Eye Sigil ARG

Eye Sigil ARG
The Eye ARG, also known as the Sigil or Eye Sigil ARG, began in 2014 and involves at least 10 otherwise unrelated indie games which all contain a hidden symbol and a unique puzzle piece which forms part of a larger "map".
Creator	Unknown
Status	On Going
Discovered	2016-01-25
Completed

Main Page > List of Investigations

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History

The Strange Glyph

On or around January 25th, 2016, a strange image was found in the SteamApp root directory of the game "Crypt of the Necrodancer". While this image had been found long before, its purpose remained unknown until another glyph was obtained, this time by snooping through the original image using a hex editor. Still, no clear answers about the images would emerge, until...

A Shared Mystery

By a combination of astute observation and dumb luck, it was discovered that the initial image found in Crypt of the Necrodancer, coined "the sigil", was present in other games as well. In each game where it is present, the sigil is accompanied by a second, hidden glyph. Sometimes, the glyph will become visible after completing a challenge in the game. In certain circumstances, the glyph has only been recovered using data-mining strategies (ie digging through the files/assets of the game).

The Big Picture

After several glyphs had been discovered, some began to wonder if, perhaps, each glyph was intended to be joined together to form a larger puzzle, which could then be applied somehow, either as a cipher or otherwise, in order to gain new information. While it is not certain how these pieces ought to be assembled, various guesses have been made as to their configuration. It is also currently assumed that we don't have all of the pieces yet, and so are still searching for sigils in games.

Sigil Pieces Puzzle Tool

You can now give it the puzzle a try yourself with a tool made by DukeBG, making it easy to place an rotate the puzzle pieces yourself. Give it a go!

Clean result:

History of possible solutions to the puzzle (ie configuring the pieces into one uniform image) included:

Attempt One	Attempt Two	Attempt Three	Attempt Four	Attempt Five Option 1	Attempt Five Option 2	Current state

Please note that some older versions of the assembled puzzle no longer include all current pieces, as they were created prior to those pieces' discoveries.

If you want to give puzzle assemble a shot yourself, two up-to-date albums are available, one with all the pieces & sigils in their original format and one with labeled PNG versions of each piece, re-sized so their circles match in diameter. Historically, flipping and rotating of pieces is acceptable during assembly, however skewing/stretching/re-sizing of the piece is not. Piece overlap is encouraged, as it helps confirm a piece's true orientation.

Commonality Between the Games

The question of whether or not the games involved with this ARG are linked in some way has proven very difficult to answer. It was first postulated that each games' developers had attended Indiecade, however later discovery of additional games sunk this theory. For now, a consistent, viable theory of connection is lacking. However, coming up with one that works could be the key to finding the rest of the sigil-containing games.

