The second game is about nuclear graveyards. The horror aspect comes from the fact that we did not think well enough about the warning signs they have: we assume the people of the far future will know any of our languages (graveyards usually include a plate in several languages just in case one of those sticks around in the post-apocalyptic future, but Holly didn't know how to read them), and that they will understand what a yellow triangle with a hand or a skull mean (which is reasonable, but in this game, everyone has mutated into shapes). Holly acknowledged the place looked hostile, as they are designed to look scary to prevent people from wandering in, but chances are it will also make them intriguing and exciting for future generations, and that soon you would have tomb raiders or archeologists trying to break into the vault to get the shiny stones that make you feel funny when you hold them. Doesn't help that the messages recommended by the Sandia National Laboratories are cryptic enough that they would look like mumbo jumbo from zany ancestors trying to protect a sacred place. Essentially a real life version of the Pharaoh's Curse.
Also: They are hanging their lanterns on barbed wire and their soup was being prepared next to a broken glove box. It's no coincidence that they don't find the nuclear graveyard odd- they used parts of it to make their home! Mahala is suffering from radiation sickness, which has common symptoms of fatigue and fever. Despite only taking in tiny amounts by never entering the graveyard, he has still been around it so much that he has become sick. He either understands that this is some kind of poisoning or doesn't care about being sick-- he's not the only person that's "sick" but doesn't mind coughing next to everyone. The dolls may have been effigies of corpses intended to scare future humans away, but because humans are no longer recognizable in the game the message is lost. Hollis remarks about how heavy the gliders are despite them being empty-- they aren't heavier. Falling into the plant dosed him with a massive amount of settled radioactive dust and he is now heavily contaminated. Every breath of air would damage his lungs (or whatever lung-like things he has) rapidly sapping his strength. Not sure what the doll at the end is, I have a hunch that Hollis is mistaking human remains in a glove box for another doll and we're seeing through his mind's eye (again, the human form is foreign to him so it's just "a doll" in there). If it is remains, then why are they in a nuclear graveyard? If not, why is a doll / effigy sealed in a glove box? The doll could be a hallucination, too.
Just teach kids radiation is evil ghosts and they'll stay away. Going by the survival of ancient legal theories Taoism, and Shinto beliefs, this should be a robust and nigh-impervious measure. Core-chan can be the personifica--wait no that would just attract them. Make it ugly.
Oh, so radiation is probably the "thing" in the woods the other wood gatherer was warning you about. He didn't what, but he knew something wasn't right. Explains why he was sick as well
I love how efficient the first game is. Instead of waiting through a long opening cutscene with character introductions, we get all we need to know with "(friend)Jack" and "(friend)Rebecca."
I think the toy planes with the seeds were the remnants of bombers dropping bombs. Over time, the image of bombs falling out of a plane became merely round objects falling out of a plane. And now, the current survivors use seeds to recreate the image, even though they don't understand where it came from.
That’s probably why they do it over a fire pit to, because if you freeze frame an image of a plane dropping bombs, you see a plane, round objects falling out and an explosion beneath the “seeds” which is fire. They celebrate their history by looking at the books they don’t understand and doing their best to recreate it.
The second game went from charming to almost beautifully haunting. Going from expecting a beast in the woods to facing the reality of a post-nuclear-apocalypse future. The silence of the facility and the sense of isolation helped to give the ending the kind of impact that I morbidly appreciate. It was sad, but all around an enjoyable, short experience.
Oh man. The original wood gatherer was sick with radiation sickness. Radiation is probably what he was referring to in the woods off the path. He knew something was out there, but couldn't understand what
I really like how NailHead smartly used the shortness of the game by focusing on the aftermath of the killing spree and trying to destroy the cursed object.
Oh, I once read about something like the second game. How in the future, maybe someone will find the plaques that read "This place is not a place of honor." but not understand it as us, who mostly know it means a nuclear graveyard, and just think the place is just another abandoned building. That's why Holly doesn't understand the symbols: people have mutated into them, apparently, and on top of that he has been living with those as something normal for his whole life. Also, when he sees the radioactive waste and says those look like the presents at home, I think it's because they have been giving nuclear waste to each other... that's probably why some of them are sick, and probably why they are all weird shapes and all. A very grim and sad game, and a very interesting take on horror games.
Yeah it sounds like around 29:20 Holly calls the nuclear waste “lanterns”? I already forget but Papaw had said about putting lanterns in containers or something… I assume they think nuclear waste or plutonium rods are just lights, nothing dangerous.
Would it make sense if the dolls were just skeletons of people who died down there? They are fairly small though so they just might as well be dolls but I don't really know.
@@Roo_Bear the "doll" at the end is inside something that looks like one of the sterile chambers used to house premature and vulnerable babies. The arm holes would have a glove or similar barrier for parents to have contact without risking the baby's health. :(
The second game had a lot to think about, and there was some strange bits about it. obviously this is post apocalyptic, perhaps a nuclear winter came to be. The main bit of discussion is the nuclear site, the kid talked about a wide variety of things, like the Hazmat suit and the worker helmets. Also they mentioned how the barrels looked like the presents at home. Unlike popular opinion, the presents at home are not radioactive. The fact that they are in boxes is what made the kid think they were presents, much like how the kid thought the Hazmat suit looked like their coat (albeit not very cold protecting). We know that the presents aren't radioactive because radiation sickness is a thing in the village, specifically the previous gatherer. The gatherer, leaving the village every year, gets exposed to high amounts of radiation. The fact that he has been sick for over a year and it is actually getting worse is telltale signs of radiation poisoning, none of the other residents have it. The thing that puzzled me the most was the dolls, which we can assume were corpses. I was confused because the kid isn't giant sized like manly thought, the doors in the facility told me that much. The ending, however, told me everything. The ending showed a doll in a container that you can put your hands through and then it clicked for me. It looked eerily similar to an intensive care nursery's boxes, and the doll was very baby sized. The kid was picking up infant corpses thinking they were dolls. What also confuses me is why was there an intensive care box deep inside a radioactive facility.
