Kitty.EXE

(File extensions are scary, amirite?!)

I am a fanatic for indie games.

(Every creepypasta that follows this format has to start with the protagonist describing how much he’s enamoured with the piece of media in question, right? Well, I’m actually not that into indie games, since I don’t have enough money to spend going around buying every one. You have to understand, it’s the current year, and people don’t really have that much cash just lying around. I’d probably play a lot more of them if I did have a more forgiving budget.

But I digress. Even then, the original creepypasta this entire thing originates from didn’t even make such a fuss about how the main character liked the game. Where did all that zeal and passion come from? I mean, nobody is that obsessed over a game they like to play or a show they like to watch.)

But, boy, do I love Copy Kitty. It may not look like much, but the gameplay is fun and engaging, and the characters just exude personality, and the devs keep putting love into the game even after all those years. The game holds a special place in my heart -  or, at least, it did, until this recent experience I had.

It all began on a summer afternoon. There’s no such thing as a “nice” summer afternoon where I live - I keep the ventilator directly on top of me at all times for roughly 3 months - but, anyway, it was summer, and it was an afternoon. I was literally doing nothing on my computer, because this piece of garbage can’t run anything with a CPU requirement over Half-Life 1 without immediately crashing, until I noticed, out of my peripheral vision, a Steam message notification. I reveled for a while in the warmth of being messaged by a Steam friend, and then opened the chat to see what I had received.

I looked at the name first, and realized that it was my dear friend “weed” (I don’t really need to craft a pseudonym of him, since hundreds of people have that name on Steam), whomst I had not heard from in 2 days. I sent him a LEGO City meme yesterday, and he didn’t even respond. But even weirder was the fact that his typing mannerisms were different; he said it all in only two messages, and there were a lot more typos, as if weed was having a hard time typing and did it in a hurry.

This is what he sent…

“dude, please don’t open that game with the catgirl again, you’ll regret it so much. go to its store page and leave a negative review before it’s too late, I’m hoping you’ll do it for me. I can’t do it, she’s after me, and if you play the game, she’ll be after you too, she can adapt to anything…

please, man, leave a negative review as soon as possible before she comes after you too, it’s too late for me. Destroy the steam score, and you'll destroy her, but do it quick otherwise she'll catch you. don't even play the game, it's what she wants, just dislike it and move on. Sorry for the typos.”

Well, gee golly willikers, that sure was wacky. Even though weed IS the guy I send memes to most frequently and I hadn’t seen him in 2 days, I didn’t do what he asked me. Wimp. What’s a harmless little steam game gonna do to him? Did he get a prototype of Copy Kitty VR or something? Well, at least, that’s what I was laughing at, until I went to my library.

With the corner of my eye, like a vicious night owl warily looking out for prey with its superb peripheral vision, I had noticed that Steam had just finished downloading an update. I clicked the little bar at the bottom of the client, and oh boy! Copy Kitty had just finished updating! I audibly said “Epic!” with my vocal cords, out loud, because as I said earlier I like Copy Kitty.

Now, I’m a member of the Nuclear Strawberry discord server, and literally nobody had said literally anything about this earlier, but because I’m the main character of a copypasta, I shrugged it off, saying it must have been the wind. When I saw the game had just finished updating, I was actually excited and wanted to play it, since I’m a a a BIG Copy Kitty fan.

I opened my Steam library, and to my shock (:O!!!) Copy Kitty’s name was changed to “Kitty.EXE”. I thought that whoever was responsible for that complete foolish incompetence must not be bright enough in the head to know that titles for Steam games aren’t supposed to work like that. They don’t need the file extension in the name. Smh. After reveling in the absolute hilarity of someone making an honest mistake, I selected Copy Kitty on the library and clicked “Play”.

The first thing I noticed that was out of place was when the title screen loaded, it was actually kind of cool, honestly. Wish the real game had a feature like that, really.

