So, I think Buckshot Roulette might take place in one of the simulation machines. They act as perfect simulations, which would imply that in simulating a buckshot blast to the dome it would stop your heart, which would then explain why a defibrilator would bring you back. Perhaps it's a prison sentence, hence the oppressive and hopeless industrial hellscape atmosphere. Could also go to explain that they know they're in this simulation and those things combined would lead to stimulus disassociation of some kind basically making them insane adrenaline junkies. Just a thought.
The only problem is that it's way too lazy and boring of an explanation. I doubt Mike would just make it "oh your in a simulation" especially when he confirms God is actually dead. Why confirm that if it's just a simulation? Like why does it matter?
@@Pig_stain It's not about having some deeper meaning, it's about exploring concepts and fleshing out consequences. The games are small, bite sized things exploring concepts in a behind the scenes world. They're set in the same universe, but they're not telling a singular story. They're giving microscopic looks into what has taken place in the world and its consequences. Like "We can Remember it Wholesesale For You". "God is dead" is a Neitzche quote and it can mean a million things. Unless the developer states 'Abrahamic God is canon to this Universe and it has been literally murdered" you have no real idea what that confirmation actually means. "God is the opiate of the masses", being a famous quote. Did the dealer kill opioids? Or is the concept of something greater than ones self dead in the eyes of the people undergoing these simulations? God is dead to them, he has been killed. But what does it really mean without a detailed explanation? It can mean a million things. Snagging your hook into one line like that tunnel visions your perspective. The point of the simulations and time dilation is something that Stephen King and Junji Ito have previously explored. The whole "9 million questions" in 5 minutes is not some new concept, nor is the effect it has on the protagonist. "The Long Jaunt" explores this directly with teleportation technology that requires passengers to be sedated and not experience the "jaunt". The purpose of exploring the effects the simulation has on the people in it isn't "it was all a simulation, the end", it's exploring the consequences of the technology and the horrors it inflicts upon the people. The horror of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein isn't, "a man creates a monster and said monster kills everyone he loves". The horror is, "in the absence of moral compunction a man decides he can do better than god, and this is what he's wrought". You think it taking place in a simulation is boring because you think there is supposed to be a grander narrative telling a single through-line story with a unified point. There isn't. The questionnaire happens in a simulation. It's explicitly stated. If you follow the instructions and are sedated, you don't even remember it. If you don't drink the coffee you experience the 50 years but don't actually live them. It's not something new even for these games. In a previous game the perfect simulations were being worked on, and people even got stuck in one at the end. He's already explored one aspect of their effects, it makes logical sense that he would explore other aspects as well. It's not "boring", you're just looking for something tying them all together that is far bigger than what actually is.
@TheNecroswanson yes but everytime your in a simulation, you are pretty much explicitly told. It just nullifies too much mystique. Why bother with the doctor reviving you? Why bother with the defibulators? We can clearly see a nightclub, but if the simulation is just tied to the buckshot roulette part, why even have it there? What about the person on the bridge? Story wise, it just nullifies too much of what Mike shows you that it just wouldn't make sense for there to be all this extra stuff. Why would the date even matter or be told in a simulation? All the simulations we've been shown have been relatively small-scale as well, but this shows other people, living human beings, being in there, too. The chance of Mike saying that it's a simulation, while not zero, I suppose, seems very low. Also, Mike literally states that the God mentioned is the creator of the universe.
