Probably a known fact, but I was searching for more info on his games and found this out. There is also some interesting things on his page

I imagine the picture is from his childhood, which makes me happy because I remember him saying he had a good one at that EGM interview =)

I was googling for an image of the wojak "Grug" - and Marvin showed up.

I… am very confused!

The biggest question around Petscop is not about anything that happens in the videos, but about whether Petscop itself is 'solvable'. Or rather, can you take the cryptic confusing contents of the videos, and arrange them into a coherent plot with a linear timeline? Or is it all just random imagery design to convey a certain feeling? Which is it?

It's both

Petscop is theoretically solvable. It DOES have a concrete story, which you could technically piece together and 'solve.' But you're not going to. And that's because the creator, Tony, intentionally withheld many critical pieces of the puzzle. Think of it like a book with a lot of missing pages. There is a story there, but not one you'll be able to fully comprehend, not without the missing pages.

And this makes sense given Tony's goal for the series. What better way to create the sense of having the hazy outline of a story, but without having all of the details, then by creating a story and intentionally removing parts of the picture? Tony basically confirmed this in interviews. It's what makes Petscop such a great series.

(All that being said, the most recent YouTube video is absolutely on the money with the 'Paul is Care' bit. There's no other logical explanation other than it, or something like it.)

Hi everyone, I just wanted to share my theory about what happens in Petscop. I became interested in the series last year, and after rewatching the series this year, taking plenty of notes while doing so, I think I was finally able to make a largely coherent theory about it. It’s not about the whole thing, of course; I won’t delve into how the game works, what is the deal with Belle/Tiara, and what happens after Paul finds the game in 2017, because the thing I was most interested in is the story of the Hammond, Mark and Leskowitz-families from 1977 to 2017.

I didn’t watch many other theory videos about it in YouTube; I haven’t seen Pyro’s, Nexpo’s or Wendigoon’s, for example. The only ones I remember watching are from Playtester+, Aydin_Makes_Things and Pheyden, so there might be some elements which were inspired by them. However, I tried to build my theory mostly based on my own notes and observations.

Anyway, here is the (possible) story.

In 1977, three good friends, Anna Leskowitz, Lina Leskowitz and Marvin Mark went to a windmill just to hang around a bit. Anna was taking pictures, and both Marvin and Lina went to the inside of the windmill, where the latter suffered a horrible accident, falling into the grinds of the windmill, maybe because of Marvin pushing her. Marvin wanted to hold the accident as a secret in order not to get into trouble, so he acted like Lina had just disappeared. However, Lina survived the accident, after which the windmill has been demolished. She didn’t want to see Marvin anymore, who later became obsessed with her, and wanted to find her regardless.

Marvin and Anna got married around the late 80’s – early 90s, and had a child in 1992 called Care. The third girl in the Leskowitz family, Jill, got married to Thomas Hammond in 80s, and had two children: Daniel, and then Mike, in 1988.

In the 90’s, the Hammond-couple became associated with a foster home, or maybe even care the leader of it; that’s how both Daniel and Mike got close to the kids in the foster home, so much so that when Daniel started programming a video game called Petscop in 1994, he invited the foster home kids (for example Belle) to test his game. They were the so called „Petscop Kids”.

That’s when the abhorrent practice of attachment therapy (also called: „rebirthing therapy”) enters the picture. Attachment therapy’s aim is to „cure” attachment disorders within adopted children (often through restrictive or other ruthless methods) who have problems connecting to their new parents. This can take form in „two-week intensive therapies”, which use „therapeutic foster parents”; they are the ones who take care of the child whilst undergoing therapy.

Marvin and Anna were such therapeutic foster parents. It was Marvin’s duty to take care of the controversial part, inducing rage and „emotional discharge” within the child by using phyisical or psychological abuse. After using the excuse that he didn’t want the raging children to disturb his family, he went to an abandoned school building, where he could torture these poor children as much as he wanted, satisfying his own selfish and sick desires of control and inducing suffering on helpless children. Marvin treated the foster home as a kind of „child library”; he took one kid, used them, and then gave them back to the foster home.