It's not specifically an intensive care unit, but a similar device intended to work with radioactive or hazardous materials. While an intensive care unit is sealed against pathogens or foreign bodies getting in to prevent infection, this one is sealed and protected to keep hazardous materials inside but still able to be interacted with.
Main character modeler of "Do they Know" here, Thanks so much for playing our game! It means so much to me that you played a game I had a hand in. And reading the comments of people discussing the message of our is incredible.
@@Kiloburn This is the only ending due to time constraints. As for the glove box, this is funny, we put a lot of thought went into this game but we put that last bit as just a surreal moment near the end.
@@Stage-Fryte Thank you for the reply. Honestly, I'd love to see this as a longer game. You clearly put a lot of thought into it, and I appreciate that!
@@Carasouls "We must not fail! All the worlds are watching!" "This place has no name" "This is The House Of." "Will someone lend an ear to our mournful dirge?"
2nd game was certainly far in the future, where the current occupants didn't know what those symbols meant which led to a poorly planned nuclear waste dump site. The character mentioned the presents which means the radioactivity is already in the village and likely has affected them all. Them being there with likely leaking containers (it was poorly sealed) means they are doomed and likely suffering already from radioactive poison (so could have been half hallucinations). There's a whole thing about what symbols to put on such dangerous sites for future humans, as they will remain dangerous far in the future.
@le lagrange effect physics I think it's either that the box was one of the boxes you have gloves built in to protect the person handling what's inside. The other thing the box reninds me of or is an NICU box, but the dolls being baby skeletons seems a bit far fetched.
Absolutely love the cheery, then morbid atmosphere of Do They Know. The title of the game alone, combined with the setting, is enough to make me uncomfortable. Goes from "What do they not know?", to "Wait, _do_ they know?", to "Oh. They _really_ don't know." (spoilers below) Very interesting take on a nuclear winter. I like that it's a literal one, where you're going around delivering gifts... one of the few things they remember from the 'old days', probably.
I kinda wish the first one was it's own full game. It'd be cool to have an evil dead type puzzle game where you try to figure out how to destroy the cursed object. Maybe give it a don't escape feel by letting the player leave at any time to see the ending and give hints on how to reach the ending. Maybe to give it replay value give different locations as object scenarios.
The second game has the best kind of "monster"; one that has no motivation and cannot be reasoned with. It's just sort of there, waiting patiently for someone to find it. And it's there due to mistakes of our ancestors. It's like a ghost haunting a place as a punishment for past crimes. This makes it so much more scary than traditional horror monsters.
@@Cainus44 it wildly varies and depends. The thing is that most people being afraid of nuclear waste means there's very little permission to put it in many places, ironically making it more of a threat than if they understood it's very controllable and easy to keep away from anywhere anyone will find it
@@Cainus44 Current estimates are that high-level nuclear waste will need to be stored for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, with some extreme cases likely going above a million years.
The finale is probably referring to what kind of visual design or signs we at this point of time trying to communicate the place where we bury or store nuclear waste since these icons need to be understood far into the future
The symbols eventually loosing their meaning with the passage of time due to culture change and etc. is actually a topic constantly discussed by scientists. Vox did a pretty good video on it called "Why danger symbols can’t last forever", it's really interesting. (fr guys stop talking about Vox and politics I'm not in the mood for this)
I put one of those in a d&d game and they just ignored all of the warnings. They totally thought it was a place of honor full of valuable esteemed dead
@@skankmcgank in my Starfinder campaign, my players faced a "Khefak Alpha" which has an aura of radiation, and they all caught radiation sickness. Boy, the campaign was very close to ending with everybody just dying of cancer or worse lol, I had to put a tribe of scavengers that traded their implants for a Remove Radiation spell lol.
The scary part of the second game I think was the dramatic irony. The place the character fell into was a nuclear waste containment facility. The hostile architecture around it (spikes out of the ground) and the almost nonsensical words on the floor were reminiscent of the (in my opinion, very ineffective and hard to understand) verses we have written to try and make sure it's clear to future humans that the area is dangerous and not full of treasure or history. (This place is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location…it increases towards a center…the center of danger is here…of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.) Even the skull, representing death and danger, and the nuclear radiation warning symbols were there. The character does not recognize any of these messages and symbols, and their exploration of what to us is clearly a very dangerous place is whereas they are only mildly curious and anxious to get home, is what horrifies me. Their language, culture, even bodies have changed so much that they don't recognize the warnings we left. (That's probably why the people had to leave the forest and the old world, to escape the radiation. I might even also say that they are in a nuclear winter.)
_"I'm not seeing any twigs... just darkness"_ When MBH realized he had gone too far into the weird woods and had no hope of turning back. That second game was definitely post-apocalyptic. That end "box" looked like a more 'normal' human body of a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit incubator. That really got me. I also wondered - why send a child there? It seems you're supposed to go back, because the old firewood gatherer told you to stay on the path, but that character was coughing, etc. Maybe the person selected to go gets changed by the nuclear waste? I'm not sure, but I liked it!
You're suppose to remove the first 2 inches of dirt from the surface after a bomb's fallout settles and essentally bury it in a lead lined cell or holding facility. What you do not do it mix it into the healthy soil. They made documentaries about this many many years ago about the morning after.
I think the point of the second game's title is exactly what you wonder - Do They Know? Do the adults back home know what they are doing by sending Hollis out there? I suspect that Hollis is actually human shaped at the very least given the intro tutorial diagrams, which unfortunately allows them to activate the nuclear area at the end (a place for two hands/arms to go in). As well, I think what was spray painted on the ground is similar to what is what Sandia National Laboratories has tried to communicate non-linguistically (like someone else has said in a different comment) This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
Long-term nuclear waste warning messages are something we have yet to perfect, there's no way of knowing how people 10,000+ years in the future will interpret messages we leave behind.
