Rapid Eyes: The Game You Can't Delete 

A little atmospheric journey is in order tonight. Rapid Eyes Official Playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PLNLOmY_ud8HPf7YzhEJnyUuapYW7iLvaD&si=1wxkz_y0pvDGj2iY PROTOTYPES Kickstarter: kck.st/3QkP7rL

It really bugged me that the player never finished a loop around the tower and always turned around to go back the same way. I thought at first it was hiding a door or something then as it progressed the real meaning became clear, his inability to finish things

poor man really just got fat-shamed by a note in a videogame clearly written by the spooky equivalent of a highschool bully

It's such a tiny detail but I'm not kidding when I say that the thing that _instantly_ sold me on the main character was the little "thanks Windows, sure, I don't care" in the intro vid. The delivery is just that _perfect_ level of "annoyed at being interrupted mid-sentence" without going overboard (almost like a verbal eye-roll) that makes him feel more like a real person.

It was bone chilling to realize that all the warnings he's ignored so far....was unchanged behaviour. He ignored a very important warning (getting help for his dad) that he's since regretted and yet he's continued to blatantly ignore explicit warnings including the radio's.

I can delete anything, you just got to be willing to break things to do so.

I like the idea that the Entity just looks at the "Spectators" and thought: "You know, I'm here to make this guy's life hell, but you people are sick monsters for enjoying his suffering. Mad respect, G. You do you, fellow monster."

I wanted to comment on this. When he falls into the water and lands on the boardwalk, “as above, so below” is rewritten to “as below, so above” which isn’t anything crazy, but a fun detail.

33:50 I love how this has become such a common thing in unfiction that some projects are starting to lampshade it. That's not sarcasm, I actually got a decent laugh out of this. The creator knows it's overused, and I almost think that's part of the reason they used it.

The fun of a Night Mind is sometimes Nick goes "Hey, go watch this first." and I go "Well alright" and wander off and then wind up wanting to give the project so much direct attention I only wind up coming BACK literal days later. Thank goodness he's patient.

4:48 Another thing about opening on a fresh install of the OS is that it gives a sense of purpose for the screen recording. It creates an immediately relatable/understable back story without needing a bunch of exposition, allowing us to focus on the hook and narrative. It can be difficult to set up why the protagonist is documenting the opening chapters of events. Allowing there to be struggle and frustration offscreen before the recording begins makes it far more believable as to why the recording exists

The themes of guilt and self-hatred that come in turn with dropping a passion project in order to grieve are not lost on me. SO excited to see how this plays out!

My theory is that its actually exploring different ways of dealing with trauma/grief: Purple/radio represents the "correct" response people are meant to show to others and themselves. She's the embodiment of comfort, compassion, and pure optimism, "it's impossible to fail forever! Eventually you will succeed." However it's a view that's incredibly difficult to maintain; when you're feeling down the signal cuts out, go through a big enough shock and the radio is broken until you can work to repair it or find another. Looking at it as an external voice, they aren't *really* there with you, they're kind words from someone a world away; well meaning but not personal. Red eyes represents a more instinctive and emotional pessimistic reaction. Something bad happened and there has to be someone to blame, to hate, including yourself; something to lash out at with all this anger regardless of whether they deserve it. "[...] now you're just here. alone." "I hate her so much. She thinks she can [...] make things happy. But this does not work." "When will you learn to just stop?" I see him as someone who went through too much and killed his own hope/optimism to cope, but now finds other people showing that optimism painful and views any attempt to help him as an attack. He's simultaneously deeply envious of people that succeed and disdainful of anyone that tries and fails. The green voice represents repression/remembering what you've repressed. "Me existence [...] is wrong." "I disappear and reappear wherever [I am the] most useful." It calls to remind MC of the loss he went through and has clearly been trying to forget/move past as he blames himself. It's a replay of the same emotions he needed to process but couldn't, and is now hopefully more capable of confronting. That said, the amount of scientific references could instead mean that it represents trying to reason your way out of grief; look at every fact and somehow try to determine what went wrong and how to move forward without having to think about painful emotions.