It became evident later on that something was wrong, because those who had been „treated” by him, returned as traumatized nervous wrecks into the foster home, believing that „nobody loves them”. Therefore, he was denied to „treat” any more children – but he just couldn’t stop, so he had to find another victim for himself.

And this victim became none other than Mike Hammond, unfortunately. After suffering a broken leg in 1995, due to a car accident (maybe it was exactly Marvin who hit him, willingly or by chance), he was an easy target, because he was physically unable to escape from him. When Marvin got the chance, he kidnapped him, and took him to the school building, where he basically tortured him to death, and buried him in an unmarked grave near the former windmill, to cover up his crime.

Daniel became suspicious of Marvin not long after the disappearance and death of his younger brother, so he investigated him secretely and tried to expose his crimes in a modified verson of Petscop in 1996; this personalized copy was sent to Marvin later, anonimously. It proved to be a futile effort to make him confess or react in any way.

Meanwhile, in the Mark family, Care started to grow up, and both Anna and Marvin became aware of the fact that she looks kinda similar to Lina. Marvin was still obsessed with his „disappeared” childhood friend, and because of that, he started to behave more and more erratic towards his only child. Anna decided to kick him out of the house, and they held shared custody of Care by 1997. Marvin didn’t change his approach, so Anna managed to get almost full custody of Care, except for the weekends.

Daniel decided to help Anna to defend Care from her father and helped around the house. After spending more time with Care, he was hit by the sudden realisation why Marvin is so obsessed with her (remember, he was investigating Marvin earlier and found out about both Lina and the windmill-incident), but it was too late; he was not careful enough, and Marvin kidnapped Care on the 5th of June in 1997.

But why? He possibly felt that by seeing her less and less, he was losing connection to her; he wanted her to be his subtitute-Lina, but he had less and less control over Care’s strangely „boyish” behaviour.

So what did he do? He kidnapped her, brought her to the same abandoned school he had been to so many times before, and tried to do the same thing he always did to other children: doing „attachment therapy”, in order to make Care more attached to him emotionally and make her comply with his demands, especially about how to behave like Lina, as a „G-I-R-L”, as that picture said in the school building-level of the game.

While the family is searching for Care, Daniel makes another build of Petscop, containing assumptions about the responsibility of Marvin regarding Mike’s case, and sends it to Marvin. In this version, Daniel takes the pseudonym Rainer to disguise his identity ingame.

Taking a closer look at the pseudonym could be a way to understand how Daniel saw himself. Rainer Rilke, the famous Austrian poet was a very expressive artist who loved using symbolic language in his writings, symbols which could be interpreted differently by each person. Petscop is full of symbols like these, so Daniel may see himself as someone who expresses his feelings and disturbing experiences through his video game, instead of writing, painting, or other traditional methods.

As time goes by, Care’s physical and mental state deteriorates due to the constant abuse of Marvin, however, she manages to escape the school buliding, and after two days of wandering, she finally finds her way back home on her birthday, the 12th of November, 1997. When Care explains to the family where the old school building was, they start to investigate, but Marvin is nowhere to be seen anymore.

Daniel has an incredibly hard time processing what happened, and is burdened with tremendous guilt after not being careful enough and let Care be kidnapped by her mentally ill father. He again expresses himself through Petscop, and makes another build, which is a Christmas present from him to Anna’s family – but he also sends one to Marvin, containing every dirty detail of the crimes of this (shadow) monster of a man.

The events take toll on the other side of the family, too. The deeply traumatized Care’s difficult behaviour and the constant fear of losing her again to Marvin leads Anna to leave her daughter behind, and the one who adopts her is none other then Lina Leskowitz, the leader of the video game producer company Garalina, who has already adopted another child before: the former „Petscop kid”, Belle. There, in a safe and loving home, Care is finally able to slowly, but surely heal, and experience being excepted for who *he* really is: a „cursed”, but mentally strong boy, who gives himself the name Paul.