This place has no name. That line is chilling because that's taken directly from recommendations on how to make nuclear waste sites look hostile to future civilizations. The spikes are also a recommendation. Everything is trying to say "get out of here" but how can we know that thousands of years in the future that a human skull would have any meaning? We can write warnings in all the languages of the world and there's no guarantee that anyone could understand it. Even the hostile architecture could be mistaken as something to be explored.
in do they know, when the kid got to the place i thought he stumbled on some long forgotten evil or the town had some dark secret then i saw the words then i remembered the spikes
@@eternallytree6603 it means that that is an ancient nuclear waste site the spikes are part of an idea for how to ward off any new civilizations human or otherwise from the site long after the language of the men that built the site and all but the barest of their history is as dust
The Nail head concept sort of reminds me of that one movie where this virus infects all living organisms and causes them to become zombielike, but with spikes protruding from almost every surface of the host's body.
does anyone think the “dolls” in the second game? kinda look like weird baby corpses? and the stuff with the radiation could be why their bones are visible? and the last one in that thing. kinda remined me of when they put infants in those things at the hospital
I think the dolls might have been symbols of "corpses" left to try and deter people, the same as the cryptic warning messages and signs ("stop" hand and skull). Unfortunately, Hollis just associates them with a child's doll, even though they're meant to symbolize death.
Do They Know was an absolutely kick-ass game - the premise, the character designs, the execution... a very solid game that I'll be thinking about for a while.
it's been like 2 days and Do They Know is fucking me up monumentally because they don't. they don't know and there all getting sick. it's inspired me so much but I've also lost sleep thinking about it
For the second game, those dolls looks like human remains. All those stuff looks like some form of nuclear waste underground storage. The final box looks like those radioactive processing boxes with glove-holes. In any case, a strange game and while it could imply the misunderstanding of future species about the danger of long-living nuclear waste, there are still a lot of unexplained stuff (like the planes/drones or why those stuff are in chains, or why that ending?).
A theory I read in the comments was that their tradition of making paper airplanes that drop seeds after it glides above a fire is in reference to their own history although twisted with time. Originally the paper planes represented bombers and the "seeds" were the bombs, the fire representing the nuclear apocalypse. Now the descendants, with little knowledge of the past are living through a nuclear winter and have no clue of the true meaning of their traditions. The only record of what happened is within the picture book at 15:08
Yup, Jonnys quickly became one of my favorite indie game developers. I love how effectively they can make simple concepts like a slide, gas station, and demonic box so unnerving with the right atmosphere.
Hey peeps! If you see a piece of metal laying randomly there and it feels hot? Or it has melted the snow around it? DONT PICK IT UP DONT GO NEAR IT LEAVE AND ALERT YOUR COUNTRY'S RADIATION PEOPLE
The second game makes me think of what they plan to do with buried radioactive waste in the future, how they plan to put warnings around where it is buried and try to keep out people in the far future. But would they know to stay away from a mysterious discovery such as this? Or would they wander inside like poor Hollis?
The skybeam was likely a satellite intended to beam information about the radioactive hazard... it had just been so long that it had eventually broken down...
I really enjoy these game collections, all the games are so different and diverse and creative. The first game was like a cool escape room. The second one gave me a comfy, yet nostalgic vibe. But I do enjoy how unnerving it got in the middle.
in the second game, apart from the nuclear waste dump site. they had a tradition of making paper gliders and filling them up with seeds, so that when they fly, the seeds will drop. like an airplane carpet-bombing the land, maybe the culture used to tell stories of a war or about the past, like the Lao's book of memories, but time has since long passed, people moved on and the stories have been forgotten, what was passed down and still survive time was the paper glider tradition, its meaning lost to the children.
30:40 Are all these red things warheads? Because that's what they remind me of. Considering the messages found on the ground earlier, if I had to guess, this is a nuclear graveyard.
"Do they know" seems kinda like a game that has more than one ending. Seems like it would anyway... The first one for sure had a Evil Dead feel to it like you said.. More so since the layout of the place is very much like the cabin from the movie.
Which game that you've played, in a one-off video, has stuck with you the most? I personally go back to your playthroughs of Black, Blank Frame, and Radio Signal quite frequently, but Don't Open Your Eyes is my personal favorite of your videos.
thank you for such an insightful comment! it's been too long since I watched MBH's playthrough of Radio Signal (amazing voice acting, unreliable narration, and a unique setting), and I'll be sure to check out the other titles you mentioned :D
The second game ended with kind of a mercy, if you think about it. Small levels of radiation only causes mutation and sickness, but an immediately lethal dose - like standing near anything radioactive enough to glow with your face exposed - is enough to make your flesh melt off your bones in a matter of days or even hours.
That's a very dangerous misconception. Radioactivity is invisible. You can get a lethal dose from something that does not glow at all. You get glows from ionizing radiation under two conditions 1) Chernekov radiation, which occurs when a charged particle passes through a medium at a speed faster than light. You see it when you look at a nuclear reactor for example. 2) The air getting ionized into a (blue) plasma -- requires an extremely strong source of radiation, well above an immediately lethal dose Everything else is fluorescence or phosphorescence, or just plain heat. The neon green glow in media is basically just a meme.
Thank you for providing such consistent, quality content. You will never know how much this will mean to the masses…but it means a lot. I wish you the best. Please keep it up for as long as it is healthy for you. It may not mean all that much for you… but for old men like me, it means everything. I truly wish you the best in your endeavors. Thank you for what you have contributed.