A small detail but one worth noticing is the purple fire at the beginning. It's comforting, warm, and keeps us and the player safe. It's mysterious but in a good way. Just like Radio. I don't know if others have noticed but I felt that was intentional. Also the play and quit options are Red and Green respectively. Red eyes want to play and be torment but Green wants to quit the torment or prevent it. I could be wrong 😅

I do enjoy how the desktop icon doesn't have the little arrow on the bottom left, so it's not a shortcut. Making it much more hard to track down the files

I have a very low tolerance for horror, I can't really watch anything too tense or gory, but I'm SO glad i watched the series before coming back to night mind. Rapid Eyes was right up my alley

I mean, ignoring warnings in video-games is pretty standard. Not because we think we know better, but simply because... wtf else are you gonna do just stand there in the game and not do anything? IRL you can head a warning and stop and go do something else and continue your life with it's semi-limitless possibilities. You can't really do that in a video-game, especially not a linear one. Like imagine buying a game, then you play it for a few minutes, see a warning, and go, "Oh dear, this could be dangerous, I should uninstall the game. Those 12 minutes of exposition in the intro were sure worth the 30$ I paid." It's similar to if they headed warnings and made smart decisions in horror movies or w/e. The movie would just end 20 minutes in, or it would just be about some dude watching netflix or something for 2 hours.

One thing that stuck out to me is how in the school video, the player forgets what dessert is. It makes me wonder if there's some sort of amnesia going on

Just got back from watching Rapid Eyes, I'm impatient to hear your thoughts on it. But I must say, it was really nice seeing their subscriber count go up by almost a full hundred every time the page refreshed to play the next video. This project deserves exposure.

Trying to read the text in the game has inspired me to make a horror game where everything is blurry and hard to read. I’m gonna call it Old Eyes.

This project is genuinely so good. I'll be honest, it's a little too real for me. It hits a lot of points that are still sore in my own memory. It's respectful, and makes my heart race something awful. Especially the noose. I recognize it all too well. Beautiful work, horrible nightmare for our player. Thank you for bringing it to our attention, NM ❤

Thanks for using your platform to actually support creators that don’t have as much exposure! We need more people like you. If successful content creators mentioned more small content creators, they could beat the algorithm.

I find it intreging that after the 8th lightpost in the parking lot, you can find the radio and it introduces us to it. After the 8th tall tower, the radio turns on and it introduces us to the green text character

2:35 -- What my overlord demands, I am happy to oblige! I'll be riiiiiiight back. Also, I really appreciate that you always link to the original work, and don't just merely cover it. Most channels don't do that. They'll be like "yeah, check it out when you can" -- but you are always so respectful and I love that you support smaller creators so sincerely! ETA: ...OMFG it's an EMDR RPG! Those notes are totally how I used to talk to myself. I have severe BPD, and that radio just keeps reminding my of my therapist. EMDR is a rapid-eye movement therapy that gets your left and right brain to talk to each other. It's so helpful. I'm 36 years old now, and didn't actually start living until I was 32. I am in love with this --ARG-- unfiction project for personal reasons. Even if I am wrong - it's hitting something deep within my soul.

When you brought up REM, I thought of something called EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). It's essentially a way to process traumatic events.

I love the detail of him reading the pages under his breath because that's totally something I do playing games on my own. It's a subtle detail that helps sell the fact he's not some youtuber or let's player, but just a regular guy recording these videos because he wants to show other people this game.

I love when larger creators help out talented but unrecognized channels, shows a level of humbleness and care that's very endearing. Plus straight up; some of the best stuff out there, we never hear of until someone brings it into the light. So for myself: thank you for showing this cool series and channel ^^ As for the creator, you've done something lovely for them and I'm sure they'll be very happy :3

I like the "struggling with the process of creativity/creation and wanting to give up rather than struggle with it" aspect a lot better than the personal trauma thing. It feels a lot more fresh. He wants to do something creative, but constantly doubts himself or loses interest quickly. It's something I relate to quite a lot.

