Terry's Vegetable Patch and What You Should Know About the Giggleland ARG

Giggleland has released its first demo, titled Terry's Vegetable Patch. Don't trust the friendly-sounding name, this is full-fledged mascot horror. YouTuber Nightmind has released a Let's Play of the demo with instructions and analysis. Game Theory has also delved into the game and the connected ARG. You can view the Steam release trailer here.

After a free online game, several animated shorts, and a hidden diary, Giggleland has found its audience. It is a combination of ARG and a mascot horror video game, with the ARG coming out first in a series of Acts. The official Discord has interested fans and investigators keen to solve the mystery, with the anonymous developers releasing announcements to track content and solved findings.

Despite the supernatural elements in each installment, the mundane scares reflect the real world. We have a narrative of child abduction and cults hiding sacrifice in plain sight. Artists find malevolent leaders corrupting their initial visions. The investigators' persistence may have also led to a child kidnapping.

On the surface, Terry's Vegetable Patch is a typical horror game where a player character explores an abandoned theme park. Then you dig deeper into the online community's findings on Discord and Reddit. The ARG and demo also have biting commentary about authority figures who claim to know everything and abuse the trust their charges give them.

There's a full Giggleland game in the works, but Terry's Vegetable Patch provides a proper introduction and story for newcomers, and something to tide existing fans over until the full game arrives (release date pending). The ARG hasn't uncovered new material since the demo's release, but the developers have hinted at more tidbits to come.

"Isn't It Dangerous To Do Farm Work At Night?"

The demo starts with you exploring a strange amusement park with a farming theme. You are Tolie, a girl trying to find her father. Terry's Vegetable Patch, a pastoral amusement park, is the last clue that Tolie has. This checks out for a standard mascot horror story.

Terry's Vegetable Patch seems to evoke the Poppy Playtime factory in a rural atmosphere, where you perform tasks among animatronic sheep and paintings of angels. None of the cornstalks or hay seems real, and there are no real animals. Any cheery music fades into eerie whimpers. The equipment also breaks down when you play by the rules. To find the truth, you have to explore. Breaking a few rules is also an option.

A mysterious figure is also watching: Eliot, the cat magician mascot for Terry's Vegetable Patch. Rather than the friendly orange toon from the posters, a shadowy figure peers at us. Eliot also directly interacts with the player via audio recordings and takes screencaps of their session, raising questions about his sapience. Despite this, Eliot doesn't seem malicious. He's curious.

My standards for abandoned amusement park demos are high; you have to do your research. In this case, I can believe such a tourist trap is possible after visiting a friend in rural South Dakota last year. When you know about reptile houses and rollercoasters in the middle of nowhere, mechanical sheep creaking as they "eat" their feed seems plausible. The extra material also reveals that "Farmer Terry," also referred to as "Uncle Teri" in supplementary material (more on that below), tested smaller versions of this idea at world fairs. He did his marketing without the horrific creative meddling. That meddling would come later.

Note that if you play the game, it reveals some screenshots of your desktop and wallpaper. A patched-in Streamer mode has fixed this if you would like to stream the game without that Easter egg.

Supplementary ARG Material

After the initial Giggleland teaser trailer was released with binary code in the YouTube description, more material came from websites with hidden codes. People went to town in the official Giggleland Discord, while the Steam page has a link to the first Ella and Eliot cartoon.

A Tumblr user named Sarah also posted interest in the company behind Giggleland, Kids Media Workshop. Why? Because her mother has a history with them and paranoia about Sarah ever leaving the house. It's implied she's only let Sarah attend school remotely and has vetoed art school, especially out-of-state. Sarah chafes at these restrictions and posts about how to get around them. Unfortunately, social media attention may alert KMW about Sarah's whereabouts, and that's not a good thing.

The Giggleland Discord has investigation channels organized, announcing when archiving ensues. In addition, Giggleland Reddit has active users investigating the demo and any potential new material. Thus far, users have seemed to uncover as many stones as possible while waiting for the game's full release.

