What's in the unused files?

WARNING! THIS PAGE MAY CONTAIN EXPLICIT CONTENT NOT FOR USERS BELOW 12-13! 

I want to preface this by saying in no ways am I a 'hacker' or any kind of computer genius. I'm far from it actually. This whole thing started when a couple of my friends and I decided to revisit animal jam.

So, I'm 18. I'm an adult in the eyes of the law in my country and the same goes with my friends. When we were pretty young and going to grade school, we discovered animal jam. I can tell you I really remember begging my parents every holiday for an animal jam membership so I could get the latest member animal. This was before the diamond shop was introduced and when we still have the good old club geo. None of this really matters to what I'm about to tell you, but it's good to get a good idea of who I am and how much animal jam had changed since then. To tell you the truth, I was at a loss for words when I logged onto my old account with my friends sitting cross legged on either side of me on my bed. My friends had accounts once upon a time, but had long since forgotten the passwords for them, me, being the unsafe genius I am, had the same password for everything when I was a little kid. My black wolf was sat on screen, almost staring at me as if to say 'hey, where have you been all these years?'

I clicked the den icon as the cheery music played and struck me with such nostalgia. My den had been untouched for all these years. Several rabbit and wolf plushies laid on those blue rectangular sofas with a pink pillow to signify a bed, a cami's frog rested against a night stand, and a few rugs and tables added in to fill in the small den.

Chloe, my friend to my left let out a little snort at the comfy brown chairs we had used as our dinner chairs when we played together. Alex on the other hand, looked as though he was about to scream from boredom. Alex was a cool guy, but he had the attention span of a hyperactive squirrel and was done with this as soon as I had logged on. Chloe was the kind of girl that enjoyed chick flicks and joining school clubs, honestly I don't know how any of us could stand each other. Chloe reached over me and jabbed poor Alex in the side.

"Hey, mister cool, why don't you call the pizza place, and don't put olives on it! You know I hate them!" Cloe shivered as she spoke, disgust growing on her face.

"Yeah whatever losers. I'm going to watch netflix. You kids have fun, don't talk to internet strangers." Alex teased. He stuck his tongue out as he left the room, chuckling to himself as he shouted the last part from the hall.I shook my head, a snort coming out at his stupidity. I loved that man like a brother, but sometimes I could just shove him down the stairs.



Our pizza did come later on and we gave it up to enjoy our dinner. It wasn't until we had finished that Alex sat up on the sofa and looked at us both, a devilish grin crossing his face as he leaned forward. I knew this look, this positioning. He had an idea, a bad idea, but I'll be damned if I don't follow along with it. He cleared his throat for our attention.

"Since you kiddies are done messing around on that kids' game, why don't we have some real fun with it?" He didn't wait for us to ask what he had in mind. "Listen listen. It's not hard to get into the inner workings of a website like that. Minimal security, open world, god, we could see everything we didn't when we were young!" He was excited. I looked over to Chloe who looked unsure.

"I don't know Alex, what if you mess up the laptop?" She asked. I knew the real reason she was unsure. She could care less for my property, heck, she put a hole in my wall last week. She was afraid we'd get caught.

Alex of course brushed her off and looked over at me expectantly. His grin was too much to bear. I cracked easily to him. "Fine."



It wasn't long until Alex had worked his way into animal jam's debug menu and began working through files. We found some pretty interesting stuff including early versions of flying animals, some concept designs of kimbara, and even some unreleased colours of popular items. It wasn't until we got deep into the files that Alex grinned. There was a string of code that Alex seemlessly typed before moving some stuff over and plopping a single folder onto my desktop. He gave that devilish grin to me again and exited the tab.

'unused assets'.

We could of told him no. We could of just told him that we didn't want to do this and none of what I'm about to tell you would of happened. Listen, if you enjoy animal jam and you don't want the experience ruined, then please, just exit out and continue on.

<p style="text-align:center;">I'm warning you.