"This is not a place of honour" As someone in the comments bellow already explained- the Do They Know concerns the far future where non speak the language and symbols we use today, a future where finding the hazardous nuclear waste disposal site might not be understood as dangerous as non can understand the warning signs left there. One game is already set in similar situation- character entering a disposal site they shouldn't have, with if I recall correctly nearly word for word placks that are usually left near these sort of sites. The game was titled Mutated Reality btw, I know of it's demo so far.
i love (/s) that we make nuclear waste graveyards look as cool as possible. like, cryptic messages and symbols? weird, unnatural spikes and shit? if i were someone from the future with no understanding of radiation it would seem like a cool place to go adventuring, to find ancient treasure or something of historical significance. we have got to come up with something better than what ancient (to us) people did to guard their tombs and holy sites. it certainly didn't keep us out, why would it keep the people after us out???
NailHead was fun, it's cool to see a horror game open where most would have ended. The attempts to end a curse work well for a shorter experience. Do They Know meanwhile was more of a slowburn, and the atmosphere carried it perfectly. I think our protagonist was meant to go there, that their civilization, not understanding what exactly the place is, are sending sacrifices.
Near the end of the 2nd game, when youre on the cat walks. i coudla sworn i could hear the audio from that video about the first ever audio recording, the guy singing claire de la lune in like the 1880s. er well, the end of the game in general.
The nailhead cabin looks almost like the one from the evil dead, the room layout is the same but is missing the details Edit:And funny enough the box couldn't burn away as easilly as the book
So, on the horror of nuclear disposal- I think it would hit harder if you were the one who doesn't understand what is written on the warnings. As when it's just your character most people will just assume the character is a dumbass- while if it's you who doesn't understand along side the character it then brings in more anxiety and fear
the second game seems to be about these little shape people (?) living in a nuclear winter, which is very common with a carbon and dust/ash/dirt stir dispersing into the atmosphere blocking out the heat of the sun. this is often due to large natural disasters such as the meteor that is the main evidential reason why your science teacher cant always say "oxygen shift" for major extinctions. i cant say these are people, because human biology cant withstand enough radiation to evolve into a functioning society to point THAT drastically different, its quite possible however, that certain other creatures have, again evolution takes millennia to perfect a single minor trait so if anything im just trying to sound smart and letting my autism be its own problem again, only the artists really know.
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Day 255 of asking Manly to play A Cold Love Story through UA-cam comments.
The second game is about nuclear graveyards. The horror aspect comes from the fact that we did not think well enough about the warning signs they have: we assume the people of the far future will know any of our languages (graveyards usually include a plate in several languages just in case one of those sticks around in the post-apocalyptic future, but Holly didn't know how to read them), and that they will understand what a yellow triangle with a hand or a skull mean (which is reasonable, but in this game, everyone has mutated into shapes). Holly acknowledged the place looked hostile, as they are designed to look scary to prevent people from wandering in, but chances are it will also make them intriguing and exciting for future generations, and that soon you would have tomb raiders or archeologists trying to break into the vault to get the shiny stones that make you feel funny when you hold them. Doesn't help that the messages recommended by the Sandia National Laboratories are cryptic enough that they would look like mumbo jumbo from zany ancestors trying to protect a sacred place. Essentially a real life version of the Pharaoh's Curse.
Damn never thought about that, spooky.
Also:
They are hanging their lanterns on barbed wire and their soup was being prepared next to a broken glove box. It's no coincidence that they don't find the nuclear graveyard odd- they used parts of it to make their home!
Mahala is suffering from radiation sickness, which has common symptoms of fatigue and fever. Despite only taking in tiny amounts by never entering the graveyard, he has still been around it so much that he has become sick. He either understands that this is some kind of poisoning or doesn't care about being sick-- he's not the only person that's "sick" but doesn't mind coughing next to everyone.
The dolls may have been effigies of corpses intended to scare future humans away, but because humans are no longer recognizable in the game the message is lost.
Hollis remarks about how heavy the gliders are despite them being empty-- they aren't heavier. Falling into the plant dosed him with a massive amount of settled radioactive dust and he is now heavily contaminated. Every breath of air would damage his lungs (or whatever lung-like things he has) rapidly sapping his strength.
Not sure what the doll at the end is, I have a hunch that Hollis is mistaking human remains in a glove box for another doll and we're seeing through his mind's eye (again, the human form is foreign to him so it's just "a doll" in there). If it is remains, then why are they in a nuclear graveyard? If not, why is a doll / effigy sealed in a glove box? The doll could be a hallucination, too.
Interesting! 🤔 Very clever and well thought out of you! I've not thought of that before. Ty :)
Just teach kids radiation is evil ghosts and they'll stay away. Going by the survival of ancient legal theories Taoism, and Shinto beliefs, this should be a robust and nigh-impervious measure.
Core-chan can be the personifica--wait no that would just attract them. Make it ugly.
Oh, so radiation is probably the "thing" in the woods the other wood gatherer was warning you about. He didn't what, but he knew something wasn't right. Explains why he was sick as well
I love how efficient the first game is. Instead of waiting through a long opening cutscene with character introductions, we get all we need to know with "(friend)Jack" and "(friend)Rebecca."
Real
Real
Real
Real
Real
I think the toy planes with the seeds were the remnants of bombers dropping bombs. Over time, the image of bombs falling out of a plane became merely round objects falling out of a plane. And now, the current survivors use seeds to recreate the image, even though they don't understand where it came from.
That’s probably why they do it over a fire pit to, because if you freeze frame an image of a plane dropping bombs, you see a plane, round objects falling out and an explosion beneath the “seeds” which is fire. They celebrate their history by looking at the books they don’t understand and doing their best to recreate it.