A lot of heavy themes in this bad boy for sure. So far to me the story explores guilt and self loathing, along with the obvious theme of suicide. I'm excited to see how these elements will all crystallise! Thank you for bringing this series to our attention!!

I am so hyped for a new video. A cozy blanket, a rainy day, a glass of mead, and a new Night Mind video to watch with my Nick Nocturne plushie.

An odd detail I've noticed in the series so far is the recurrence of "left". The player goes around the left side of the tower every time he checks the back of it. He takes the left path in the forest. He holds the radio in his left hand. The colored lights that slowly brighten the black screens with nature ambiance come from the upper left corner of the screen. No idea what this means but it is a strange detail.

One of my favorite RU-vids plays games but he's one that just moves along with the game. Sure he'll react when things happen but it's never over the top. He's more about the game rather than being overly excited. So seeing this guy do that was a comfort because that's the kind of thing I like to watch.

The funny thing is, the presentation in Rapid Eyes is more akin to what I think of as a Let's Play-er rather than the loud exaggerated personas that are so common now. Reminds me a bit of the Let's Plays that came out of early YT

If I could make a “this game I found” styled project, I would love to make something involving game hardware rather than software. A fictional game console so poorly designed that it was prone to causing serious injury or death. Imagine the 360 red ring of death but instead of the console dying, it seriously hurt or killed someone.

While watching the videos myself I noticed that the note saying "As above. So below." changed after he jumped down and appeared back on the platform. It then said "So below. As above." at 16:19

Could it be that all of this was something developed to force the player to get past his own hang ups and traumas? Like… he’s forcing himself to confront things he doesn’t want to deal with, through the antagonistic brutality of Red Eyes and the gentle touch of Radio.

Rapid Eyes account had 348 followers when I started this video... it's at 2k! Go Night Mind for helping spread this project!

I find myself so interested in what red eyes really wants, like are they doing this for some grand purpose? Are they secretly trying to help the player remember and/or come to to terms with their past failure? are they really some horrifying manifestation of self defeatist mentality tormenting the player for even trying at all? Or are they just well and truly fucking with them? Who knows, but I’m certainly excited to find out!

"Unfinished business" is possibly one of my favorite underlying themes in Frankenstein. Walton and Frankenstein's mother had fallen ill, and died while being taken care of. Frankenstein himself doesnt finish anything in particular, even though he put so much time and effort into his creation, he lost it at the most important step because he couldn't finish what he had started. At the end of the novel, frankenstein had fallen ill after chasing the creature far up north into the cold, and he succumbs to it. Walton felt his business was left unfinished, and so did the creature, who upon seeing the dead body of the man who failed to teach him, and failed to defeat him, leaps off the boat to die on his own terms, leaving his business mostly unfinished as well. Even Walton's journey up to the icy waters had fallen through, but instead of follwing his own hubris, he was thankfully able to return home, but relatively unsatisfied. Seeing similar themes in this way is actually super cool and I cant wait to see more from rapid eyes!!

I only just now noticed but to play into things Play is in red, Quit is in green. One of them is obviously the correct answer.

not sure if it's hardware, software, or lessons, but you've nailed the spooky calming voice even better than you did previously

Survivor's guilt is real & holy crap this game has some of those feelings in it.

"Moving along in mutual curiosity, sharing in the moments of odd feelings and mysteries" is a pretty apt description for every Night Mind video as well. I really love that line in this video.

That demo video of the parking lot has another oddity. When the player shows it on the computer in the video, the one he shows actually ends without the red eyes thing being there at all, you can tell because of the traffic cone logo appearing. The one on the channel itself is the one with the red eyed entity telling the viewer to leave.

