For many years, I have enjoyed scrolling through Facebook and YouTube to see what random content has been picked for me to see. When food videos pop up, I can’t help but watch with fascination at the kind of foods people create. Drooling at the looks of food or feeling creative when food gets fancy. 

Quite a few times, I have watched pancake art and thought ‘That’s so easy. Oh I can do that! You just have to draw, how hard can it be?’. Well let me tell you, that mindset was my first mistake. Let me tell you, how my journey of watching pancake art lead to me creating butchered pieces of art and pancake mix in my hair. 

Like anybody else who watches a video and get inspired with the ‘I can do it attitude and stars in their eyes’, I went to amazon and ordered a bunch of squeeze bottles. The first of my many mistakes, because I didn’t realise they were 20ml bottles, not 200ml. I had a test run with them using my own homemade pancake mix, and well I can tell you that didn’t go too well. By the time I had finished drawing with the pin point squeeze bottles, I had a burnt pancake that was paper thin. And so, with that, I then took back to going on amazon to order sauce sized bottles. 

In the mean time as I awaited for my new bottles to arrive, pancake day came around. So I took to making fresh batches of pancakes and had fun flipping them over and over. Now some of them did burn, some exploded upon the sheer brute force of my flipping, and one even got yeeted across into the sink. It was one sloppy pancake day for sure. Oops! But at least I got a bit of entertainment out of it.

Eventually a few days later, my squeezy bottles from Amazon arrived. So I popped to the shops, and grabbed the final ingredients I needed. I took out my camera, set it up and began the journey one final time. Taking plain ingredients… To making this.

Now as you can see, what a mess I made! I certainly made some… Questionable art to say the least. But also some damn right horrifying pieces too. I mean have you seen Pikachu? It looks like someone grabbed some an image of Pikachu and butchered it.

The whole experience and journey of making the pancakes has certainly been entertaining. No way am I any good at it. But just experimenting, having a mess about and certainly giving it a try was worth the while. I mean I hope I at least made you all smile with my abominations. I do have to say I do at least like one of the half butchered Pikachu’s and my little dinosaur character. Maybe in the future I will give it another try. It has certainly taught me some techniques to the style, and I no where near had the right equipment.

But as a whole, I had fun. And that’s what matters. Let’s see where this journey takes me next.

There’s nothing like that exciting moment of pressing start before spending hours upon hours of blood, sweat and tears on a game. Pouring your heart into the stories that developers have created. Building emotions of characters who don’t even exist but draw those feelings from you. Living in electronical worlds that steal your heart and soul.

Yet, there is nothing like completing a game… Or so I hear.

It’s kind of crazy, you know. Being 27 and not having completed a game start to finish. It just feels absurd that such a thing is possible. I mean, my steam library alone has 280 games, and that’s not to mention the games I have played over the years on various other consoles and devices. Well, I decided to rectify that because it’s kind of shameful in a way. I mean, I would gladly call myself a gamer. I’ve been gaming since I was a child. Yet still no completed games. Not even the Grand Theft Auto series that I’ve played on repeat numerous times. And I tell you, I have played Vice City and San Andreas waaaaaay too much.

So, what better way could I remedy my shame on the gaming community? Well, of course, I would need to complete a game! Not going to lie, I didn’t expect for the first game for me to complete to be a horror game, but you know what. It was an experience, and I did it in the best way possible. For you see, I reached an amazing goal. I had, after 4 years of on and off streaming, hit 300 followers. To think that 300 people have watched me scream, swear, laugh and cry and still hit that follow button is incredible. So, I celebrated by streaming and playing games with forfeits to say thank you. I mean, what could go wrong?

I started by playing Happy’s Humble Burger Farm, a game around working in the fast-food industry. But thing’s didn’t last long after I was flipping those burnt burgers, exploding cheese and throwing shakes at customer’s faces. And so, I swapped over to Don’t Be Afraid. I mean, my chat has started enjoying me playing horror games, though I’m pretty sure it’s because they find it hilarious when I’m screaming or jumping out of my seat from the horror game. I wasn’t expecting it to be too bad; I mean, it had five nights of Freddy vibes (I hadn’t actually played that either). How bad could it be? Opening up my game library, I swapped over whilst laughing with my chat, who was already starting with the truth or dares that I set up as rewards for them.