@@Pig_stain You are missing major points of the simulations previously mentioned. A "perfect simulation". Perfect. Meaning to people inside the simulation, it is indistinguishable from reality. The simulation isn't tied to the Buckshot Roulette part, Buckshot Roulette is a product of the lives of people in the simulation. Go back to my first post: They'rr in the simulation, possibly for the purposes of prison but it not really mattering what it's actually for, but they understand it's a simulation. They know it's not real, but literally everything that keeps them conscious believes it is. I mentioned the disassociation with stimuli. Imagine doing grievous bodily harm to yourself, you start to die, you know you are dying. Now add in the fact that three seconds afterward you are literally fine as if it never happened. You can't comprehend it. With all our science and medicine we can barely comprehend PTSD. What simulation horror stories or the "infinity in an instant" stories are exploring is beyond even that. Think back to Call of Cthulu. It's not part of a broader narrative, it's a single story amidst a greater work of single stories. They share a similar universe but aren't telling a single narrative, they're microscopic glimpses into a larger world and its consequences. There is no purpose looking for a single story tying it all together because there really isn't one. All you are getting is a small glimpse into a much larger world, but that larger world is only consequential to how this particular portion happened. Look at Dark Souls 1. Who Queelag is is inconsequential to the player. Same with Artorias. You never speak to them, you cannot reason with them, and you cannot pay them for passage. Who they are and what they once did is entirely inconsequential to the player. They are in your way and it's kill or be killed. Their lore means nothing outside of coloring the blueprint laid down by the enviornments. It's meaningless. What matters is that you are going to take the world as you have learned of it and decide whether or not another cycle is worth it. Gwyn will never speak to you and shake your hand. The story isn't the history of the world. The story is the consequences and your actions in the game. It's the same here with the games. "The creator of the universe is dead". Perfect simulations in this setting exist. Meaning entire universes are created by computers and technicians. You're putting a lot of stock in what are intentionally nebulous statements to fill a prefit notion that goes from BJ Blazkowicz to Doom Guy. But that's not the world and setting you are being presented with. Dates are world building. The nightclub is a factor of a perfect simulation. The "brush with death" adrenaline junky game of Buckshot Roulette is the result of the world around them not being real clashing with every fiber of their being telling them it is, but the disassociation caused in realizing that's it's not, yet being trapped inside. Again, the story being told isn't just some protagonist uncovering the greater secrets of the world to tell you a complete narrative. The story is a look at a microscopic event, in a broader world of technology and its consequences. Go back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story isn't about some guy screwing up. It's about the consequences of his actions in actively believing he could do better than God did. It's not a question of "if simulation therefore lazy". It's a question of "are YOU looking for a story that isn't being told"? I'm probably wrong in my assessment of the game's setting. But not because it would be a lazy copout, just that I'm misinterpeting the themes tying the works together. But there is no story tying "Hellraiser" to "Mister B, Gone" despite both involving stories about those who come from Hell. And there is no story tying a simulatrd questionaire to Buckshot Roulette, only the themes and a nebulous background world.
@@Pig_stain Also remember The Matrix. The night club nightmare, communicating with those outside the simulation, being aware of the simulation opening opportunities for those inside to manipulate it, etc. Game starts in a dingy night club. The cell phone lets you call an unknown individual who has knowledge of the shell order that they would only know through outside observation, small abilities to manipulate what is happening (the defibrilator). These are clear nods.
I never really put together that the games are one connected world, but this was pretty convincing Also, id like to think Carbon Steel probably takes place in the past, just going off of the fact that before 2000, people shortened years to just the last two digits usually, but id guess as time went on, the full year would usually be written
So I do remember that in the Buckshot ARG, you have to bring up the date that's mentioned in Carbon Steel, could this be evidence that it takes place in 1998?
It sounds crazy at first, but the "setinals" look similar to the dealer, but the dealer seems more humanoid then a setinals. its probably a guy with a mask. But it is possible setinals adapted to the humanoid body and one just turns into a dealer.
He made The Other Side????? I remember watching Mark play that game a couple years ago, so seeing the dev of that game blow up as much as he did recently is cool as fuck
the Infineural the earth year says May 5th x) two days before the published date of the game, though very good video! it helps pull everything together
Fun fact about the sytem upkeep arrow. It has 2 dots and rhe rest of the arrow makes a dash which makes a U in morse code. And U is rhe fist letter of the word Up and it's an arrow pointing in said direction. Pretty neat detail I noticed.
I personally believe that the BR dealer is not human, but a machine. You can hear some noises similar to a machine when he comes back after.... ahem... getting a healthy dose of iron...
One thing I think is overlooked is that the sentinels from The Core look a lot like the Dealer from Buckshot Roulette, maybe the Sentinel creatures were here far sooner than we thought?
@@everberon That was fast! Thanks for the heart, I’ve been loving your channel for a while now I got sucked in by all of your amazing legal company videos, and I’ve been watching every video with bated breath! Also, after commenting, I realized that perhaps the sentinels could have evolved from the original “dealer species” and could have turned hostile one way or another. Keep making awesome videos, dude!
1:12 - This shit is so unique that not only Dusk/Iron lung did it but also wallpapers made of newspapers on the walls of decrepid barack of tsar times mentioned that everybody and their grandmother's been doing that even before texas chainsaw or hellraiser... Or 90% of indie horror.
Great video! Was really cool seeing how they could all be linked together. In my opinion, the human experiments at the end of carbon steel could have gone wrong and resulted in the creation of creatures like the one in The Other Side. Where now the current state of the world is full of giant human-spider hybrids roaming the lands. Just an idea though
Theory: God got killed by the dealer, causing these spider things to keep evolving. Volta, a company known for their advanced technology, try to help humanity survive and adapt.
Hearing about Unsorted VHS... So you're telling me there's some thing where, if you go in, you'll come out in another place. And this thing has 5 locations it goes to, except there's a 6th one that people are struggling to get to. And that 6th one is extra special. Outer Wilds?