I just watched the whole series and it’s very reminiscent of diminish in the BEST possible ways. Absolutely obsessed thanks for finding such a gem!!!

Started this morning and finished after work. Already the Rapid Eyes channel has 10x the views it had this morning. If this guy is struggling at all and making it into art, NightMind just shined a bright light into his world.

“There’s a ghost in my comp-“ *DEMO pops up* Me: noooope *volume down* I have been conditioned! Demo means jumpscare!

Please cover "White Door Opened" and "Midwest Angelica". Both are criminally underrated and hidden gems on youtube. White Door is particularly fun, because it's a good old fashioned ARG, complete with hidden code, ciphers, and even spectrograms.

Ohhhh yesssss thank you so much NM, you’re the true gem for introducing us to so much media. Thank you thank you!!! I love a tasty undiscovered bit of media thank you!!!!

It's 3am here and I binged them. Demo made me jump lol. Episode 6 got me just right! And I was a fool for not realising where we were. But that's what you get when you are just along for the torment hehe

I love how you're bringing wide recognition to little known ARGs. I really enjoyed watching Rapid Eyes

I love the layers of narrative storytelling within this series, what I mean by this is that currently our main character is playing through a game against his will whose narrative is being made by entities who (I’m speculating) were made by him, all of these characters also being made by the actual author of the project

Definitely think the angle of "the trials of creation" is important. But the commentary from both Red Eyes and Radio definitely indicates some level of goal desired and that the User is captured. But part of my thinking is: do we ever have video of the User outside of the PC? With the half dropped line of "It can't be that there's a ghost haunting my computer", we are first meant to think Red Eyes is that ghost with the intercut DEMO section. But what if the User IS the ghost. I know "they were dead all along" is pretty hokey, but I'm wondering if it's a matter of the User being in a liminal state BETWEEN life and death. And Red Eyes wants them to go to death, while Radio is the one saying there's a CHANCE he could make it back to life and he should try for as long as he can. As for the phone call about Dad, I could definitely see that going one of two ways that dovetails into the "abandoned creation" aspect. Either he abandoned it after Dad died/suffered some harm because User was too busy trying to code (like this option less, since it blames the hobby to a certain degree), or User was listless and nonresponsive because he'd already given up and was feeling like shit about it.

I don't usually go through these things myself before watching an essay video on them but MAN I'm so glad I did this time. It caught me by surprise how much I'm enjoying this one.

SO glad you covered this! I was in the twitch raid when SeireaSong recommended Rapid Eyes to you and fell in love with it at first watch! Excited to see where the series goes, and for it to get the exposure that it very much deserves!

I watched through the OP’s playlist earlier (I’m a theatre and dance instructor, so my comment is coming hours after I finished watching the playlist as I had classes to teach.) and found it incredible watching his subscriber count jumping at a decent amount between each of the uploads. It’s amazing to see these smaller creators gaining traction and attention because of videos like this. Thank you, NM, for keeping these communities growing and thriving!!!

I watched all the videos on Rapid Eyes as instructed and omg the characters and lore AND EPISODE 11 were so good! Glad I took the time to watch and I wish the best for the Player! Don’t let the hater notes get you down!

take a shot everytime the player says okay

Rapid Eyes just got 40 more subscribers in just 7 minutes. I think your promotion worked Nick.

his acting is super rough but was a fun ride nonetheless

Nick: The videos on this channel have less than 1 thousand views. Me: Not on my watch.

Honestly though, I do love how annoyed the player is at running into the Backrooms. Oversaturation really has ruined that little liminal space creepypasta

Eh, interesting ideas. Yet again just left wishing the performance was more natural. Over-acting is such a common issue in these kinds of series. This has some particularly great moments, the reaction to the stop signs is basically perfect, right down to the mouse movements of the little flick back and everything. But then elsewhere he's looking basically exactly where he needs to, or just not looking around at all. If you've ever seen anyone play a walking simulator, it's basically 100% ingrained to start zig-zagging when walking for a long time unless it slows you down a lot, but this guy has steel concentration, I guess, walking in straight lines unflinchingly for ages.