The title card formed really slowly, lasting about 344% longer than normal, and when it finally completed, the shiny yellow and blue were tarnished and dull, and didn’t move anymore, the “Nuclear Strawberry 2019” was now instead “Nuclear Strawberry 666” (That’s the Mark of the Beast! From The Bible!!! You can be scared now!), the background’s funky digital tunnel was instead a flat backdrop with a weird version of the Plasma background effect, except it was red, like blood, and it looked… I… I feel like there’s a term I could use to describe how real it seemed, it’s on the tip of my tongue…

...well, anyway, there was also the menu. It only had the option to play “Story Mode” - all the other buttons were missing. This is pretty bad design. What if I wanted to fiddle with the settings for a while, or something?

But the freakiest thing was the music. It sounded like the distorted version of Melon Microchip you hear when you select Exgal’s database entry, except it was even more distorted. There were some noises I couldn’t really discern playing along with the cacophony of the song itself, too. Because I’m the main character of a creepypasta, I thought it was just part of a Summer Halloween update, and shrugged it off. But then, another thing happened. Can you believe it? Things - happening? In MY computer game?!

Anyway, when I selected the Story Mode button, the jumpscare that plays whenever you select the Exgal level played, except instead of “it will rise”, it said... something else entirely. What, do you expect me to have memorized that weird alphabet from one single boss fight? Anyway, I was like “WTF, this again?! I thought I’d at least get a character select first!!” Then, it does fade into the character select screen, and I feel stupid. After that, I noticed something else that was off. The background was that weird jumble of shapes from the Nocturne levels, and there were actually three characters I could select - I’d have squealed with delight if I wasn’t pissed at that stupid jumpscare. The music was that creepy Endogeny theme from Undertale, except I could somehow recognize that it was extended, and it was playing in reverse. And the textbox that told you about the character (or how to unlock it) was red static for all three characters.

Before I could wonder if the game could legally use that song, what freaked me out more was the selection of characters. it showed only Savant, Lymia, and to my surprise, Isotope! Now I was sure that something was up, I mean, beforehand I was giving this game the benefit of the doubt, y’know, being polite just in case it was acting up, but this was the last straw. This had to be the breaking point in conspicuousness for my suspicions as to this game, I mean, how can you play as Isotope in Copy Kitty’s story mode, for crying out loud? Really, this was the most upsetting moment I had ever experienced in the whole entirety of my complete and unbroken life. Literally nothing had peeved me as much as finding out that there was something going on in the game at this moment specifically.

Namely, that someone had hacked it, of course.

Yeah, it definitely looked hacked. Looks like a legit take on the matter if you ask me. It was really creepy, but as a Smart Gamer™, I wasn’t scared (or at least I wasn’t literally peeing my pants in sheer terror), I told myself that this was just a hacked game and there’s nothing wrong with that. Except maybe for the fact that someone put their time and effort into making this look as convincingly scary as possible, and did not market it as some super-successful indie horror game, instead only sending it privately to a couple of dudes. Stupid hacker. Nonetheless, I completely disregarded the possibility that maybe, perhaps, my friend, weed, was telling the truth, and steeling myself from my unnerved feeling I picked Savant and got started. The game froze for, like, about 4.8 seconds, and I heard a creepy laugh that sounded kind of like Isotope from the final hard mode level before cutting to black. Y’know, fair. Sounds like a Halloween hack.

The screen stayed black for about 10 seconds or more, and when I was starting to consider just restarting my computer because the game was probably going to freeze, it completely skipped the level select and went straight to the first level, except the geometry pre-render was red as if it was hard mode, and the text only said “MISSION 1 - ATTACK”. The power selection showed up and I started the level, revealing Savant in the Exie Attack level from Cyberspace. The music was different, though, it sounded like a peaceful melody in reverse. ANYWAY I started playing, and had Savant float around the level like you do normally. What was odd was that as Savant was floating forward along the level, there was nothing but flat ground and some platforms for 5 entire goddamn minutes, at the end of which the peaceful music started to lower down into slow deep tones as I kept going.