My theory is that all the monsters we see in games come / escaped from The Pit in Carbon Steel as in the alternate (good ) ending that you didn't show we actually escape the facility there partially by blowing it up and in doing so we also damage the tube that we used to pull those things from deep underground.
i think that lab run might be close to system upkeep because in lab run they say they made a 20,000 gigaton explosive compound and in system upkeep they say you are delivering a 20,000 gigaton bomb
Waited til the end of the vid. Did you notice the Sentinels kind of look like the Dealer? Massive, pale, round faces with hollowed eyes and huge grins with jagged teeth. There might be a connection there in some way
The dream in carbon steel shows a brain like biomass breaking from the cage. The same brain like biomass that is used in the Volta technology. What if the creatures we extract in carbon steel are used to build the tech from volta. That would place carbon steel before buckshot roulette.
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You Sellout.
no, I don't think I will
I have something to say, other side takes place thousands of years in the future, imagine it takes place in the 5090s, i think that carbon steel might take place in 5090s too, this is because when we go to sleep in carbon steel, we can have a dream where we are in a beatiful countryside, this countryside is very similar to the one in the other side, maybe the protagonist of carbon steel was planning to escape to the other side and wanted to do it, also, carbon steel and other side protagonist may be the same person.
thank for letting me know to not watch your videos or subscribe
That infinite survey game really gave me the creeps. I was expecting something cosmic or superhuman, but no, the horrors of being confined and isolated for 50 years is honestly more terrifying then the spiders in the Control Room Alpha game.
Definately. I think it's one of his creepiest for sure.
No those spiders weren’t even Australian.
I do wonder if the people who remembered what happened drank the coffee but the drug didn't work on them, or if they didn't follow the safety instructions and went in regardless.
Ah yes true horror, online surveys
I don't get how people are "scared" of that one
its just annoying
I love how every one of these essays is someone gushing over Mike's aesthetics and philosphy and I'm just over here pounding shots and playing roulette with my best friend
Now you can pounding shots each other with your friend considering the new update.
I’m fascinated by horror that doesn’t rely on gore to be scary. The games like Tartarus engine and infineural get me so much more than games where blood and guts are everywhere because the most primal fear, is that what we cannot grasp
I completely agree
Absolutely agreed with you two, it's why I can't get into PuppetCombo because that's all just blood and slasher stuff, I get the draw, but compressed screams and blood n guts with jumpscares around each corner, reused music all over can feel, though scary in the moment lacking in depth. Completely my personal opinion as I can see why some are scared by it - the idea of a serial killer or your grandma betraying you or a pregnant cadaver murderer zombie demon, all good ideas that are freaky! Just not nearly as compelling in the long term as the strange grungy science fiction horror esque style of Klubnika's stuff with a focus on psychological techo-cosmic horror is a real mainstay that grips me tightly.
The buildings being all derelict and rusty is kinda like gore for inanimate objects.
we call that psychological horror. horror that doesnt make you shit your pants bc of something rearranging your guts but rather it messes with your mind or has disturbing implications
I thought the most primal fear was a large predator that's higher up on the food chain.
I remember someone math'd out the time dilation of the tartarus engine and they figured out that it's only going to be a few days. Like less than a week, which while awful is definitely survivable
Oh interesting hmmmm
Then it’s INSANE that almost 19,000 years passed in increments of a few days… Assuming that it’s 6 days, that’s over a million participants assuming the machine’s on at all times- and that’s just one cubicle
Who KNOWS how many poor souls got run through that questionnaire…
Definitely not. If you mash it at 10 answers per second, you'll go through 9mln questions in 10 days - and have about 400 billion questions from penalties. If you take careful 15 seconds per question and never make any mistakes, without breaks you'd be done in over a year. But no breaks and no mistakes are impossible assumptions.
@@sharpfang tartarus engine, not the questionairre.
@@sharpfangWrong game -_-
You forgot to mention the secret floppy disc in carbon steel, when the engineer gets you out off the cell
Also, great video
Yo, could u tell me about that, I couldn't get it
@@bloodwarrior314 i think you just find it on your desk or around the other floppys.
@@AlexConley-n2w okay thank you bro
i was completely surprised by his telling of carbon steel because i literally thought that the engineer ending was the only ending. guess ive been playing the game wrong
i imagine there'd be solid evidence for carbon steel to be taking place in 1998 as the email date is signed as just *98* which was prevalent in computing technology at the time as the only signed value for the year are the last two numbers, in this case 98, whereas the prefix to 98 was a text string "19" that would just get glued on to the end to display the whole date. seeing as the computers still use floppy discs, i'd say it's fair to say the game takes place in 1998.