The second game went from charming to almost beautifully haunting. Going from expecting a beast in the woods to facing the reality of a post-nuclear-apocalypse future. The silence of the facility and the sense of isolation helped to give the ending the kind of impact that I morbidly appreciate. It was sad, but all around an enjoyable, short experience.
i absolutely love this comment. while saying some stuff about the game it doesn't give that much spoilers about it. thanks.
I almost had hope that this game will end with a happy ending where the kid safely comes back to the village
Oh man. The original wood gatherer was sick with radiation sickness. Radiation is probably what he was referring to in the woods off the path. He knew something was out there, but couldn't understand what
I really like how NailHead smartly used the shortness of the game by focusing on the aftermath of the killing spree and trying to destroy the cursed object.
Oh, I once read about something like the second game. How in the future, maybe someone will find the plaques that read "This place is not a place of honor." but not understand it as us, who mostly know it means a nuclear graveyard, and just think the place is just another abandoned building. That's why Holly doesn't understand the symbols: people have mutated into them, apparently, and on top of that he has been living with those as something normal for his whole life. Also, when he sees the radioactive waste and says those look like the presents at home, I think it's because they have been giving nuclear waste to each other... that's probably why some of them are sick, and probably why they are all weird shapes and all. A very grim and sad game, and a very interesting take on horror games.
Unrealistic. That far in the future nuclear halflife would have caused all the radioactivity to decay to virtually nothing.
Yeah it sounds like around 29:20 Holly calls the nuclear waste “lanterns”? I already forget but Papaw had said about putting lanterns in containers or something… I assume they think nuclear waste or plutonium rods are just lights, nothing dangerous.
@@DeathnoteBB well, they also expressed confusion at them giving off light after all this time, so I don't think it was that literal
Would it make sense if the dolls were just skeletons of people who died down there? They are fairly small though so they just might as well be dolls but I don't really know.
@@Roo_Bear the "doll" at the end is inside something that looks like one of the sterile chambers used to house premature and vulnerable babies. The arm holes would have a glove or similar barrier for parents to have contact without risking the baby's health.
:(
The second game had a lot to think about, and there was some strange bits about it. obviously this is post apocalyptic, perhaps a nuclear winter came to be. The main bit of discussion is the nuclear site, the kid talked about a wide variety of things, like the Hazmat suit and the worker helmets. Also they mentioned how the barrels looked like the presents at home. Unlike popular opinion, the presents at home are not radioactive. The fact that they are in boxes is what made the kid think they were presents, much like how the kid thought the Hazmat suit looked like their coat (albeit not very cold protecting). We know that the presents aren't radioactive because radiation sickness is a thing in the village, specifically the previous gatherer. The gatherer, leaving the village every year, gets exposed to high amounts of radiation. The fact that he has been sick for over a year and it is actually getting worse is telltale signs of radiation poisoning, none of the other residents have it.
The thing that puzzled me the most was the dolls, which we can assume were corpses. I was confused because the kid isn't giant sized like manly thought, the doors in the facility told me that much. The ending, however, told me everything. The ending showed a doll in a container that you can put your hands through and then it clicked for me. It looked eerily similar to an intensive care nursery's boxes, and the doll was very baby sized. The kid was picking up infant corpses thinking they were dolls.
What also confuses me is why was there an intensive care box deep inside a radioactive facility.
It's not specifically an intensive care unit, but a similar device intended to work with radioactive or hazardous materials. While an intensive care unit is sealed against pathogens or foreign bodies getting in to prevent infection, this one is sealed and protected to keep hazardous materials inside but still able to be interacted with.
The dolls are also most likely spooky effigies that are meant to scare and drive away people.
Main character modeler of "Do they Know" here, Thanks so much for playing our game! It means so much to me that you played a game I had a hand in. And reading the comments of people discussing the message of our is incredible.
So, was that the only ending? If so, what was up with the doll in the glove box?
@@Kiloburn This is the only ending due to time constraints. As for the glove box, this is funny, we put a lot of thought went into this game but we put that last bit as just a surreal moment near the end.
@@Stage-Fryte Thank you for the reply. Honestly, I'd love to see this as a longer game. You clearly put a lot of thought into it, and I appreciate that!
what did you write on the ground? :0 its hard to read it with manly moving around
@@Carasouls "We must not fail! All the worlds are watching!" "This place has no name" "This is The House Of." "Will someone lend an ear to our mournful dirge?"
2nd game was certainly far in the future, where the current occupants didn't know what those symbols meant which led to a poorly planned nuclear waste dump site. The character mentioned the presents which means the radioactivity is already in the village and likely has affected them all. Them being there with likely leaking containers (it was poorly sealed) means they are doomed and likely suffering already from radioactive poison (so could have been half hallucinations).
There's a whole thing about what symbols to put on such dangerous sites for future humans, as they will remain dangerous far in the future.
I just wonder what is the meaning of these dolls? And why one of them was inside of a box at the end?
@le lagrange effect physics I think it's either that the box was one of the boxes you have gloves built in to protect the person handling what's inside. The other thing the box reninds me of or is an NICU box, but the dolls being baby skeletons seems a bit far fetched.
the snow could’ve also been from a nuclear winter
No, they'll remain dangerous for about a hundred years. Not exactly that far in the future.
@@lelagrangeeffectphysics4120 yeah thanks, typo
Absolutely love the cheery, then morbid atmosphere of Do They Know. The title of the game alone, combined with the setting, is enough to make me uncomfortable. Goes from "What do they not know?", to "Wait, _do_ they know?", to "Oh. They _really_ don't know."
(spoilers below)
Very interesting take on a nuclear winter. I like that it's a literal one, where you're going around delivering gifts... one of the few things they remember from the 'old days', probably.
I kinda wish the first one was it's own full game. It'd be cool to have an evil dead type puzzle game where you try to figure out how to destroy the cursed object. Maybe give it a don't escape feel by letting the player leave at any time to see the ending and give hints on how to reach the ending. Maybe to give it replay value give different locations as object scenarios.