His sarcasm throughout his documentation was SO funny. Especially when the tower was weirdly falling with him. Genius storytelling. No true fear in the beginning, just annoyance

A personal ideology of mine is that “a true mistake is only made if you don’t realize you’re making it to begin with”. Thus, one could describe the Rapid Eyes series as a view into the mind of the person making said true mistake, doomed to keep experiencing the same torment because he ignores all the warnings provided to him. While the “Sisyphus rolling the boulder” analogy Radio says around 40:00 clearly resonated with a lot of people, one thing to note is that unlike the Player, Sisyphus is fully aware of his predicament. He continues to roll the boulder as it gives him enjoyment and purpose. And for the Player? As said before by Red Eyes, the Player will not find peace in this game. The Player’s curiosity and relentless pursuit in trying to look for answers in this game without fully processing what is truly in his environment has only served to “terrify…belittle,…and make fun of [him]”. It’s almost as if Red Eyes is trying to tell the Player to stop before they pass the point of no return, and could even be applied to the stop signs before the elevator shaft that led to the phone scene. And, if what was said on that phone was true…this was all born out of regret, out of grief. Processing said grief, however, takes time and focus, if the outcome desired is something that isn’t prolonged torment. Considering all of that…maybe Red Eyes was the one almost trying to help more than Radio, at least in the beginning.

I still can't believe the backrooms part haha. He dropped down into them and I went "the backrooms? Really?" only to have him echo me XD

Night Mind: The RU-vid Channel You Can't Stop Watching

I get tingles every time I hear “Welcome back to Night Mind friends…”

Trying not to fall asleep, yet choosing to watch NightMind. I like to live dangerously.

Without spoiling the most recent upload too much, the thing that struck me was the idea of hope, and how, when youre in the depths of pain and despair, you reach a point where you just want hope to die. To leave you alone, let you succumb to the darkness around you. Recently, ive been struggling with that (working ny way through one of the worst times of my life. Be kind to the next homeless person you see). In the worst parts, hope is just a reminder of everything thats out of my reach, and it hurts like a son of a bitch. But hope is the only way forward, the only way to survive. That internal struggle is captured by this project so wel.

Night Mind's voice is so soothing, i just get such friendly vibes from it.

I really like the art style of the game. It was surprising how well the high detail assets like the phone fit the presentation (whatever shader they used made the models feel more like sprite billboards). Also the open source advocate in me is hyped to see a series using Godot instead of Unity, especially after Unity's huge licensing controversy a few months ago.

tbh to me this is giving inspired by petscop. (The demo, "ghost in the game", something personalized, etc., etc. I love it. Would have never foune this myself, thanks NM!

Game developer that doesn't remember developing the game that keeps getting re-installed on his computer? Seems like some hidden part of his personality keeps putting it back and drawing him into things in order to torment him(self). Will def be watching to see how this plays out.

I've never heard of Rapid Eyes before so I was really excited to see what this is all about and after finishing this video, I immediately subscribed to their channel. I really love how this seems to deal with the player who appears to be struggling with their depression from the implication of losing a family member that it stopped them from doing something they seem to love. I'm very excited to see more of this project in the future. Thank you so much for this video Nick, and for introducing us to another small creator that deserves more spotlight and recognition! 💜

He now has over 5,000 subs WELL DONE in helping out a creator that has done a very good job at making something that has many layers and interesting, intriguing and enjoyable content. THANK YOU for turning us onto this my friend!!! 👌🏻

good video as always BUT, please read these messages for us, because a lot of us, if not most, are LISTING only to most of it and not watching it. i personaly always have stuff like arg conclusions/history/explained running while gaming. keep up your work

The guy is a good actor. He sounds natural and shows emotion when he needs to.

NM, you're the GOAT for bringing attention to unknown creators. So much respect.