That's a fair point. I'm super up-in-the-air on it still and of course, it's certainly not able to be ruled out.
In the 1M+ High Rollers teaser for BR there's a message that shows up on screen for a frame that says "Remember August 05 1998" after the player shoots themselves. August 5, 1998 would place Carbon Steel 2 weeks before BR. The other ending to CS is acquired by using a core capsule that has an "X" scratched on the rim, creating an explosion where the scientists are behind the door and leaving an open chasm for whatever is being pressure treated down below to make its way up to the surface.
That is some REALLY good thinking... great catch!
@@everberonOn that same note, from what I've seen the sample capsule with the engraving will show up on the last day with the deepest drawn creature from the pit. And following the aformentioned explosion, could also be the "shutdown" in the BR ARG that was used as the key for the cypher that was so graciously provided by Volta.
So from what I am getting the creatures in Carbon Steel manage to get out, which eventually results in them taking over Earth
I think the black shadow figure is you looking in, because the red beam thing is preventing you from progressing the same way it prevents the black shadowy figure. Especially given how Untitled VHS is in general.
i feel like the sentinels from core and the dealer from buckshot roulette are connected in some way, their face is almost identical
That's a REALLY good point!
@@everberon I'm betting on them being pressure treated humans, that's why they have human faces.
No idea why "pressure treating" turns things into spiders though. Anyways the experiments in Carbon Steel take place after the player bombs the alien planet in System Upkeep, and the orb thingy from Control Room Alpha is retrieved. Timeline wise SU takes place directly after CRA so I think it's the most likely to be a direct sequel, after the orb is discovered they attempt to negotiate with it, but that fails and SU takes place.
The Orb is eventually retrieved and the events of Carbon Steel take place, eventually more and more pressure treated humans are created and they break out making the earth uninhabitable.
Edited to be more clear.
@@sulphurspanic26Could be that the alien creatures live somewhere under immense pressure, so they hope to move humans on to a similar state of existence. There’s an underlying weakness of the human body that’s acknowledged in having your mind put into a machine body to withstand the 5 simulated decades of survey
They're probably all entities from hell, since it was said that after God died "all hell broke loose. Literally"
It occurs to me that at no point in time is the player important.
Yes, there's clearly something going on, but overwhelmingly most of these games focus around someone doing mundane work and trying to make ends meet. Unsorted VHS and Tartarus Engine might have the PC as someone important, but that's about the list. Everyone else is just trying to make do. No matter no one in these stories ever finds out what's going on; they're just trying to get by in life.
There's also a recurring theme of these incredible and terrible feats of technology being used for alarmingly mundane things, this happens in both Tartarus Engine and Infineural. Heck, the entire point of unsorted VHS was that someone was trying to use the magic cabins to raise funding. The only one where what you're doing is something grand is System Upkeep, which... why is a space ship carrying an apocalypse bomb powered by coal?
Budget cuts
"Caution, big ass spider"
Btw, carbon steel has second ending
and that ending just so happens to fit this videos theory.
if I had to guess the survey questions in Infaneural were some sort of data collection training. Like how we have captchas that tell us to identify motorcycles and stop lights and boats, which are then later used to train image recognition software. Those in the booths are just there spending over half a human lifespan in the infinite captcha to both answer and collect data so... something... can answer one simple question.
Are you human?
if captchas go rough itll just be that 😭
You don't need to guess. It literally tells you this in the game. It's a method of training and simulating an artificial intelligence by transferring human consciousness into a synthetic brain and simulating many years of answering training questions into a few moments of real-time.
The name "captcha" even clues us in because real life captchas are not only used to detect bots but also to train ai algorithms
I think the shadowy figure that jumpscares you is either one of the aliens or a version of you looking in at yourself
"BIG ASS SPIDERS
EXIT AT OWN RISK" is what got me
I'm not usually a fan of comedic relief like this in horror but this is perfect for the tone of Mike's games
Mike Klubnika started the klubnika game universe by uploading a bunch of cgi videos to his youtube channel. some of the videos are related to the mike klubninka universe. there even is a video where the same company logo as the one we see in carbon steel is visible.
Is it at all possible that the player character in Carbon Steel becomes the Dealer in Buckshot Roulette? Im unsure about the exact time Buckshot Roulette occurs, but if anyone else has seen that creature we pulled from the mariana trench a while ago, they look similar.
...wait.
This is a very good video. Btw, in Mike's Unsorted VHS video, he said that the game is a standalone. However, Lab Run is actually connected to Control Room Alpha and Carbon Steel! All 3 games feature a single organization known as E.K.R.E (Carbon Steel has their symbol on the screen and CRA has it on the paper, not sure where it is on Lab Run)
As for your theory about Core, i really doubt that they invaded a shelter because one of the first room you see (43:26 to be specific) is called "Sentinel Manifold" which hinted at the Sentinels being created at that facility.
