Half-Life: Alyx

Half-Life: Alyx
Active since 2020-03-26
Mysterious looping radio stations within Half-Life: Alyx.
Type	Official
Creator	Valve
Discovered	2020-03-26

Main Page > List of Investigations > Half-Life: Alyx

Half-Life: Alyx (commonly abbreviated HL:A) is a game created by Valve. The game was released on March 23, 2020. This page aims to document the secrets that players discovered within the game. Tyler McVicker produced a video on his Valve News Network channel that summarizes the initial hints in the game that can be watched here. The game features two radios that play mysterious numbers stations. One of the radios is in the first level of the game, and one is in the Northern Star hotel area of the game. Initial speculation on the radios was shared in a Reddit thread.

Reversed Audio

On 2020-03-26, players noticed that some of the audio played on the numbers stations could be reversed to yield robotic messages. Here are the relevant pieces of audio:

Original Audio	Reversed Audio	Transcription
radio_number_station_terminator_synthy_01.mp3	terminator_01_reversed.mp3	SW TX UY
radio_number_station_terminator_synthy_02.mp3	terminator_02_reversed.mp3	SPTQU
radio_number_station_terminator_synthy_03.mp3	terminator_03_reversed.mp3	XYZ
radio_number_station_terminator_synthy_04.mp3	terminator_04_reversed.mp3	OL PM QN
radio_number_station_terminator_synthy_05.mp3	terminator_05_reversed.mp3	KH LI MJ NK
radio_number_station_terminator_synthy_06.mp3	terminator_06_reversed.mp3	H I F JK
radio_number_station_terminator_synthy_07.mp3	terminator_07_reversed.mp3	D EA FB C

Northern Star Radio

A radio found next to an interactive piano at the Northern Star hotel also plays a numbers station that differs from the numbers station heard on the radio at the start of the game. Players suspect the numbers station is linked to the piano somehow, but nothing has been confirmed.

The numbers station plays a seemingly random string of eight pairs of letters and numbers separated by either "and" or a static sound called "connector_low" that appears to be piano notes. After it has played eight, it randomly plays one of the terminator_synthy files.

Looking at relevant files like the soundevent file, players can see that the number and letter combinations played by the radio are seemingly completely random except for three set number/letter combinations that appear more often but still in a random order: A14, D7, and V4. The randomness has been confirmed by reviewing logs from multiple players recording the sequence from the radio.

The radio looks similar to actual Soviet-era radios. The radio's texture can be found here, and a picture of the radio model can be found here. The words at the top are various Soviet cities.

The radio can be moved around, but when it is moved it appears to stop working. Some players speculate that the radio may start working when placed in specific locations, similar to the Portal 2 ARG.

The Terminal Website

Players noticed that a newspaper found throughout the game called The Terminal (which can also be found in Half-Life 2) included a link to their website, theterminal.online. The website appears to only be a parked domain and has no indications that it is related to the ARG as of right now.

Tyler McVicker statements

Tyler McVicker, who runs the popular Valve News Network channel, confirmed in the #half-life-alyx channel of the Game Detectives Discord that he had "talked with a few people" and that there was "SOMETHING to be found here." This is notable because Tyler has been a leading source of information on the inner workings of Valve as well as their future plans. Tyler also commented that "Valve doesn't put this kind of shit in a game without knowing people will do this kind of thing."

Audio Spectrograms

Nothing has been found in the spectrograms of any of the audio files.

Northern Star Hotel Tag

A hotel tag that can be found in the game has the number 0451 on it. This is likely only a reference to 0451 being the first passcode you use in the game Deus Ex, which has also been used in other games as a tradition.

Insights into Valve's Portal ARG

Valve previously ran a Portal ARG back in 2010 to tease and announce the sequel, Portal 2. Three years later, the Valve developer solely in charge of the ARG wrote an article for Gamasutra explaining their philosophy behind the ARG, the planning that went into it, and the things that happened that they did not expect. It is worth a read for insight into how Valve approaches ARGs. The article can be read here.