The second game has the best kind of "monster"; one that has no motivation and cannot be reasoned with. It's just sort of there, waiting patiently for someone to find it. And it's there due to mistakes of our ancestors. It's like a ghost haunting a place as a punishment for past crimes. This makes it so much more scary than traditional horror monsters.
Nonsense. Radiation doesn't last that long.
@@Cainus44 it wildly varies and depends. The thing is that most people being afraid of nuclear waste means there's very little permission to put it in many places, ironically making it more of a threat than if they understood it's very controllable and easy to keep away from anywhere anyone will find it
@@Cainus44 Current estimates are that high-level nuclear waste will need to be stored for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, with some extreme cases likely going above a million years.
@@gnolex86 Blatant lie based on worst case nonsense and activists. Waste becomes fairly safe much more quickly than that. The fuel lasts much longer.
@@gnolex86 tell me you know nothing about nuclear watse disposal without saying it.
The finale is probably referring to what kind of visual design or signs we at this point of time trying to communicate the place where we bury or store nuclear waste since these icons need to be understood far into the future
The symbols eventually loosing their meaning with the passage of time due to culture change and etc. is actually a topic constantly discussed by scientists. Vox did a pretty good video on it called "Why danger symbols can’t last forever", it's really interesting. (fr guys stop talking about Vox and politics I'm not in the mood for this)
ew you watched vox
@@teejay9189 well true, their channel is filled with democrat propaganda, but still, pretty nice vid.
@@merle3184 yeh, ima watch it myself
@merle3184 Democrat propaganda. Seriously? Jfc dude.
@merle3184 "Filled" seems like an understatement, as Vox is pure lefty cancer, but that does sound like an interesting article!
That kid found a place that is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here.
I put one of those in a d&d game and they just ignored all of the warnings. They totally thought it was a place of honor full of valuable esteemed dead
@@skankmcgank in my Starfinder campaign, my players faced a "Khefak Alpha" which has an aura of radiation, and they all caught radiation sickness. Boy, the campaign was very close to ending with everybody just dying of cancer or worse lol, I had to put a tribe of scavengers that traded their implants for a Remove Radiation spell lol.
The scary part of the second game I think was the dramatic irony. The place the character fell into was a nuclear waste containment facility. The hostile architecture around it (spikes out of the ground) and the almost nonsensical words on the floor were reminiscent of the (in my opinion, very ineffective and hard to understand) verses we have written to try and make sure it's clear to future humans that the area is dangerous and not full of treasure or history. (This place is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location…it increases towards a center…the center of danger is here…of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.) Even the skull, representing death and danger, and the nuclear radiation warning symbols were there. The character does not recognize any of these messages and symbols, and their exploration of what to us is clearly a very dangerous place is whereas they are only mildly curious and anxious to get home, is what horrifies me. Their language, culture, even bodies have changed so much that they don't recognize the warnings we left. (That's probably why the people had to leave the forest and the old world, to escape the radiation. I might even also say that they are in a nuclear winter.)
2:56 Nailhead: Hammers! My only weakness!😆
4:31 Nailhead: Axes! My only OTHER weakness!
5:15 Nailhead: Fire! My only OTHER OTHER weakness!
Also Nailhead: ah no wait, *fire makes me stronger*
Reminds me of Composite Santa.
@@Nyghtking 😄That's the one! 🎅⛄
You forgot about FirePokers
@@fenrirsrage4609 Doh!😆
_"I'm not seeing any twigs... just darkness"_
When MBH realized he had gone too far into the weird woods and had no hope of turning back. That second game was definitely post-apocalyptic. That end "box" looked like a more 'normal' human body of a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit incubator. That really got me. I also wondered - why send a child there? It seems you're supposed to go back, because the old firewood gatherer told you to stay on the path, but that character was coughing, etc. Maybe the person selected to go gets changed by the nuclear waste? I'm not sure, but I liked it!
You're suppose to remove the first 2 inches of dirt from the surface after a bomb's fallout settles and essentally bury it in a lead lined cell or holding facility. What you do not do it mix it into the healthy soil. They made documentaries about this many many years ago about the morning after.
I think the point of the second game's title is exactly what you wonder - Do They Know? Do the adults back home know what they are doing by sending Hollis out there? I suspect that Hollis is actually human shaped at the very least given the intro tutorial diagrams, which unfortunately allows them to activate the nuclear area at the end (a place for two hands/arms to go in).
As well, I think what was spray painted on the ground is similar to what is what Sandia National Laboratories has tried to communicate non-linguistically (like someone else has said in a different comment)
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
Long-term nuclear waste warning messages are something we have yet to perfect, there's no way of knowing how people 10,000+ years in the future will interpret messages we leave behind.
Better to just advance technology and use the waste as fuel again...
The idea of a "final solution" for nuclear waste is very short-sighted.
you know it's a bad time when you're thinking "oh thank god the kid dies quickly from being crushed instead of The Alternative"
This place has no name.
That line is chilling because that's taken directly from recommendations on how to make nuclear waste sites look hostile to future civilizations. The spikes are also a recommendation. Everything is trying to say "get out of here" but how can we know that thousands of years in the future that a human skull would have any meaning? We can write warnings in all the languages of the world and there's no guarantee that anyone could understand it. Even the hostile architecture could be mistaken as something to be explored.
Just put that Nintendo bitter spray on it to keep the kids out.
in do they know, when the kid got to the place i thought he stumbled on some long forgotten evil or the town had some dark secret
then i saw the words
then i remembered the spikes
what does the spikes mean?
@@eternallytree6603 it means that that is an ancient nuclear waste site the spikes are part of an idea for how to ward off any new civilizations human or otherwise from the site long after the language of the men that built the site and all but the barest of their history is as dust
The Nail head concept sort of reminds me of that one movie where this virus infects all living organisms and causes them to become zombielike, but with spikes protruding from almost every surface of the host's body.
