Pictured: Noisy Beepboop, Diego's new avatar
Teeny Toys Exploration is a YouTube "Unfiction" video series. The series covers an old MMO game from the 2000's whose servers have recently been restored, allowing the uploader to share its world with others...or rather, it's about the uploader, Diego, having to confront his past and learn why the servers were shut down in the first place. The first episode was uploaded on June 14, 2022. The series can be viewed here
.Tropes:
- Arc Words: The phrase "It's my fault" comes up a few times; the other player in "A Helping Hand" saying "but it is not your fault", the screenshot of the server shutdown announcement in "Memories" containing the line "so no one is at fault here", the uploader saying "It's my fault" in "The Temple" for feeling like he's destroying the game, one of the notes in the hospital room reached in "A New Perspective" ending with "It's all my fault"...
- An Arm and a Leg: In episode 7, "Memories", Diego uses the scissors item to cut off Noisy Beepboop's arm, allowing him to play the Tic-Tac-Toe game that restores Teeny Town.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Episode 7, "Memories", has Diego switch from the new character he's been playing as, Noisy Beepboop, to his original save file, a bluenote robot named Tiny Robobob, in order to access old screenshots he took and try to remember what the game used to be like.
- Bilingual Bonus: Although the series is presented in English, there is some text in the Teeny Toys game written in Italian, Diego's native language; sometimes it's translated in the video description, such as the story of the lion at the start of episode 4, "The Pink Room", but other times it's not commented on, such as the story about the cloud that made a village disappear in episode 8, "The Temple".
- Curse Cut Short: Episode 7, "Memories", concludes with the living room props being deleted and Teeny Town put in its place, and Diego saying "What the f-" right as the video ends.
- Death of a Child: As the series goes on, it becomes clear that Teeny Toys was played by hospitalized kids, some of which passed away before the servers were initially shut down.
- Disguised Horror Story: The series starts out innocently, with the uploader showing off the current version of the game. Then things start taking a turn with the other player in "A Helping Hand" that leads to obtaining the items needed to check out an old urban legend, and ramps up in "A New Perspective" with an area based on a hospital room.
- Driving Question: Following an introduction to the game by a toy bear named Carl, Diego's character is dropped into a world devoid of other players. At first, he thinks he's still in some kind of tutorial, but it soon becomes clear this isn't the case and leaves both him and the audience with an important question: where is everyone?
- Dummied Out: In-Universe, the modern version of Teeny Toys that Diego shows off is a more realistic home environment than the old version that gets shown off in Episode 7, "Memories", with screenshots he took showing that there used to be attractions like an entire village made of cardboard. He finds a way to bring the village back at the end of the episode.
- Emergency Transformation: The storybook at the start of episode 4, "The Pink Room", is about a tiny lion that was very sick, so a Great Bear used machines to turn the lion into a robot in all but brain to make them feel better. Diego admits in episode 10 that he thinks the story was about himself.
- Fictional Video Game: The titular Teeny Toys video game is not an actual video game.
- Ghost Town: Diego is the only person actively playing an MMO game, leaving its world feeling woefully empty.
- Luck-Based Mission: The first half of episode 8, "The Temple", has Diego play a slot machine minigame with three icons: a low battery, a head with X'd out eyes, and a head with dark eyes on a pillow. It kicks him from the minigame before he's able to get a matching set.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: Episode 10, "A Sad Reminder", starts with Diego silently exploring some other areas now available after getting the radar attachment before checking out the newest room he has access to, where he ends up admitting that he hasn't been entirely honest and edited out some audio because it's becoming more apparent that the game's hidden content is directed specifically to him and referencing his personal history.
- Mouse World: The setting of Teeny Toys is a giant abandoned house, with characters needing ladders to climb onto countertops and smaller toy-sized doors built into the huge doors between rooms.
- Orange/Blue Contrast: As the series goes on, "orange" starts to represent the present (the color of Diego's new character), while "blue" represents the past (Diego's old character, the Teeny Town buildings, the other playing in "A Helping Hand" that encourages Diego to uncover his past).
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: In episode 8, "The Temple", there's a brief flash of a story handwritten in Italian. Translated, it's about a cloud that made everyone in a village disappear despite their attempts to stop it, and a "moral" that sometimes bad, unstoppable things just happen for no reason.
- Speaks in Binary: xXZer0SkillzXx, a player whose profile is seen in the memories folder in episode 7, has a background which seemingly says "this means nothing to me :)" over and over again in binary code.
- Visible Silence: Episode 10, "A Sad Reminder", has one first-person sequence where Diego interacts with various abstract characters that address him like an ill child. There are points where a dialogue choice pop up, but with only three exceptions, all of the options are to say "...".