I suddenly saw something and stopped to see what it was; it was a standard exchikke lying dead on the ground bleeding (even though constructs don’t even have blood). Savant actually looked pretty chill about that, so I had him move along. As he kept moving I saw more destroyed exies as Savant floated past them looking more and more nonplussed as the music lowers and he moves past more dismantled robots, I was shocked to see how they all died, they looked like somebody killed them in pretty inefficient ways, since most strong attacks tend to destroy construct debris as soon as they die. I felt sick to my stomach when I saw this noob gameplay, and apparently so did Savant. After a few more seconds, there were no more constructs, and the music seemed to have stopped, but I still made Savant continue.

After one more entire freaking minute of complete silence, Savant started floating upwards and then he stopped. I then saw why - Boki was there, standing on a platform, with her back against Savant, with her eyes closed. Savant still looked rather neutral about this whole ordeal, but then he chuckled, obviously noticing that Boki must have dozed off or something. Savant floated slowly towards Boki, and I noticed that I wasn’t even using a keyboard to make him move, so even though the cutscene bars were nowhere on screen and the UI was still there, this had to have been a cutscene.

Suddenly I began to have a growing sense of dread as Savant floated closer to Boki to wake her up. I felt that Savant was in danger and that something was going to happen. I heart faint static growing louder as Savant floated closer and closer and stuck his arm out to nudge her. That foreboding feeling in my gut was growing stronger, and even though this was literally a videogame and the characters would never really respond to anything I said in real life, I felt the urge to tell Savant to get away from Boki as the static grew louder.

Suddenly, in a split-second, I saw Boki’s eyes open, and they were black with two glowing red dots, just like literally every single unoriginal scary game known to man. Until this point, I was starting to get the heebie-jeebies from this hack, but honestly, this kind of threw me off the mood. I sighed in disappointment as the screen turned black and the static stopped.

It stayed black for approximately 6.34 seconds, and then Boki’s textbox appeared, with a red color palette. “Hey. That was kinda rude. I’m trying my best, you know?”

At this point I really didn’t care, I didn’t want to keep playing this, but curiosity got the better of me. I was taken to the next level, titled “HIDE AND SEEK”. No mission number. How hard is it to type “2” above a mission name? Seriously, sheesh.

This time I was in the upper sky levels of World 9 and it looked like everything was on fire.

Savant looked as though he was bored out of his mind this time. He actually looked at me and rolled his eyes as if he wanted to be left out of this because he had work to do fixing the system-wide clock at his job or something. I was starting to relate a bit to him, I mean, Savant was actually breaking the fourth wall, telling me he has places to be.

So I pressed down on the key as hard as I could, because as I am a Smart Gamer™, I know that push button hard make thing go fast. Ooga booga. A pixelated version of Durian Detonator was playing in the background (and don’t ask how you can pixelate audio) as I made Savant float through the desolate bunch of rocks in the stratosphere, trying to help him get this over with as fast as I could.

Suddenly, I heard that laugh again… That weird, manic cackle… right after I had spent exactly ten seconds trying to get Savant out of the sky level, and then I started seeing flashes of Boki popping everywhere on the screen, still with the tacky overused black and red eyes.

The music then changes to Tangerine Tremor as I see Boki behind Savant, slowly gaining up on him, FLYING; Boki wasn’t running, she was actually FLYING! She was maintaining NO physical contact with the ground! She was actually NOT touching the floor as she MOVED! The flying pose her sprite was making kind of looked like the one she made in battles where she was able to fly. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised about Boki flying.

THIS time she had the most deranged smile on her face; she looked as though she was enjoying wasting the time of that poor old man.

Suddenly, Savant tripped (somehow), the music stopped and Boki vanished. Savant laid there sighing in disappointment for a somewhat inaccurate estimate of 15.3226 seconds. The scene was rather frustrating to watch and I kind of grunted in discontentment myself. But then Boki appeared right in front of Savant and Savant pretended to be horrified when he saw her.

Blood started to come down Boki’s blackened eyes as a grin slowly grew on her face as she looked down at the unamused bug. I could do nothing but watch.

Just in a split-second, Boki lunged at Savant and the screen went black, with a loud screeching noise that only lasted 5 hours. The textbox returned, only this time it said “Looks like you died, meow. Want to try again?” and that irritating laugh came with it.