Another thing i want to point out is that in Infineural, all the employees are dead as the monitor stated it during the same frame you took the date from, which make me question how they were able to pay you money lol
Ooh interesting stuff about Lab Run, and good thinking regarding CORE! Thanks for this.
I delved into the lore because of the pyrocynical video. I was recommended this video. It is far superior and more in-depth. I subscribed and look forward to more of your content. Great stuff keep it up
I believe low polygon count games is the best for horror. It is enough to give what you generally need for a horror game while also leaving enough to the imagination.
"A character known only as GOD" has to be the silliest phrase I've ever heard in one of these essay videos
God is just the name we give to very powerful entities, it could have m
been the One above all in Marvel or anything else
i mean it’s kinda cool what it implies
I’ve seen some videos about unsorted vhs and carbon steel forever ago, seeing them here was absolutely wild to me. The idea of them being in the same universe just makes it all the better.
i am fairly certain that the dealer in buckshot roulette is an automaton or a robot due to the why he moves and how his face deforms after being shot
Mike seems to have hinted at this too, or at least it's hinted at in the ARG.
Klubnika means "strawberry" in Russian. Now imagine listening to a serious video with specific atmosphere (props to you btw, nice narration) and every time, you call his name, i hear "mike strawberry".
There was not one moment in this video where I started to do something else. I was listening intently. I love your vids!
Haha thanks! Lol
Ad ends 4:20
Hehehe. Nice
I'm, personally, of the belief that Carbon Steel takes place around or during the same time as Buckshot. Feels like it makes the most sense to me, at least.
Klubnika gets it, and he's quickly become an absolute icon for me to look up to.
The issue with modern horror games is that it feels like you *need* to have the monster be an opponent, and the one time he does have one (Buckshot Roulette)... it's uneasy in a completely different way. He understands humanity and our fears, that we're goal-forward in nature, and that having a consistent opponent means the horror needs to come from a different angle.
I think this is something that the industry giants gets wrong; Alien Isolation is regarded as one of the greatest horror games ever made, but I always find myself regarding the titular alien as a challenge and NOT as the horror it's supposed to be. It's something to be worked past, not something to worry me.
All the games are connected to buckshot roulette!
The coffee on System Uplink is suspicious
Upkeep*
Abandoned industrial sites can be well creepy, I once went into an abandoned quarry and couldn't wait to get out.
Im glad that games like this exist, if for no other reason than because people who "dont like games" because they never read or watch anything, not even a button guide, and as a result dont understand the game and get stuck
Absolute banger of a video yet again!
Everberon, I really enjoyed this video, so I hit the like button!
Thanks so much!
THIS VIDEO ALMOST KILLED MY DOG! For real, this is a really great video and I really like it. 10/10 would watch again. When I watched this video it scared me and I had a hard time falling asleep so I invited my older dog to sleep with me. He slipped and started loudly crying out in pain, I thought he dislocated a hip and would need to be put down, turns out he just got his paw stuck under something and was completely fine.
So yes, me watching this video did scare me enough that for a second I did thing I accidentilly killed my dog.
Great video, 10/10, you earned a subscrition, dog is fine
It's a long Jaunt. Longer than you think.
First thing Infineural reminded me of was The Jaunt by Stephen King where humanity is able to travel across the stars but can only do so while “Jaunting” unconscious and that if you are awake during The Jaunt, the experience for you will feel like 100-1 billion years, and a Family in the story Jaunt to Mars and the Son decides to hold his breath and avoid Anaesthetics to experience Jaunting and awakens completely insane and claws his own eyes out and all the Father does as “whatever his son used to be” gets dragged away, screams
Damn, before the ad break I’ve already subbed and am commenting for the algo. Quality already!
5:56 QUICK HOW DO I STOP THE MONSTER
Some guy on the radio:I DON'T KNOW JUST THROW RANDOM CRAP AT IT
Im sad that you didnt mention concrete tremor at all. I think the setting in this one is a perfect example of soviet-style "Utopia", which I being from an ex-eastern block country can relate aswell as Klubnika can probably.
In Carbon Steel, there is an alternate ending you forgot to cover involving a floppy disk that gives you information on how to escape
Great video! i didnt know every single game on this, but some of them. you got a great voice. keep it up!
greetings from germany
Thank you!