What the ARG Investigation Has Uncovered

Ostensibly, the company KMW (Kids Media Workshop) and an unknown developer released Giggleland and a free flash game online: Eliot's Adventure. Playing the game straight through leads to a happy ending with missing content. Walkthroughs will guide you to multiple endings and Easter eggs.

A diary unlocked by sleuthers reveals that a girl named Debbie created the Ella and Eliot cartoons with her friend Simon. "Uncle Teri," the man who brought her to the KMW Commune when she was a child, meddled by making each cartoon horrific, complete with onscreen violence, murder, and maiming. Then he would show them to the other children at the commune. Uncle Teri refused to listen when Debbie and Simon told him that he was ruining their concepts and the cartoons had become inappropriate. They also found something scary in the commune's barn, something that Simon never discussed after Teri moved him from animation to game development. Debbie eventually ran away after giving birth to twins, and one was stillborn. She's trying to hide her living child, Sarah, from KMW.

Eliot's Adventure

Eliot's Adventure puts in a lot of references to the Datura flower, Aztec symbolism, and child sacrifice. Datura flower species have hallucinogenic properties that can be used for divination, medicine, or poison. With one cartoon short showing Eliot burying his bullies in "Mr. T's" garden and the hidden notes in the Giggleland demo, it seems that Uncle Teri has gotten into child sacrifice and cultural appropriation of Aztec culture. Given his erratic behavior, he may have also developed a Datura addiction, if you believe a fan theory.

What Are Some Reasonable Conclusions?

KMW has kidnapped kids. The media doesn't say it outright, but you can figure out the subtext. Dr. Valteri Nadear was a psychiatrist for a girl named Laura before bringing Debbie to the commune. Debbie's diary hints that she is Laura, and Dr. Nadear is "Uncle Teri." The Giggleland demo also shows that a boy named Isaac went missing on April 17, 2025. 

No one has stopped KMW from their evil plots. If they have released the Giggleland game as the Steam page indicates, the question becomes whether the game and supplementary material are a confession or an indication of a fall.

Who (Or What) Is Eliot and Ella?

That's the biggest question. What purpose do the two mascots serve? The trailer indicated that Eliot was a master of ceremonies, manipulating Ella and other cartoon victims, but the animated shorts hint that it's the other way around. We don't know who controls the narrative in either media, though "Uncle Teri" may be responsible for the latter. Extra material in the Giggleland demo hints that Eliot has broken his game script, leading to glitches that a player can find.

If Eliot has come to life, then something is amiss. The game trailer indicated that he has hijacked the park and its show. Still, he doesn't see your player character as a trespasser, which raises more questions. Most mascot terrors go for the kill. Eliot watches.

Suppose Eliot really isn't to blame any more than Ella is for the horrors. The Eliot who is walking around in the game could be a real human being in disguise. Eliot, then, is a mask for Uncle Teri or other malevolent mundanities. Take out the supernatural aspect, and the two are just character victims of an egotistical director's meddling. Debbie mentioned in her diary that Uncle Teri took over her and Simon's idea to do a wholesome PBS-style cartoon and add horrific elements. The question becomes, what is Uncle Teri's endgame? What does he want the player to find?

Waiting for the Full Story

It's still yet to be determined when the final Giggleland game will release. The real, anonymous creators have thanked people on Steam for their ongoing support. They've advised players to stay patient as more material emerges. Any hints will come from hidden codes or Easter Eggs.

The full story will have to explain what the deal is with Uncle Teri, Eliot, and the missing children. We probably won't learn how Uncle Teri got a business loan for all those animatronics, but I hope we find out why this so-called doctor is obsessed with "educating" children by traumatizing them. The real world does enough of that.

One final note - if the creators of Giggleland end up going the way of previous horror game creators–donating millions to Trump's campaigns, abusing employees, investing in NFTs, cyberbullying fans, and so forth–then I will update accordingly and remove my recommendation.