I was so shocked at what had happened. Did Boki murder Savant? I mean, it wasn’t completely clear what had happened, honestly. Pretty sure there’s a possibility she didn’t, the actual developments of the events of that aren’t really very clearly established and there’s quite a lot of space for reasonable doubt, definitely. I mean, uhh, no, she couldn’t have… She’s supposed to be his niece, right? Why did Boki do that to him?

I shook the shock off as I was brought back to the character select, instead of a mission fail screen. Go figure. The option to pick Savant was unselectable now, and his picture was really edgy. His suit, instead of having a green grid pattern, seemed to have the same blood-reminiscent pattern from the title screen, his eyes were blacked out and bleeding, and he had an expression of anguish on his face. Trying to ignore how hard it was trying to look edgy, I picked Lymia next.

The laugh played again, and once again the screen cut to black and remained that way for another 10 seconds. I was starting to wonder why the hell it was taking so long to load, even with my subpar computer, when the mission name came up. “YOU CANT RUN”. Oddly enough, still no mission number.

This level looked interesting. It had the Fyskir tileset but the background was the same as the character select screen - a bunch of shapes being scrambled, with hands in the foreground. Looked pretty cool. But it was the music that creeped me out the most; it sounded like Akron’s theme right after you get through space in Epic Battle Fantasy 3. I also noticed that Lymia looked disgruntled, just like Savant did, but not as much, since she was probably okay with playing along with this. She broke the fourth wall, just like Savant, and looked as if she wasn’t sure about going on. I made her move anyway lmao.

She flew down the straight pathway in this dark level, and as she did, the screen started to flicker red static a couple of times and then that infuriating laugh came on again.

Then, after a few seconds of flying, I noticed several bloodstains on the metallic floor. I felt a growing sense of fear again, thinking something horrible was going to happen to Lymia. She looked kind of icked flying over this blood-stained machinery, but I still kept her going.

Suddenly, Boki appeared right in front of her with those black and red eyes and then red static appeared again. When it disappeared, there was nothing but a black screen with text saying “FOuNd YOu!”. I was now confused, Boki “found” Lymia? Wouldn’t it be super easy to tell she’s there, anyway? Does she know how long I was walking along this path?! What was going on?!

Anyway, red static appeared again, and then I was back on the level. Lymia looked like she was having plenty of fun, but trying to hide it, and Boki was nowhere to be found. And this time, Durian Darkness was playing. Not very original. I mean, the background was already Nocturne anyway, you might as well just have made the tileset into bones and have the full package.

Was this some kind of boss battle with Boki? I hoped to God it was, honestly.

Suddenly, Boki appeared behind Lymia in what appeared to be a cloud of smoke. I made Lymia turn and dash towards Boki, but Boki vanished into bits of smoke before the dash even got close to her; that stupid laugh played again. Then, Boki appeared behind Lymia again, and when I did the same thing as before, she disappeared again, laughing. I remembered this was probably the same dodging mechanic as Lymia’s boss fight, and I only had to aim at her a couple more times, but Boki kept faking me out, which, honestly, was pretty frustrating. Lymia was managing to hold back her amusement even less, and even I felt like I was being pranked, Boki was basically playing with me, she was pulling a stupid prank on me and Lymia…

Another “cutscene” played where Lymia fell to the floor and started giggling like a madman. I get where she was coming from, I guess it’s probably funny for her, but I was really just wasting my time with this.

And then, in a split-second, Boki lunged at Lymia and the screen went black with another distorted screeching noise that lasted for at least 2.94767 seconds.

Another textbox appeared. “So many souls to play with, so little time… Wouldn’t you agree?”

Like hell YEAH I agree, I really don’t have the time for this. Just what is going on? I started to think Boki was actually talking to me through the game, but I somehow was also too scared to think that. So I gueeessssss I didn’t actually start to think that? Maybe I did? I dunno, my writing isn’t supposed to make sense, this is a creepypasta.