The room with the computer and window apparition matches the placement of the VCR/window(screen?/black box?) at the end of the game. Since we're the person hanging there with our tapes/memories it's possible that there's someone watching us (like the figures at the end) that we can 'see' but are too engrossed in the tapes/memories to ignore our current situation so we 'filter it out' and make it part of the memory.
great video! control room alpha was the second of mikes games i played and made me fall in love with his style!
Mr Everberon, id like to bring to your attention to Carbon Steel has two outcomes. i cant remember how to achieve it but it has another outcome 100%
I think it's if you spend too long and let the final creature escape, then you get away on the trolley, if I remember right. In retrospect, isk why I didn't talk about it in this vid
I see
@@everberon black floppy disk you were holding if you were to import it into the computer, you will get an email that’s all I’m gonna say because I don’t wanna spoil it for you
@@The_toasty. I see, I missed this so I'll add a correction! Thanks!
bro i f*ckn love peeling potatoes
The opening scene in Infineural looks a lot like a location in front of a hotel in Columbia that my family stayed during vacation there.
Maybe in 2047 the Vietnamese Dong has SPIKED in worth and its actually a lot more then 40 Dimmadollars
Cold opening a video with a 4+ minute ad is a very bold move.
No one talked about the theme musics of Buckshot roulette 🗣️
WE MAKIN IT OUTTA THE NIGHTCLUB WITH THIS ONE 🗣🗣🔥🔥🎶🎶
4:20 video actually starts
Impressive work! Though, I feel like you forgotten about a game that you mentioned at the beginning: Concrete Tremor (6:25)
This video was incredibly interesting. Well done!
I like the overall gritty, industrial, and barren, look to the environments 🩶
So, I think Buckshot Roulette might take place in one of the simulation machines.
They act as perfect simulations, which would imply that in simulating a buckshot blast to the dome it would stop your heart, which would then explain why a defibrilator would bring you back.
Perhaps it's a prison sentence, hence the oppressive and hopeless industrial hellscape atmosphere. Could also go to explain that they know they're in this simulation and those things combined would lead to stimulus disassociation of some kind basically making them insane adrenaline junkies.
Just a thought.
The only problem is that it's way too lazy and boring of an explanation. I doubt Mike would just make it "oh your in a simulation" especially when he confirms God is actually dead. Why confirm that if it's just a simulation? Like why does it matter?
@@Pig_stain It's not about having some deeper meaning, it's about exploring concepts and fleshing out consequences.
The games are small, bite sized things exploring concepts in a behind the scenes world. They're set in the same universe, but they're not telling a singular story. They're giving microscopic looks into what has taken place in the world and its consequences. Like "We can Remember it Wholesesale For You".
"God is dead" is a Neitzche quote and it can mean a million things. Unless the developer states 'Abrahamic God is canon to this Universe and it has been literally murdered" you have no real idea what that confirmation actually means. "God is the opiate of the masses", being a famous quote. Did the dealer kill opioids? Or is the concept of something greater than ones self dead in the eyes of the people undergoing these simulations? God is dead to them, he has been killed. But what does it really mean without a detailed explanation? It can mean a million things. Snagging your hook into one line like that tunnel visions your perspective.
The point of the simulations and time dilation is something that Stephen King and Junji Ito have previously explored. The whole "9 million questions" in 5 minutes is not some new concept, nor is the effect it has on the protagonist. "The Long Jaunt" explores this directly with teleportation technology that requires passengers to be sedated and not experience the "jaunt".
The purpose of exploring the effects the simulation has on the people in it isn't "it was all a simulation, the end", it's exploring the consequences of the technology and the horrors it inflicts upon the people.
The horror of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein isn't, "a man creates a monster and said monster kills everyone he loves". The horror is, "in the absence of moral compunction a man decides he can do better than god, and this is what he's wrought".
You think it taking place in a simulation is boring because you think there is supposed to be a grander narrative telling a single through-line story with a unified point. There isn't. The questionnaire happens in a simulation. It's explicitly stated. If you follow the instructions and are sedated, you don't even remember it. If you don't drink the coffee you experience the 50 years but don't actually live them.
It's not something new even for these games.
In a previous game the perfect simulations were being worked on, and people even got stuck in one at the end. He's already explored one aspect of their effects, it makes logical sense that he would explore other aspects as well.
It's not "boring", you're just looking for something tying them all together that is far bigger than what actually is.
@TheNecroswanson yes but everytime your in a simulation, you are pretty much explicitly told. It just nullifies too much mystique. Why bother with the doctor reviving you? Why bother with the defibulators? We can clearly see a nightclub, but if the simulation is just tied to the buckshot roulette part, why even have it there? What about the person on the bridge? Story wise, it just nullifies too much of what Mike shows you that it just wouldn't make sense for there to be all this extra stuff. Why would the date even matter or be told in a simulation? All the simulations we've been shown have been relatively small-scale as well, but this shows other people, living human beings, being in there, too. The chance of Mike saying that it's a simulation, while not zero, I suppose, seems very low. Also, Mike literally states that the God mentioned is the creator of the universe.