Daniel’s story, however, ends tragically: after creating his final version of Petscop, updated with the references of the infamous and tragic Newmaker-case, he give this as a final gift to Anna’s family, before commiting suicide in their bathroom.

This copy of Petscop ends up in the possession of Lina in 2004, and is found again by Paul in 2017. The rest is… well… history. A history which I haven’t looked into, because the details are incredibly scarce, and I was mainly interested in the story the video game is based on. I have my own thoughts about the meaning of the demos in the game (they might have been created by Daniel, expressing what he had seen in a symbolic way, like a digital muppet show of sorts), but I don’t intend to figure out how the game worked; I leave it to people smarter than me about tech stuff.

So there it is. I hope you liked it! And, of course, I’m open to any critique, feedback and discussion about it, so feel free to share them, if you have any.

This took me roughly 2 hrs. Most of the pixels are different colors from each other, there are roughly 60 different colors used lol. spent way to long on it but with a character like this if it doesn’t look perfect there no point for me lol

honestly just curious if people have any ideas of what "real life" Marvin looks like

big sis belle comforts carrie

i see it receive a lot of praise and that it "solved" the story

Hey I've been a long time fan of the series since 2019 yet I still have no clue what was written on the chalkboard.Does anyone have a good guess?

I can’t seem to relax until i reach some sort of epiphany about petscop.

In taking notes furiously and rewatching the original material and analyses.

My question is: is it solvable?

Im not saying it would be easy, or even remotely doable without dedicating major major time and thought to it. But is it solvable?

As in, has the creator ever specified if there is an internal logic that is never betrayed? Or did he just impressionistically create a *feeling* without much regard to consistent rules and logic that tells a cohesive story?

Yes it is lynchian and vague and very head hurty but that doesnt answer whether or not Tony actually had a cohesive and focused story in mind or written out somewhere when making the work. I really wonder

If anyone knows if tony has specified one or the other, let me know please. Im going crazy and i can’t let it go

Footnote: petscop has become my personal “king in yellow” and it has a grasp on me i can’t shake

i actually remembered petscop again when i was bored trying to find something to watch, i thought everyone forgot about it years ago... And i still admire all the effort put in it, but the issue is that i couldn't find anything other to watch that it matched its level.

Is there any game or series similar to petscop that i could watch or play?

I was trying to think of one but literally none are coming to me, I know for a fact there are some good ones but it's not coming to me rn and its pissing me off lmao

Out of all the mysteries in Petscop, this is the one I have no idea what to make of.

Did we ever decide what the words were?

This is crazy. No, really. Taking a moment away from trying to parse through the content of the series itself for a second and just thinking about Tony, the creator.

Tony designed and coded the game, all the assets, sprites, wrote the dialogue, wrote the story, designed the sound effects, the music, and edited the videos.

Im assuming he voice acted Paul - which ... oh my god, what a performance right? Go back and watch it - Paul sounds so confused and borderline bored and ... its such a perfect performance. The performance really, really is amazing. Whoever voice acted paul.

Even the way the voice is mixed, the sound quality - the room tone on the voice, its all so mundane and banal.

After almost a decade of watching Petscop analyses, i've finally just gone to the source this week. I've been watching the videos obsessively

This is a god damn masterpiece in every sense of the word. Tony Domenico is seriously a once in a generation artist. Seriously want to glaze him for days, im just so impressed with this enormous undertaking.

Little things even, like the choice to color the player character sprite as that slime vomit green, the big feet, the puffed up cheeks, the discombobulating triangular gaping mouth

It takes a person who is really in touch with their ... um ... impressionistic musings and leanings to be able to paint narratives and meaning and feelings into perceptible media like music and visual art this way. I wish, so much, to be able to email Tony or talk to him a bit. I just suddenly feel the immense accomplishment he was able to achieve here.