"As Above, so Below. As Below, so Above." -Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus

Really appreciate the way you explored the content you wanted to provide and listened to people's feedback. Long format stuff is perfect for work and other tasks to just listen to your voice is perfect for the stuff!

Haha, I once had a Resident Evil (PS1) iso on my desktop that I couldn't delete. That somehow scared me off Resident Evil, still haven't played it to this day.

ah, the time-honored tradition of watching a NM video, not clicking away when told, and immediately being intrigued by the first clop used, THEN clicking away to watch the playlist. i also don't usually catch up to stuff like this in one sitting -- i always need to click away because the Unnerving feeling gets Too Strong. but i got really attached to player and radio !! i needed to see what happened to them !! and gosh, it's REALLY neat to watch one of your videos after i've already caught up because i kept going "!!!", like when the player recognizes the radio as being almost identical to one they own. ahhh, i am so excited to hear what you think! why is player constantly shown bypassing stop signs? what's going on with the player and the developer? why does red eyes hate the player, or at the very least want to withhold support from them? okay, back to the video!! oh, side note: thank you for using they/them for the player! i know like, duh, that's what has been used in canon, but it's still really affirming & it would have been difficult for me to get through this vid without it 🫡🙏

Between this and AndrewGaming67, I want more internet horror to have tropey, cliche creepypasta stuff happen and then instead of being scared the main character just gets pissed off at it lol

The fact that you were able to form such a logical conclusion from just carefully observing small details is amazing. You are very intelligent.

Perfect timing Nick Nocturne!! I was about to start doing my homework! I love your content Nick, you got me into the horror that I was missing out on!! Thanks for making my horror side amazing!

On top of the name of this project referencing REM sleep, the style of these videos is also very reminiscent of the abstract ps1 game LSD: Dream Emulator, what with the eerie primitive graphics, the mutating recurring environments and the sudden teleportation. I definitely think dreams are a major theme here.

Game found footage series are my faves! So excited for a new one 👁️

I been watching Night Mind for a while now....but this find sealed the deal and now im subbed up. Great work, as discovering obscure projects like this likely wouldnt have happened without your research into it....

Hmm...I can't imagine forgetting a creation. Not a creation like that, especially. I remember everything I've created. At least everything that was that involved.

It took me a while to realize 'Rapid Eyes' refered to REM sleep, commonly associated with dreaming. Clued in when the gameplay looked eerily similar to LSD Dream Simulator.

I’m so glad you made a video on this! I went and watched their episodes first and had to subscribe. This is right up my alley and I’m happy to help his channel grow so this can continue!

Rapid Eyes has over 2k subs and over 4k views on episode 1 in 6 hours after this video going lives, good work peeps

thank for using your platform to promote unknown series like this!

This was the first time I actually full stopped, watched, and came back. I was not disappointed. Thank you.

I really like that you emphasise the need to consume the original content before you start the video

I remember being in stream watching the Backrooms section, us expecting the floor to drop from under the player in a more literal sense, and then what ACTUALLY happens being one of the more subdued forms of jumpscare you could get but easily the best - the tension being kicked into high gear but then, rather than throwing a monster in your face, it pulls the rug out from under you with a smug attitude of ‘bitch, you THOUGHT’ 😂

Probably not for nothing that the birdsong at about 40 min and an hour in is the call of a mourning dove - though the call is reversed the second time.

it's funny how much this series feels like everything's on the table but also kinda nothing is, like we get Radio & Red Eyes as conflicting forces, the player's guilt over a past tragedy (there's a note that says "only you could fail at giving up" which is a clear reference to a failed past attempt IMO) but then you've got all the weird in-game lore stuff like Cycle Not Ready, Hypna-Orbs, Level Movement Detected, a reference to some others, also the monster in the school used BLUE text, not red or green or pink

Haven’t finished the video yet but Night Mind, your voice is so incredibly relaxing, I’m honestly thinking about adding some of your videos to a sleep playlist at some point