@@Pig_stain You are missing major points of the simulations previously mentioned.
A "perfect simulation". Perfect. Meaning to people inside the simulation, it is indistinguishable from reality.
The simulation isn't tied to the Buckshot Roulette part, Buckshot Roulette is a product of the lives of people in the simulation.
Go back to my first post: They'rr in the simulation, possibly for the purposes of prison but it not really mattering what it's actually for, but they understand it's a simulation.
They know it's not real, but literally everything that keeps them conscious believes it is.
I mentioned the disassociation with stimuli.
Imagine doing grievous bodily harm to yourself, you start to die, you know you are dying.
Now add in the fact that three seconds afterward you are literally fine as if it never happened.
You can't comprehend it. With all our science and medicine we can barely comprehend PTSD. What simulation horror stories or the "infinity in an instant" stories are exploring is beyond even that. Think back to Call of Cthulu. It's not part of a broader narrative, it's a single story amidst a greater work of single stories. They share a similar universe but aren't telling a single narrative, they're microscopic glimpses into a larger world and its consequences. There is no purpose looking for a single story tying it all together because there really isn't one. All you are getting is a small glimpse into a much larger world, but that larger world is only consequential to how this particular portion happened.
Look at Dark Souls 1. Who Queelag is is inconsequential to the player. Same with Artorias. You never speak to them, you cannot reason with them, and you cannot pay them for passage. Who they are and what they once did is entirely inconsequential to the player. They are in your way and it's kill or be killed. Their lore means nothing outside of coloring the blueprint laid down by the enviornments. It's meaningless.
What matters is that you are going to take the world as you have learned of it and decide whether or not another cycle is worth it.
Gwyn will never speak to you and shake your hand. The story isn't the history of the world. The story is the consequences and your actions in the game.
It's the same here with the games. "The creator of the universe is dead". Perfect simulations in this setting exist. Meaning entire universes are created by computers and technicians. You're putting a lot of stock in what are intentionally nebulous statements to fill a prefit notion that goes from BJ Blazkowicz to Doom Guy.
But that's not the world and setting you are being presented with.
Dates are world building. The nightclub is a factor of a perfect simulation. The "brush with death" adrenaline junky game of Buckshot Roulette is the result of the world around them not being real clashing with every fiber of their being telling them it is, but the disassociation caused in realizing that's it's not, yet being trapped inside.
Again, the story being told isn't just some protagonist uncovering the greater secrets of the world to tell you a complete narrative. The story is a look at a microscopic event, in a broader world of technology and its consequences.
Go back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story isn't about some guy screwing up. It's about the consequences of his actions in actively believing he could do better than God did.
It's not a question of "if simulation therefore lazy". It's a question of "are YOU looking for a story that isn't being told"?
I'm probably wrong in my assessment of the game's setting. But not because it would be a lazy copout, just that I'm misinterpeting the themes tying the works together.
But there is no story tying "Hellraiser" to "Mister B, Gone" despite both involving stories about those who come from Hell. And there is no story tying a simulatrd questionaire to Buckshot Roulette, only the themes and a nebulous background world.
@@Pig_stain Also remember The Matrix.
The night club nightmare, communicating with those outside the simulation, being aware of the simulation opening opportunities for those inside to manipulate it, etc.
Game starts in a dingy night club. The cell phone lets you call an unknown individual who has knowledge of the shell order that they would only know through outside observation, small abilities to manipulate what is happening (the defibrilator).
These are clear nods.
I'm sure someone must have mentioned it by now, but the date in Infineural is May 5, 2022. 2 days before it was published on steam.
32:22 Im arachnophobic, and I started tweaking when that spider popped in 😭
I never really put together that the games are one connected world, but this was pretty convincing
Also, id like to think Carbon Steel probably takes place in the past, just going off of the fact that before 2000, people shortened years to just the last two digits usually, but id guess as time went on, the full year would usually be written
what is the skeleton album art from? i know its most likely tied into something, but does anyone know the song/album name for it at @0:24 ?
Carbon Steel had a second ending, if you had used and sent the marked canister
So I do remember that in the Buckshot ARG, you have to bring up the date that's mentioned in Carbon Steel, could this be evidence that it takes place in 1998?
It sounds crazy at first, but the "setinals" look similar to the dealer, but the dealer seems more humanoid then a setinals. its probably a guy with a mask. But it is possible setinals adapted to the humanoid body and one just turns into a dealer.