Splinter?
@@Uhlersoth77 I have to wonder how much better *Splinter* would have been without the avid farts and 16fps for the monster scenes.
@Monroville I'm sorry, what? lmao
@@Uhlersoth77 I think so
I remember the influenza episode from Cells at Work
does anyone think the “dolls” in the second game? kinda look like weird baby corpses? and the stuff with the radiation could be why their bones are visible? and the last one in that thing. kinda remined me of when they put infants in those things at the hospital
I thought the same thing, like a petrified baby and the "glove box" being a sort of incubator
I think the dolls might have been symbols of "corpses" left to try and deter people, the same as the cryptic warning messages and signs ("stop" hand and skull). Unfortunately, Hollis just associates them with a child's doll, even though they're meant to symbolize death.
Do They Know was an absolutely kick-ass game - the premise, the character designs, the execution... a very solid game that I'll be thinking about for a while.
it's been like 2 days and Do They Know is fucking me up monumentally because they don't. they don't know and there all getting sick. it's inspired me so much but I've also lost sleep thinking about it
Aw the second games seems to be based on the "this is not a place of honor" thing, very cool and effective
Just from the thumbnail alone, I gotta say, they really NAILED that first game's atmosphere.
Hey I did some of the ambient tracks and most of the UI for Do They Know, thanks for playing our game! c:
The ambience was really beautiful! Thanks for giving us that c:
IT'S AMAZIN'
For the second game, those dolls looks like human remains. All those stuff looks like some form of nuclear waste underground storage. The final box looks like those radioactive processing boxes with glove-holes. In any case, a strange game and while it could imply the misunderstanding of future species about the danger of long-living nuclear waste, there are still a lot of unexplained stuff (like the planes/drones or why those stuff are in chains, or why that ending?).
A theory I read in the comments was that their tradition of making paper airplanes that drop seeds after it glides above a fire is in reference to their own history although twisted with time. Originally the paper planes represented bombers and the "seeds" were the bombs, the fire representing the nuclear apocalypse. Now the descendants, with little knowledge of the past are living through a nuclear winter and have no clue of the true meaning of their traditions. The only record of what happened is within the picture book at 15:08
You come in handy when I need my horror game fix but don't have the time to go on the hunt for some new thrills.
Yup, Jonnys quickly became one of my favorite indie game developers. I love how effectively they can make simple concepts like a slide, gas station, and demonic box so unnerving with the right atmosphere.
Wow, from the thumbnail, I can tell this is gonna be a great slasher game. I think the devs really *nailed* it!
I love the idea of coming into the aftermath of a slasher movie and figuring out what happened.
That second game made me feel rather sad. Just the knowledge being lost to time.
Hey peeps! If you see a piece of metal laying randomly there and it feels hot? Or it has melted the snow around it?
DONT PICK IT UP
DONT GO NEAR IT
LEAVE AND ALERT YOUR COUNTRY'S RADIATION PEOPLE
The second game makes me think of what they plan to do with buried radioactive waste in the future, how they plan to put warnings around where it is buried and try to keep out people in the far future. But would they know to stay away from a mysterious discovery such as this? Or would they wander inside like poor Hollis?
Thank you for posting this at 2 in the morning. Makes the night shift much more bearable.
Same that's a plus
Second game is definitely my favorite of the two! Even though it's a horror game, it's just so cozy and I love the artsy-fartsy character design!
The skybeam was likely a satellite intended to beam information about the radioactive hazard... it had just been so long that it had eventually broken down...
I really enjoy these game collections, all the games are so different and diverse and creative. The first game was like a cool escape room. The second one gave me a comfy, yet nostalgic vibe. But I do enjoy how unnerving it got in the middle.
in the second game, apart from the nuclear waste dump site. they had a tradition of making paper gliders and filling them up with seeds, so that when they fly, the seeds will drop.
like an airplane carpet-bombing the land, maybe the culture used to tell stories of a war or about the past, like the Lao's book of memories, but time has since long passed, people moved on and the stories have been forgotten, what was passed down and still survive time was the paper glider tradition, its meaning lost to the children.
Also I know I'm late, but it looks like they use barbed wire as decorations
30:40 Are all these red things warheads? Because that's what they remind me of. Considering the messages found on the ground earlier, if I had to guess, this is a nuclear graveyard.
"Do they know" seems kinda like a game that has more than one ending. Seems like it would anyway... The first one for sure had a Evil Dead feel to it like you said.. More so since the layout of the place is very much like the cabin from the movie.
That second game is kinda sad by the end.
They absolutely nailed the presentation for these to be quite honest with you, really hammered it into my mind...
If there's anything I've learned about shapes is that square is the shape of evil!!
Ah come on, these people were probably jaywalkers or something anyways
Which game that you've played, in a one-off video, has stuck with you the most? I personally go back to your playthroughs of Black, Blank Frame, and Radio Signal quite frequently, but Don't Open Your Eyes is my personal favorite of your videos.
thank you for such an insightful comment! it's been too long since I watched MBH's playthrough of Radio Signal (amazing voice acting, unreliable narration, and a unique setting), and I'll be sure to check out the other titles you mentioned :D
Those are all great choices
@@MsOkayAwesome thank you! I play them to help me sleep, they're just very tranquil to me.
@@CordialGun I hope you enjoy!
Manly really NAILING it with these playthroughs
I love the atmosphere of the second game- even if I don’t fully understand
Yoo I would love to see more of the Do They Know world
10:42 as Stitch once said, "Ohana means Family" LOL (Their names)
pov: squirrel stapler, but you are the squirrel
god is coming
You nailed that first game! On the second game I liked the abstract village. Lots of soul.