I was brought back to the character select, and this time Lymia’s option was also unavailable, and edgier. Her white dress and fairy wings were spattered with blood, her pink skin was kind of greyed out, and she had Crippling Depression™. I began to think about how much time I had wasted on this already…

So I took a break. I mean, I wasn’t enjoying that very much anyway, and I was feeling sleepy as all hell, so I went and threw myself into bed with the carelessness of a thousand dandelion seeds flying in the wind, and promptly fell asleep. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because I hadn’t drank any water beforehand, and I ended up being really thirsty throughout the entirety of my nightmare.

Oh, right, my nightmare. Okay, so when I fell asleep, I was in pitch black darkness. It makes sense, because my eyes were shut, and I was wearing the sleep mask I got for my birthday. It’s really comfy. Anyway, I was under the light of a lamp that was hung high above my head. I could hear some chatter that sounded like what I thought Savant and Lymia would sound like in my head. They were saying stuff like “This was actually subpar at best…” and “But it was really fun, though!” and “You should really not keep playing.” and “But then it would all end on a cliffhanger! You should totally keep going, for the laughs!”

Then they went silent as I heard that freaking laugh again. Seriously? Even in my dreams?! I was looking around for the source of my headcanon voice for Boki as she started to speak.

“You’re a lot of fun to play with, kid, just like your friend weed, though he didn’t last long…”

Oh god, oh fuck, he was right all along. How could I have foreseen this? It was definitely not confirmed a dozen times before I had gotten to this point.

“It won’t be long now until you join him and all my friends…”

Huh. Friends? I’m starting to not mind where this is going. By this moment, she was flickering in and out from several directions as she slowly walked towards me.

“You can’t run, kid. You’re in my world now. Just like- wh- what are you doing?”

I had noticed a lightswitch beside me, probably a product of my subconscious, since I was starting to get annoyed by all the darkness. I flipped it on, and suddenly I woke up in bed, on the same fucked-up position I had thrown myself on it with. At least the lights were on again. I went to drink water and keep going with my day.

After a couple of hours, I started to agree on Lymia’s voice from the nightmare and thought I might as well play the rest of whatever that was, even though weed literally told me not to do that, and he was proven right on that same dream session. Whoops, I forgot to turn the computer off, oh well. At least I didn’t need to wait for it to boot up so I could run the game. I opened it, selected Isotope and hoped for the best.

I still thought it was silly, playing as Isotope. But I digress. The mission name, this time, only said “...”, which I found pretty stupid.

This time, I was in some kind of hallway that still looked like it was in any of the Copy Kitty tilesets, with it still having those shiny neon graphics, which was kind of underwhelming and didn’t really do much to contribute to the scariness; the floor was the checkered pattern from the castle zone, colored black-and-white, and the background was completely covered with the brick pattern from the same zone, but dark purple. There were also candlelights, which are admittedly cool, but also didn’t contribute to the scene looking scary, and some dark bloodstains here and there, as well as a dark red curtain hanging from the top part of the screen. Every 12 seconds or so, that curtain swayed very slowly, but whenever you’re playing the game you can barely see it move. The music was oddly pleasant, I recognized it as the song that played in Mission 1 - Attack, only it wasn’t reversed.

Isotope didn’t look quite as annoyed as Savant or Lymia, probably because her hair covered most of her face, but I could tell she was looking unimpressed, like she was being pretty judgmental about all this. Her idle animation was just her looking around the place, looking at me, and scoffing, as if she has no idea why this got made in the first place. Even though I was scared outta my mind about what was going to happen, I had Isotope walk forward, even though I could just close the game or something.

Then I stop at a long flight of stairs leading downward. Now I was nervous, while Isotope just didn’t react, but I pressed onward.

After going down the stairs, I noticed the colors of the background elements had changed. The bricks were now red and didn’t blink quite as brightly as before, and the torches, which were candles, were now burning in blue flame. I thought that was a pretty cool feature, wondering if the level editor would have that too. We went through another hallway, and headed down another flight of stairs. This one was longer, lasting almost a full minute. I got a bit disgruntled about this. What’s the point of making me press the right arrow key for this long?! I hoped whatever was at the end of this would wind up being worth all that buildup.

Then I heard that annoying laugh again, which was weird, since Isotope was right here. As that happened, the bricks turned a darker red and the torches’ flames were now black.