He made The Other Side????? I remember watching Mark play that game a couple years ago, so seeing the dev of that game blow up as much as he did recently is cool as fuck
the Infineural the earth year says May 5th x) two days before the published date of the game, though very good video! it helps pull everything together
all of the messing with time type stuff really reminds of the The Jaunt. pretty curious if that was also an inspiration at all
He seems to have been really inspired by The Jaunt
I tell you what, it might only be 5 minutes to perfom the study in Infineural. But honestly......it's eternity in there
Fun fact about the sytem upkeep arrow. It has 2 dots and rhe rest of the arrow makes a dash which makes a U in morse code. And U is rhe fist letter of the word Up and it's an arrow pointing in said direction. Pretty neat detail I noticed.
you forgat the secret ending from engineer blowing up the resident you work in in carbon steel
I got jumpscared by a UA-cam Music ad
I personally believe that the BR dealer is not human, but a machine. You can hear some noises similar to a machine when he comes back after.... ahem... getting a healthy dose of iron...
One thing I think is overlooked is that the sentinels from The Core look a lot like the Dealer from Buckshot Roulette, maybe the Sentinel creatures were here far sooner than we thought?
I know that this doesn’t really make any sense considering they’re on opposite ends of the timeline, but the sentinels look very similar to the dealer
They kifbt be closer than we think. New video coming soon!
@@everberon
That was fast! Thanks for the heart, I’ve been loving your channel for a while now I got sucked in by all of your amazing legal company videos, and I’ve been watching every video with bated breath! Also, after commenting, I realized that perhaps the sentinels could have evolved from the original “dealer species” and could have turned hostile one way or another. Keep making awesome videos, dude!
Played system upkeep like a year or two ago, never realized it was made by the same masterful hand to soon make buckshot roulette
1:12 - This shit is so unique that not only Dusk/Iron lung did it but also wallpapers made of newspapers on the walls of decrepid barack of tsar times mentioned that everybody and their grandmother's been doing that even before texas chainsaw or hellraiser... Or 90% of indie horror.
With the new buckshot trailer it confirms that carbon steel is set in 1998
Edit: it's to help progress the arg
Great video! Was really cool seeing how they could all be linked together. In my opinion, the human experiments at the end of carbon steel could have gone wrong and resulted in the creation of creatures like the one in The Other Side. Where now the current state of the world is full of giant human-spider hybrids roaming the lands. Just an idea though
Theory:
God got killed by the dealer, causing these spider things to keep evolving. Volta, a company known for their advanced technology, try to help humanity survive and adapt.
Klubnika really likes putting time-based missions at a handful of minutes from midnight.
"it's eternity in there!"
I’m not sure why but I really love the tartarus engine
Hearing about Unsorted VHS...
So you're telling me there's some thing where, if you go in, you'll come out in another place. And this thing has 5 locations it goes to, except there's a 6th one that people are struggling to get to. And that 6th one is extra special.
Outer Wilds?
My theory is that all the monsters we see in games come / escaped from The Pit in Carbon Steel as in the alternate (good ) ending that you didn't show we actually escape the facility there partially by blowing it up and in doing so we also damage the tube that we used to pull those things from deep underground.
33:44 in the words of civvie 11, "somebody put tuttle instead of buttle on a form so I had to kill like 6 people"
i think that lab run might be close to system upkeep because in lab run they say they made a 20,000 gigaton explosive compound and in system upkeep they say you are delivering a 20,000 gigaton bomb
"Long hallways brother"
40:05 " Looks like you are late, Mr. Freeman..."
Mike Klubnika is one of the developers what made games what doesnt look like standard granny games.
@petergriffincumjar9398 what.
4 samples each day depending on when you get paid is $160 each sample is worth $40 so it seems to be a decent job if i did my math right
Maybe my brain is rotted but Volta Electronics immediately makes me think The Mars Volta. Purely vibes tbh but the vibes are definitely there.
Waited til the end of the vid. Did you notice the Sentinels kind of look like the Dealer?
Massive, pale, round faces with hollowed eyes and huge grins with jagged teeth. There might be a connection there in some way
Great video! But Klubnicka pronounce is klubn{I}ka not kl{U}bnika
i love The Other Side it was the most fun beside the Roulette
Man those sentinel faces are an AWFUL lot like a visceral, unrefined, primal version of the dealers face.
It's weird having Kent Brockman making original content.
But I don't mind it.
Very good video.
The time dialation ones really give me the creeps
Fire video
The dream in carbon steel shows a brain like biomass breaking from the cage. The same brain like biomass that is used in the Volta technology. What if the creatures we extract in carbon steel are used to build the tech from volta. That would place carbon steel before buckshot roulette.