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<p style="text-align:center;">Animal Jam wasn't originally called Animal Jam, infact most of the stuff was completely different. You were still able to choose an animal to be, dress them however you like, and live in a den which you could costumize. The original animals you could choose from were pretty limited. There was the wolf, the bunny, and a bear. Not a panda bear, but a normal brown bear. There was one other though that confused me to be honest. It was a human. From what I can gather, each animal was a 'class'. Think of DnD classes. The wolves would be better at attacking, rabbits had speed but no defense or attack, bears we tanks and had both attacking and defense, but at the major loss of speed. Each player would be put in a group of their class and they would have to find clues to solve cases. If they needed info from a player who refused to give it, you'd have to track them down and force them to give you the information you needed. These segments involved cartoonish interrogations from the finished cut-scene segments. These usually involved the player cornering the other in a forest, bar, or store and demanding information. The opposing character would have an option to tell the truth, or lie. If they told the truth, the player would be given the information, if they lied, they'd have to play a mini-game.

<p style="text-align:center;">The mini-games themselves were... disturbing to say the least. The first involved your character slowly pulling back the other player's fingers until it broke, or the other player escaped through help of a friend or purchasable item. The sound that played though when you broke the finger... Chloe almost threw up. The cracking sound paired with the peeling of flesh. She demanded we stop. When Alex called her a baby she left. I chewed Alex out for it, but he said he'd apologize later for it. That wasn't good enough for me, but he wouldn't relent and continued on looking.

<p style="text-align:center;">It's time I talked about the human class. You see, the humans didn't really come with any mini-game sequences, or any files beyond their sprite, walking animation, sitting animation, and a corpse animation. The corpse animation wasn't awful to be fair. All it was, was the cartoon body with a small blood pool at the back of their head. The other animals didn't have corpse animations, instead when an animal died a single tombstone would appear for a few moments before vanishing slowly. This... this was odd to me. Alex was losing interest until he hovered over another folder within labelled only "Case 1". It was the only case, assumingly since this didn't go very far.

<p style="text-align:center;">The folder contained 1 avatar option, 4 videos, and a word document. The avatar was simply a costumized human playing the corpse animation. They were a female with a tux and skirt on. Alex had taken control again and exited out, clicking the first video. A file named "001"

<p style="text-align:center;">A girl around 15 was sat on a wooden kitchen chair with her hands not visible and thick rope wrapped around her legs. She was sobbing and squirming on the chair. This went on for a minute before a black gloved hand appeared on screen, wiggling their finger in a shaming fashion to the girl. The man stepped into screen, a mask of a wolf on his face. He crouched down so he was head level with the girl and pulled her cheeks into a smile before giving a thumbs up.

<p style="text-align:center;">The next video, 002, featured the same girl, this time heavily beaten. Marks covered her body as she silently sobbed on the chair. Her hair was knotted and she looked malnurished. It had obviously been a large lapse in time since the first video. She let out a scream the man came back on screen. His wolf mask was replaced with a bunny mask. He held up 3 fingers, then 5, pause, 7 again, his fist to signify 0, 7, 6, his fist again. The video then cut out.

<p style="text-align:center;">The third video, named only -, included the girl in a pit. She was breathing but it was laboured, like each breath was a struggle to take in. She wasn't crying anymore, infact she didn't look concious. The man appeared onscreen infront of the hole, holding up his hand again. 1, 0, 1, 1, 8, 1, 0, 6, 2. The video cut out as he started burying her.

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<p style="text-align:center;">The final video contained the mangled and dirty corpse with a sad faced mask placed over the girl's face. There were zoom in shots before it cut to the man with a sad bear mask on. He gave a thumbs down before the video cut out.

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<p style="text-align:center;">In the document was.... something. A journal? I'll copy and paste the doc here.

<h5 style="text-align:center;">"Victim 1. Choosen from Texas, Skellytown at 1am. Victim is unsettled and highly uncooperative. Victim reacts well to the sleepy medicine :)!'" <p style="text-align:center;">

<p style="text-align:center;">At this point it seems a new narrator takes over.

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"My new friend: My new friend's name is Liza! Liza really liked to play outside. She liked to play outside with her friends! Liza will play with her friends again soon! But the detectives need to find her before something bad happens! She's not smiling... I'll make her smile nice and bright for the camera!"=====

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"Liza seems sad :(. She didn't like the new games I showed her... She only cried and never smiled. I wonder what's wrong? I think I played too rough with her because she keeps saying her leg has a boo-boo! Oh no :( I hope the detectives find her soon" =====

"Why didn't you find her"
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<p style="text-align:center;">I don't know what any of this means.... But, I'll answer any questions in the comments that I can. I just... needed to get this out here.