Just watched his gameplay of "Mother" horror game from 2 years ago, and now he uploaded a new one. Going to keep watching
The second game ended with kind of a mercy, if you think about it.
Small levels of radiation only causes mutation and sickness, but an immediately lethal dose - like standing near anything radioactive enough to glow with your face exposed - is enough to make your flesh melt off your bones in a matter of days or even hours.
That's a very dangerous misconception. Radioactivity is invisible. You can get a lethal dose from something that does not glow at all.
You get glows from ionizing radiation under two conditions
1) Chernekov radiation, which occurs when a charged particle passes through a medium at a speed faster than light. You see it when you look at a nuclear reactor for example.
2) The air getting ionized into a (blue) plasma -- requires an extremely strong source of radiation, well above an immediately lethal dose
Everything else is fluorescence or phosphorescence, or just plain heat. The neon green glow in media is basically just a meme.
Thank you for providing such consistent, quality content. You will never know how much this will mean to the masses…but it means a lot. I wish you the best. Please keep it up for as long as it is healthy for you. It may not mean all that much for you… but for old men like me, it means everything.
I truly wish you the best in your endeavors. Thank you for what you have contributed.
me when a nailhead has already nailed me (not in a sexy way)
"This is not a place of honour"
As someone in the comments bellow already explained- the Do They Know concerns the far future where non speak the language and symbols we use today, a future where finding the hazardous nuclear waste disposal site might not be understood as dangerous as non can understand the warning signs left there.
One game is already set in similar situation- character entering a disposal site they shouldn't have, with if I recall correctly nearly word for word placks that are usually left near these sort of sites.
The game was titled Mutated Reality btw, I know of it's demo so far.
i love (/s) that we make nuclear waste graveyards look as cool as possible.
like, cryptic messages and symbols? weird, unnatural spikes and shit?
if i were someone from the future with no understanding of radiation it would seem like a cool place to go adventuring, to find ancient treasure or something of historical significance.
we have got to come up with something better than what ancient (to us) people did to guard their tombs and holy sites. it certainly didn't keep us out, why would it keep the people after us out???
It's 3 am in the morning, it's was worth being wake up by the monster under my bed to watch this.
Rebecca's died because she forgot to turn the temperature down 0.01 degrees before stepping in the shower it seems
NailHead was fun, it's cool to see a horror game open where most would have ended. The attempts to end a curse work well for a shorter experience.
Do They Know meanwhile was more of a slowburn, and the atmosphere carried it perfectly. I think our protagonist was meant to go there, that their civilization, not understanding what exactly the place is, are sending sacrifices.
I love you Manly. Thank you for making your videos they always put a smile on my face ❤ :)
Drones? A factory? he discovered Amazon Headquarters!!!
21:56
Dammit manly now ya got me wanting to listen to Pip doing his twig song again xD
1:55 that snow/lighting looks amazing. The same shade as in real life
This is a messaje to my daughter, she is a Fan of your Channel: "HIJA, PAPA TE AMA HOY Y SIEMPRE"
sorry... nevermind delete the message.... the back story is too sad, and cruel to explain it to everybody
The Second game made me sad...
I really need a full game out of that.
Near the end of the 2nd game, when youre on the cat walks. i coudla sworn i could hear the audio from that video about the first ever audio recording, the guy singing claire de la lune in like the 1880s. er well, the end of the game in general.
"Do we grow? We're shapes!" I wasn't expecting leaving this video knowing Manly has exposed himself as a Shapist. smh
“The Nailhead has already nailed you” but Do They Know about it?
YES I GOT THE NOTIFICATION THIS TIME
LOVE YOUR VIDS MANLY
Your videos always have a calm effect on me, manly never stop uploading, keep it always up!
The nailhead cabin looks almost like the one from the evil dead, the room layout is the same but is missing the details
Edit:And funny enough the box couldn't burn away as easilly as the book
These videos are so good I really liked it
When a manly vid comes out while you're watching a manly vid
I comment u
i want a full picking up wood song sung by manly
manly really nailed it with that first game
Let’s be real here, MBH would be an amazing VA for a horror game protagonist
That last game was a mind fuck
What a time to refresh my homepage
Manly, I think you really *NAILED* this one.
it seems UA-cam thinks that every horror game you've played recently is silent hill 😭
Bro literally got nailed💀
we considered ourselves to be a powerful culture
Man, Johnny 2x4 hasn't been the same since Plank went to college.
Looks like the Devs _Nailed It!_
watch the second game before reading more
context for the second game: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
Thank you
The box head entity feels like something out of SCP: Containment Breach.
"Nothing of value is here. No great deed is commemorated here. This is not a place of honor."
Wow manly,you really NAILED it!
6:02 Do They Know?
As soon as Manly said that the 2nd game reminded him of Smiling Friends I thought "Oh, god. The monster is going to be Joshua Tomar, isn't it?" 😅
What more fearsome of a menace could ever be faced than the raw power and the ruthless sociopathic cunning of Tomar?
So, on the horror of nuclear disposal- I think it would hit harder if you were the one who doesn't understand what is written on the warnings.
As when it's just your character most people will just assume the character is a dumbass- while if it's you who doesn't understand along side the character it then brings in more anxiety and fear
the second game seems to be about these little shape people (?) living in a nuclear winter, which is very common with a carbon and dust/ash/dirt stir dispersing into the atmosphere blocking out the heat of the sun. this is often due to large natural disasters such as the meteor that is the main evidential reason why your science teacher cant always say "oxygen shift" for major extinctions. i cant say these are people, because human biology cant withstand enough radiation to evolve into a functioning society to point THAT drastically different, its quite possible however, that certain other creatures have, again evolution takes millennia to perfect a single minor trait so if anything im just trying to sound smart and letting my autism be its own problem again, only the artists really know.