Amanda the Explorer: Everything To Know

I should admit up front that Dread XP is one of my go-to independent studios for frightening games. They are responsible for the classics The Mortuary Assistant and Sucker for Love: First Date. Naturally, you will know what to expect from a Dread XP game because you have played them previously. There is a sense of tragedy and impending disaster, and there are multiple potential outcomes that all point to a giant enigma. Amanda The Explorer conceals all of this beneath an exterior that appears benign.

About Amanda the Explorer

Evaluation Of Amanda The Explorer

Amanda The Explorer begins with a letter from your missing Aunt Kate, a helpful librarian/detective who has left you her residence in her will. However, the attic is where the home’s actual value resides. The totality of the game will take place in this ominous, gloomy room. It has several secure containers, a television, and a VHS tape of Amanda the Adventurer for children. Moreover, this animation has numerous defects.

VHS recordings of Amanda the Explorer being viewed

Except for the tape-watching feature, Amanda The Explorer has uncomplicated controls. WASD for movement, clicking on objects to interact with or take them up (depending on the item), and Left Ctrl for crouching are the only controls. You investigate Aunt Kate’s attic, a relatively small space, by watching tapes for clues and digging around the debris to discover what happened to your aunt, the purpose of the creepy artifacts in the attic, and the cause of the young girl’s distress.

When interacting with objects, you will attempt to crush them together most of the time. Initially, the game consists primarily of following fundamental instructions. You view a VHS recording, then use the information it contains to manipulate the object that appears on the table behind you. Typically, this will lead to the creation of yet another VHS recording. This should not take longer than 30 minutes, but only an idiot would give up before reaching the game’s conclusion.

Amanda The Explorer: A Puzzle That Will Not Fit Together

Amanda The Explorer, the feisty protagonist with a cold gaze, appears shortly after the VHS tape is inserted. She is accompanied by Woolly, a talking sheep who is as anxious as a battered dog. Amanda, like Dora the Explorer, will ask a query and wait for an answer before proceeding to the next adventure. But now, the situation begins to take a peculiar turn. Amanda and Woolly can both hear and respond to your voice commands. If you take advantage of this, as I did, to irritate our adorable host, Amanda, you will see a violent and nearly demonic aspect of her. In addition, the show’s tone takes a sad turn from the beginning, and it only gets darker as it progresses.

Despite this, the initial playthrough reveals a surprisingly small story information. Unlock hidden tapes and discover more about the show’s history and Amanda’s role by completing the game multiple times. After observing each clip and reading each conclusion, you will still have concerns. The narrative of Amanda The Explorer is nuanced and intricate, seamlessly merging the player’s world with Amanda’s. The game’s revelations are well-earned and sufficiently mysterious that I could not help but rush to the next tape, eventually finishing the game in one session.

However, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the game’s clever storytelling instances. Numerous lore recordings, including the titles of specific episodes, lines of dialogue, and the names of books and articles, contain clues of something sinister beyond the endings. As previously stated, part of the fun of these games is coming up with your hypotheses, but as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

Amanda The Explorer: A ruthless god and his victim

Without Amanda and Woolly, there would be no point in the story. And each possesses its dreadful uniqueness. The authors did an excellent job creating Amanda. He is Amanda’s scapegoat, the reasonable one, and the one no one wishes to harm. A vengeful deity has sentenced the individual to spend all of eternity confined in a small cell.

Is he, however? It’s entertaining to speculate, but unless there’s a sequel (which seems probable), we won’t find out who he is. Numerous additional characters play crucial roles in the narrative, but we never meet them—the father of Rebecca, Sam Colton, and your aunt, Kate. The limited time we spend with these people heightens their tragic and enigmatic outcomes.

Amanda The Explorer: One Tape, One Puzzle, Repeatedly

The core gameplay routine of Amanda The Explorer is deceptively straightforward. The instructions are as follows: play a tape, solve a problem, acquire another video, and repeat. As one might expect from a cartoon intended to educate young children, the initial dilemmas presented are relatively straightforward.

However, as you progress through the game and uncover more of its secrets and lore recordings in pursuit of the game’s ultimate conclusion, the difficulty of the puzzles increases dramatically. Each mission requires you to employ multiple strategies in response to the videos’ hints, to pay close attention to anything that seems out of place, and to search the entire attic.

The conclusion

Amanda the Adventurer does a satisfactory job of maintaining player interest throughout the experience. Some puzzles could be more logical, and the primary gameplay could be more engaging so that you may become frustrated. After experiencing the betas, the final product will be a significant letdown. The mystery is resolved, but in a highly unsatisfying manner that weakens the narrative. In general, it is a fun game to play. It needs to meet the standards established by its predecessors. The gameplay is satisfactory, but the story fails to meet the lofty expectations set by the demos. I would still recommend Amanda the Adventurer to analog horror fans, but only if it were on sale.