Starting the game up, I instantly began to regret my decision. Because you see, I didn’t just play the game, I thought, oh, let’s also hook up my sound effects and phillip hues to synchronise with the game. Straight away, my room started lighting up in reaction to the game. In the beginning, we are met by Franklin, who has drugged us for his… Experiments.

As we progress through the game, we find out that Franklin has been kidnapping children, us being one of them, and experimenting on them whilst taking their teeth and turning them into mannequins. If I wasn’t horrified enough, I am even more after meeting Franklin’s brother Theodor, who chases us and, if caught, smashes us with brute force. Scary enough, right?

But then we come to the education floor, where we meet a clown. Now for those that know me, I hate clowns. They’re not my best friends. I’m chased across the floor through tunnels trying to escape, all the way to a door where I thought I could escape.. Even if I cheated a few times and paused whilst I regained brief composure. I managed to escape to a higher floor, where I found a door with blood across the floor leading behind it. Unless I wanted to head back to the clown, my only other option was to go through the door. So after a deep breath, I clicked on the door and escaped. Or so I thought…

You see, I then spawned in another room where Franklin then apologies to us whilst mannequin’s are blocking us in a room. But you see, Franklin’s brother Theodore has hurt us and left us taking our last breaths as we walk through the basement again. With the screen throbbing to the game, we slowly walk our way back to the very room we started in, gasping our last breaths. An impending feeling looming over the head of David, our character groans; Franklin laughs as he encourages us to walk down the final corridor to where we can rest. We walk past a mannequin we met earlier on, whispering “hello little brother to us”, past the girl as she sings la lala la la and towards the final door where a chair awaits us. Then I realised things were going to take a turn.

As David steps into the room in which we started, the door slams behind us. Franklin’s voice crackles over the speakerphone telling us to sit. I know now things will end badly as I’m forced to sit down whilst we can hear David’s laboured and panicked breathing. The moment I realised we aren’t going to escape and that we will become simply another mannequin in Franklins collection. Franklin explains as our vision fazes in and out that he is happy with our game. He chains David’s wrists to the chair, saying that his work will finally be over once he finished with us. The game pulls at the heartstrings as David’s eyes close, and we realise that the game has come to an end. But to make it worse, the game even asks us to press the button ‘F’ continuously to make David close his eyes. I mean, come on, developers! You’re already getting me emotional and teary. Now we have no choice to kill our character by following the command. We watched sadly as David’s eyes close and the credit’s roll…

Or so we thought. But no, the developers had another trick up their sleeves—a cruel, evil ending. For we hear as the credits start the swish of a knife, and you would think nothing of it. Until you hear the sound of stabbed flesh and David crying out in pain, the screen returns to David’s pained vision with a knife in his wrist as Franklin chuckles and apologies. Telling us, “Don’t be afraid… I’ll make sure you have company while you’re rotting in the ground.” The screen fades out with one final command of tapping F to give up. Killing off David before finally running to the true end credits.

I didn’t know this until later, but there are actually multiple endings, and I happened to get the worst because I didn’t go in the vent when I should have. But what a way to end! I wouldn’t normally play a game like this, but I thought to play it on the horror celebration stream. It certainly took me through the emotions and, in the end, threw me and chat off with a huge curveball. Something I completely wouldn’t have expected even after all the weird scenes we had gone through.

Do I regret playing the game? In some ways, yes, because of how messed up it was. Some scenes weirded me the hell out. But then on the other side, no, because it was was an experience. I had finally completed a game after 27 years and had the wonderful experience of doing it with my chat which made it completely worthwhile.

You’re more than welcome to check out my highlighted video around the challenge below. Try not to laugh too much at the jump scares I encountered.

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