Amanda the Adventurer is an indiepuzzlehorror video game series developed by MANGLEDmaw Games and published by DreadXP. Partially inspired by the children's television show Dora the Explorer, the series centers upon Riley Park, who has become involved with the sinister mystery surrounding the fictional children's show Amanda the Adventurer.
The series started as an entry into a game jam in April 2022 and was developed into a full game in April 2023 after it was acquired by DreadXP. The game spawned a trilogy, with Amanda the Adventurer 2 being released in October 2024 and Amanda the Adventurer 3 in November 2025.
Gameplay
During all three games, players must solve puzzles and locate VHS tapes containing episodes from the children's series Amanda the Adventurer.[1] While screening the tapes, players can interact with Amanda and her sheep companion, Wooly, which can in turn impact the player's environment and game endings.[2] The player assumes control of Riley Park, a non-gender-specific character who is tasked with investigating the mystery surrounding the show and the sinister company Hameln Entertainment.[3] There are a few secret tapes to unlock such secret endings. Each decision that players make can affect how the game ends.[4]
Plot
Amanda the Adventurer (2023)
Riley Park receives a letter from their Aunt Kate, who has recently died and has bequeathed to them her home in Kensdale, Ohio while mentioning a VHS tape in her attic. After arriving at Kate's house, Riley enters the attic and discovers that the tape contains an episode of Amanda the Adventurer, a children's television series that started out as a public-accesslive action show. After it was acquired by a studio called Hameln Entertainment, it then became a popular computer-animated cartoon. During its run, parents became concerned about some of the show's increasingly disturbing content. Several children also went missing while watching the show, which led Kate to investigate it.
As Riley plays the tape, they are introduced to the show's titular protagonist, Amanda, and her timid but friendly sidekick Wooly, an anthropomorphic sheep. Both are able to fully interact with Riley, and by completing various puzzles, Riley discovers more tapes of Amanda the Adventurer, each one being more disturbing than the last. Depending on the player's choices, Riley can discover additional secret tapes that hint at Hameln's darker intentions, along with behind-the-scenes footage about the series and its missing creator, Sam Colton, who had his adopted daughter Rebecca play as Amanda.
The game has several different endings depending on the player's choices. If the player makes bad choices or fails a task, Riley is either attacked by a demonic entity resembling Amanda, or becomes trapped as a prop inside the show. In the game's two good endings, Riley plays a tape where Amanda asks if she could share a "secret" with them: If the player answers "No", Amanda dejectedly stops the tape and Riley leaves the attic unharmed. If the player answers "Yes", Amanda claims that she is "out there somewhere"[5] before the TV glitches violently, forcing Riley to throw a brick at the television and destroy it. If the player found all five secret tapes before the canon "Yes" ending, Riley will discover that a masked figure has entered the attic.
Amanda the Adventurer 2 (2024)
Picking up where the first game left off, the masked figure tells Riley that she is a friend of Kate's. The figure later takes them to Kate's former workplace, the Kensdale Public Library, where Riley is again tasked with finding more Amanda the Adventurer tapes while the masked figure stays outside to keep watch, using a walkie-talkie to communicate with them.
As Riley solves various puzzles and watches all of the library's Amanda the Adventurer tapes, Amanda and Wooly frequently encounter an unnamed opossum that meddles in their adventures. During these interactions, Riley must also avoid the wrath of Amanda's creature, who will attack them if Amanda is unsatisfied with Riley's choices. Riley can also discover other tapes which reveal that Sam Colton was abducted by Hameln, Kate was a member of a secret group investigating Hameln and the tapes, and that Hameln kept Rebecca in a vegetative state before using her to control Amanda as a supernatural avatar, who would entice children to come to Hameln's facility.
The game has two different endings: if the player does not find all of the secret tapes, the masked figure gathers all the Amanda tapes and begins destroying them, causing Amanda's creature to attack and seemingly kill her. Grabbing a blank VHS tape, Riley escapes through a secret hatch that was installed in Kate's office.
If the player finds all four of the game's secret tapes, Riley watches an alternate version of the last Amanda tape, where the opossum hears the masked figure's voice over Riley's radio, and tries to cry out "Joanne" before Amanda and Wooly subdue him. The player can then obtain a secret audio cassette tape which recorded Kate's last words to Riley, imploring them to destroy the tapes rather than watch them before being killed in a car crash. Overhearing this, the masked figure reveals herself to be Joanne Cook, whose younger brother, Jordan, was one of the children who disappeared while watching the show. Convinced that Jordan is trapped in the tapes and that destroying them will free him, Joanne manipulated Kate into helping her and caused Amanda's creature to attack them, indirectly causing Kate's death. Joanne urges Riley to flee before she is mauled to death by another demonic entity resembling Wooly. Riley escapes down the secret hatch with a blank VHS tape.
Amanda the Adventurer 3 (2025)
In a prologue set ten years prior to the events of the first game, an unnamed associate of Kate's infiltrates Hameln Entertainment in an attempt to find Rebecca. He is unsuccessful, but locates pods containing the missing children, who are being used to portray props in Amanda's surroundings. The associate tries to disable the alarm system via Amanda's scavenger hunt tape, but he is ultimately caught by security and killed.