Confirmed Appearances

No.	Found In	Store	Price	Release date	Sigil Added	Sigil Location	Sigil Image	Solution	Puzzle piece	Video
1	Crypt of the Necrodancer	Steam GOG	$14.99	2015-04-25	2015-05-29	Image placed in the root directory of the steam game folder		Piece is embedded inside the sigil image file		YouTube
2	Mini Metro	Steam GOG iOS	$9.99	2015-11-06	2015-02-13	Sigil appears by going back and forth between credits and menu		Puzzle piece is obtained by recreating the sigil.		YouTube
3	Legend of Dungeon	Steam	$9.99	2015-09-13	2015-12-08	Sigil appears when clicking the dwarf in the pause menu.		Puzzle piece is on the 27th floor after finding the sigil.		YouTube
4	The Magic Circle	Steam	$19.99	2015-07-09	Before 2015-07-14	Sigil appears on the door of an airlock.		Puzzle piece appears above the room with the airlock.		YouTube
5	Neon Struct	Steam	$17.99	2015-05-20	release	Sigil appears on the shirt of a character named "Stranger".		Puzzle piece found by playing through the game talking to all strangers, getting all geocaches, saving a displacement orb for the end, and throwing it past the ending trigger.		YouTube
6	Mos Speedrun 2	Steam Android iOS	$8.99	2015-09-03	2015-10-15	Sigil appears in a secret area reached by jumping through a roof tile in stage 3-4. Puzzle piece found by solving all secrets in the game up to the final puzzle.		The puzzle piece appears in a hidden area on level 3-3.		YouTube
7	Flickers	Website	$0.00	2015-11-1	2015-11-9	Sigil appears on tree shortly into the game.		There is a dot on the sigil level that disappears after a short time. Piece appears when reaching it (i.e. speedrunning the level).		YouTube
8	Sokobond	Steam GOG	$9.99	2014-01-21	2015-01-31	Sigil appears whenever you solve a level with a solution involving hydrogen. When this happens, it appears with a count of such solutions you completed (out of 12 total).		The piece will appear on screen once 12 solutions involving hydrogen are completed.		YouTube
9	Moon Hunters	Steam GOG	$14.99	2016-03-10	release	Sigil appears in some levels as a statue structure. In multiplayer, two people have to perform a specific pose while standing on the sigil to obtain the puzzle piece.		The piece will appear on screen once the solution is completed.		YouTube
10	Soda Drinker Pro	Steam	$9.99	2016-04-13	release	Sigil appears in the corner of the room in Level 2.		Puzzle piece found by glitching through wall.		YouTube
11	Bellular Hexatosis	itch.io	$0.00	2015-11-06	release	Sigil is visible at the start of the game. Clicking on the sigil causes it to spin.		Puzzle piece found by clicking the colored mushrooms found elsewhere in the game in the order the sigil displays after spinning.		YouTube
12	Slide the Shakes	Android iOS	$0.00	2016-02-24	Unknown	Sigil appears in the corner of the room in Level 88. Morse code hidden in the level spells out "ARCHUSB".		Piece was on a USB hidden at an arch in L.A., that was a landmark in another ARG by the same devs.		N/A
13	Souls of Darkness	itch.io	$8.00	2016-01-02	release, though webdings added only on 2016-05-10	Sigil appears next to the name of the map. Symbols underneath the sigil are webdings and correspond to a series of numbers.		The numbers were a book cipher to be used on the GAME SOLVERZ HINTS after each of the 11 chapters in the book. It led to osdPcDotpng which led to the image link of the puzzle piece.		N/A
14	Kingdom of Loathing	Website	$0.00	2003-10-02	2014-10-03	Sigil appears on first visit to The Secret Government Laboratory.		The drops of the monsters in the 'Secret Government Laboratory' (Excluding those from Monster Manuel) had the first letters being all different letters from A to M. If organised into alphabetical order, the last letters of each name gave the string 'nlry9htdotgif' which led to the image on the images subdomain of KoL.		N/A
15	Quadrilateral Cowboy	Steam	$19.99	2016-07-25	release	Visible above several clocks in the "Malta Stock Exchange" level.		One of the monitors on the "Malta Stock Exchange" level says "MISSING CHUNKS". Within the games files, the code that renders text on this screen needed to be modified: "DELETE_THIS_CHUNK" part should be deleted and the missing chunks that are spread in comments of other scripts should be "restored". Then the piece is displayed on the monitor, drawn by rectangles defined by the chunks.		N/A
16	There Came an Echo	Steam	$14.99	2015-02-24	release	Visible on the wall in level 5, near a point called Foxtrot 6		Datamining the sigil revealed an equation (solution=EIEIO), leading to "Old McDonald Had a Farm" phrase. Using this voice command in-game in front of where the sigil is shows the piece on screen.		YouTube
17	Duskers	Steam	$19.99	2016-05-18	release	Hit f1, f2, f12 or del on launch, then hit enter on seeing %*)!@(#$@*#$(&& and it appears in the top left for a split second		Choosing the %*)!@(#$@*#$(&& option opens the browser with an URL containing a string of characters. An in-game clue links this string to another similar string, leading to the second URL with a login form. Currently the legitimate credentials to this form are not known, but the puzzle piece was found in that folder under the filename piece.jpg.		N/A
18	Clockwork Empires	Steam	$29.99	2014-08-15	2015-09-16	Seen in the promotional drawing on their website update page for v43. Same art appears ingame at certain "strange artifact" events		The puzzle piece was hidden with OpenStego steganography software with the password 191761112 in the image with the sigil. The password is composed of the amounts of times the symbols in the promo image appear on the Phaistos Disc in order.		N/A
19	You Have to Win the Game	Steam	Free	2012-05-06	2015-08-20	Seen on the Listen to the Wind screen of the Extra Spicy mode near the end of the campaign. Alternatively available in the list of sprites by using the edit command by pressing ` in-game		The room with the sigil has a changed title — a clue to a different room, which will also have a sigil upon visit. Following the trail of clues in changed titles, the player arrives to the winning screen with 7th sigil and title Backmask the Myth, referring to the screen Hydra is Myth of the original campaign. By playing the original campaign and entering the password ARDYH near the end, the player is teleported to a series of secret rooms marked by the sigil. By progressing to one of the rooms (Sadness) the player will see the piece in the pause menu.		YouTube

Media Appearances

25th Jan. 2016

[EN] PCGamer - There is an indie ARG on the loose

[EN] VG24/7 - Is this a Steam AR game to promote The Witness?

[EN] Kotaku - For Years, A Few Steam Games Seem To Have Been Hiding A Larger Secret

[DE] Gameplane - The Witness – ARG, eine Sigille und Rätsel über Rätsel

26th Jan 2016

[EN] MXDWN - The Game Is Afoot! Steam Games Hiding A Secret

14th Feb 2016

[EN] DVSGaming - Crypts to Trains: The ARG That Connects 9 Random Games

31th Jul 2016

[EN] Vox Ludicus - There is a new ARG, encompassing 15 indie games on Steam.

16th Aug 2016

[EN] Kotaku - The "Eye Sigil" Conspiracy Is Indie Games' Most Arcane Mystery

17th Aug 2016

[EN] Vice Gaming - These Mysterious Symbols Have Been in 19 Video Games and No One Knows Why

Resources

Red Herrings

Developer Exchange Archive

Investigative Tools

Unsolved