When I landed on the third hallway, Isotope looked really, really annoyed, though she tried to hide it. I couldn’t blame her, I was barely scared at this point too.

Suddenly, Boki popped in front of Isotope the same way as Lymia, and then red static. The red static lasted for about 15 entire seconds, and my ears were already going numb, when the screen then displayed a most unpleasant image…

Oh! I remembered what I was trying to say back when I was describing the title screen!

The screen showed a hyper-realistic image of Boki standing in the darkness where you could only see her face while her head and torso faded into black, and when I say hyper-realistic, I mean it, my dude! It was goosebump-inducingly, hair-standingly, blood-curdlingly realistic! 4K graphics up in here, boy! You could see each individual hair on her skin! It’s like I could stick my hand through the screen and touch her face!

Speaking of her face, oh my God it was so cute!

She was visibly trying her hardest to look scary, with the yellowed and blood-stained smile, the blackened-out eyes with red wisps staring straight at me, which were crying hyper-realistic blood, and the generally unsettling atmosphere. But her widdle ears and nose! The headband on her hair! I wish I could pet her!

After staring at that adorable image for more or less 30 seconds, feeling like she was probably starting to feel uncomfortable, the screen flickered into red static about 3 times, and on the third time I heard that weird laugh, except this time it was more distorted, and almost didn’t sound like it was Isotope’s cackle anymore. Maybe they should have used this one instead of the others, it felt really awkward on that last level.

After the static had gone away, there was text on the screen, but it was one of the most endearing and adorable things I looked at since I installed this update…

“I AM GOD, MEOW.”
It was when I read that message while looking at Boki when it hit me. I realized, right there and then.

Boki was trying her hardest to make a scary Summer Halloween update. The detail she put into all the props and the atmosphere... and she even convinced other characters to play along, including Savant, Lymia, and even Isotope, just to make it spookier, and she had put an immense amount of effort into this.

Suddenly, in an actual split-second, much unlike the multiple other split-seconds I mentioned that weren’t actually real, I decided to also play along and scream when Boki lunged into the screen, as it turned into nothing but complete darkness, until the red static came again. It was unnaturally loud - almost like a YouTube shitpost - and lasted for an entire 7 seconds. Almost like a YouTube shitpost.

Then it stopped, showing nothing but a black screen.

I stared at the black screen for a while, hoping for something to happen, like it always does whenever a game ends in a black screen, until another textbox appeared.

"Ready for Round 2, SILVIOAA.000?”

I chuckled because I didn’t really bother to change the computer’s name to this day, so whenever something used it, it sounded really silly, and this was no exception. But I didn’t actually hear myself, because the distorted Isotope laugh, now sounding clearer, almost as if she was right behind me, played again 3 times as I looked at that text trying to not giggle like an idiot.

Then I got booted back to the character select screen, and none of the 3 characters were selectable. Isotope’s body looked rusted and the normally lit-up bits on her chest and tail were turned off.

I looked at Savant, Lymia and Isotope and cried a bit, I pitied them for everything they went through just to try and make a convincingly scary experience while I only scoffed at all the effort all of them put into this.

Then the computer turned itself off. I got really pissed, it used to not do this on games like Copy Kitty. Was I really gonna have to not play anything until I got a new PC?

I sat there, trying to plan my course of action regarding budgets this year for about 24.997463 seconds, furious at what had just happened, when I heard a voice behind me, like a whisper…

"Try to keep this interesting for me, meow.”

I turned around to see where the voice came from, and what I saw made me scream.

Sitting on my bed… Staring right at me…

Was a Boki plushie! Oh my God! I didn’t even know there were any! I did hope whoever broke into my house to give this to me didn’t steal anything on their way out, but Christ almighty it was so cute! I could hug the plushie all day, even though it had hyper-realistic plush blood dripping from the eyes and stuff. It was actually very detailed, now that I think of it. Who made this? I wanted to commission them a Savant plush, too.

Anyway, uh, I dunno, the game pulled me into the screen and I’m dead now. That’s how all joke creepypastas end, right? Thanks for reading all of this.