In the present day, continuing from the second game's ending, Riley manages to escape from Wooly's creature by fleeing into the sewers and entering the abandoned Hameln facility containing the children's pods. However, Wooly's creature follows them and persistently attempts to enter the facility. In order to progress, Riley must watch more tapes and solve puzzles. The opossum reappears in the tapes, infuriating Wooly but delighting Amanda, who names him "Chicken Scratch". Discovering other tapes and audio logs, Riley learns that Sam Colton died while attempting to rescue Rebecca and unwittingly unleashed Amanda's creature, whose name is revealed to be the "Colton Anomaly", a psychic manifestation (akin to a tulpa) born from a discharge from the technology they were using on Rebecca (which was classed as neuropsychic). Eventually, Riley is tasked with disarming the alarm system using the same scavenger hunt tape, during which Chicken Scratch grows increasingly distressed as he is aware that Wooly's creature is approaching. Riley is able to solve the puzzle just as Wooly's creature breaks into the pod room and destroys the pods, killing the occupants (with Chicken Scratch being one of them) while Riley escapes via a nearby elevator.
Riley is taken to the facility's inner sanctum, a small satanic chapel, and watches several more tapes. It is soon revealed that Wooly is actually Marcus Moutman, a Hameln employee hired to monitor Amanda, and that Wooly's creature (codenamed "Shepherd") was created as a more controllable version of the Anomaly, which Hameln used to find and destroy the remaining Amanda tapes. Having been jealous throughout Amanda's growing friendship with Chicken Scratch and Riley, Wooly has an emotional meltdown, causing him to glitch and die. Riley solves one final puzzle that allows them access to a chamber containing Rebecca's pod, and finally release her.
There are two endings depending on the player's choices; in the normal ending, Rebecca and Riley witness the Anomaly and Shepherd fight over a tape containing the part of Rebecca's soul that makes up Amanda. During the struggle, both entities fall into a chasm with the tape, causing Rebecca to sadly state that she will "never be whole again". In the true ending, after collecting all of the five secret tapes, the battle takes place off-screen and the Anomaly wins at the cost of its right arm. Riley gives the tape to Rebecca, who then breaks it, causing the Anomaly and Amanda to disappear and the children's souls to be released. As Riley and Rebecca leave the chamber, a wholesome outtake recorded during Sam and Rebecca's public-access show is played, ending the trilogy.
Development
The first Amanda the Adventurer game was released in 2022 as part of DreadXP's Found Footage Jam on Itch.io.[‡ 1] The game, which has been referred to as Amanda the Adventurer: Pilot Episode, was developed by Ontario-based[‡ 2] developer MANGLEDmaw Games, along with Arcadim and SinisterCid.[‡ 3] In October 2022, DreadXP made an announcement that they had acquired the title for Amanda the Adventurer and would work with MANGLEDmaw to create a full game.[6] A demo of the full game was premiered at PAX East in early 2023.[7] The studio chose to recast the role of Amanda for the full game in order to have a black actress voice the character, as the prior voice actress was chosen due to convenience.[8][bettersourceneeded]
The first full Amanda the Adventurer game was released on April 25, 2023, via Steam and featured localized subtitles for multiple languages.[9][10] The game was given a release on the Nintendo Switch in September of the same year and, in 2024, Amanda the Adventurer released to the PlayStation and Xbox consoles.[11][12]
A sequel entitled Amanda the Adventurer 2 was announced in October 2023 and released to Steam on October 22, 2024.[13] In 2025, the sequel released to the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch consoles. A third game entitled Amanda the Adventurer 3 was announced on April 25 and released on November 6, 2025, which serves as the finale of the series.[14][15][16] A demo featuring a prologue was released on June 19.[17][18]
Reception
After its release, the first Amanda the Adventurer game became popular with online gaming streamers, and, per PCGamesN, videos relating to the game received approximately 1.5 billion views on YouTube.[19] Vice.com praised the game for its aesthetics and puzzles, as well as the choice to make the game start off "disarmingly sweet and wholesome".[20]
GamesRadar+ reviewed the first game, warning readers that some of the game's visuals could be disturbing and that it did not end with any definitive answers, while also noting that, "otherwise, Amanda the Adventurer is a startlingly effective horror game deceptively wrapped in the aesthetics of an old analog horror game and retro children's TV shows".[21]Prima Games was also critical of the game ending with too many unanswered questions; they also praised the game's writing, worldbuilding, and puzzles.[22]TouchArcade reviewed the first game's Nintendo Switch port, stating that it was an overall good port but that "I feel like the change to how you interact with preset options rather than inputting on a keyboard like in the PC version holds this back from its true potential".[23]
Hardcore Gamer reviewed the second game, stating that it was "a fun adventure title that delivers solid puzzles, great performances and a nice mixture of dread and humor, but a few sloppy decisions and a lack of anything substantial in either the gameplay or story areas hold it back".[24]
In their review for the third entry, Hardcore Gamer found that the game and overall series had some visual flaws while overall praising the puzzles.[25] Gayming gave the entry a score of 6/10, praising the gameplay and lore while criticizing that players were unable to backtrack to solve puzzles as they could in prior entries.[26]
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