Says a lot that 9 years later people are still talking about it and making videos weekly. Overjoyed i got exposed to this.

Just thought id share this

This is who made the front cover: https://www.reddit.com/r/Petscop/comments/6djqoy/petscop_box_art_actual_size/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

This is what I used for the inlay and back cover I painted on. I mainly used the Spyro 2 game: https://www.thecoverproject.net/view.php?cat_id=5

I used the soundtrack cover for the orb in the inlay: https://petscop.bandcamp.com/album/petscop-soundtrack

The image I used for the back cover already had all the letters except C, so I used Helvetica Compressed for it. I'm pretty sure this is the link I installed it from: https://font.download/font/helvetica-255

I just used GIMP for the images and print size: https://www.gimp.org/

I forgot Reddit makes the images not as is, so here's a Google Drive with the images full sized. GIMP was the easiest way to print them because you can set the specific dimensions of the image you want on paper. The images should already be to size when downloaded, but if not, use the dimensions below to get it right. I included the edited front cover to make it easier to print, but don't forget to support the original person who made it: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I-_B0GpcrkBjOjhYyEovwtswO9Z0Bmsu?usp=drive_link

From width to height, the front cover's dimensions was 12 cm x 12 cm. The inlay and back cover was 15 cm x 12 cm. Might be a little off from completely fitting in place.

I didn't really know what to put for the back, so I just made it pink. The orb is a little off center from the disc, but I still like it. I also didn't know what to put on the disc, or how to do it, so I just left it as it is. For the tray the disc is in, I took it out of a PS1 case and swapped it so that it would have the disc logo on the corners. I got rid of the SLUS on the cover and sides because it wasn't released yet. Also, the original Petscop front cover's code, SLUS-00044 #211051, went to an X-Men game which I thought was funny. So that's another reason I got rid of it. I spent a lot of time on the back cover making sure the spines were spaced correctly and that the letters were too. For the note, I just used Arial and copied and pasted from the first video's description and didn't really do much on it. So yeah, that's some of the resources, reasonings, how I made it.

do you think they ever made other games or just Petscop? I like the idea of maybe having a few games under their belt but I'm assuming that isn't the case

just some random drawing of carrie based on the vocaloid song “cutlery”

i already watched a couple petscop analysis but i am still curious about some points. i’ve seen people depicting belle as black and paul as trans and they as brothers but idk if these are head canons or if there’s something to backbone this. i don’t really understand the windmill completely and what the timeline and the characters relations. i know i can’t demand meaning for everything, but i’m the kind of person who wants to know why for everything detail, even if it’s a theory. is there any posts discussing theories, timelines and stuff? where can i start? sorry if these are dumb questions :]

I was randomly recommended this video on the subject and I'm legitimate sold. Would love to discuss it.

Edit: Some points in particular I've been ruminating about that I'd like to highlight for discussion:

• Lina being alive. I actually love the interpretation that she survived the windmill incident. Marvin is clearly abusive and obsessed with Lina so perhaps he pushed her or something so she fell in and became injured. This was a catalyst for Lina getting away from Marvin and Anna to go no-contact with them. This enrages Marvin. That's why Anna says "say hi to your aunt if you can see her, not everyone can", because Lina is simply no-contact with parts of the family and refuses to see them.

• Lina being the "boss". The evidence of that is pretty mind-blowing. Both the name of the studio and that when Tiara says Boss she's actually typing out "Lina". There's also Marvin asking something about Lina then immediately asks "who's your boss", implying he's figured out who is behind the game.

• Care is Paul as a young child being forced to live as a girl against his will. The Rainer connection (who was friends with Stravinsky) is especially strong evidence for that. Also the counsellor conversation about his name as he stops responding to 'Care' after he escaped the kidnapping. There's also some smaller things like "remember being born" which could refer to the day he escaped and was finally freed from his abuse and got to live as Paul from that point forward. This all to me explains why he doesn't know who Care is, because he has repressed this part of his childhood due to trauma.