Game Theory ARG
| Game Theory ARG | |
|---|---|
| It's just an ARG. A Game Theory ARG! | |
| Type | Official |
| Creator | Game Theory |
| Discovered | 08-10-2018 |
Main Page > List of Investigations > Game Theory ARG
The Game Theory Merch Mystery and an unnamed arg commencing on 29/8/2018 are ARGs created by the Game Theory Team: Matthew Patrick and Stephanie Patrick. The Merch Mystery was created to promote new Game Theory merchandise, so it may be possible that the next ARG is created to promote more products by Game Theory.
Contents
The 1st Merch Mystery
On 08/10/2018, MatPat announced on his twitter account that New Merch had been released, and that a puzzle involving the merch was also created. Although the clues necessary to complete the puzzle were hidden in merch, no purchase of said merch was necessary to complete the puzzle.
Some people who purchased the merchandise noticed 1 of 6 spelling errors on their carrier bag that the item was stored in. The 6 spelling errors were all in place of the letter "o" in the word "theory".
The 6 spelling errors could then be rearranged to spell "t#30r%" (pronounced "theory"). This would be used later on in the ARG.
The next clue would be hidden in the Game Theory Journal. All of the eyes of the characters in the notebook had letters located within them. When spelled sequentially, they would spell a website name: hasmatpatgonemad.com
This website showed a A 1:00 minute video of MatPat's face with big eyes surrounded by a weird background a rays coming from his head.
Keen eyed investigators saw that Matpat's blinking was actually Morse code, seen below:
- ... . / - .... . --- .-. .. ... - / --. .- -. .-- .- -.-- / -.. --- - / -.-. --- --
This decoded to THE THEORIST GATEWAY DOT COM, and led players to a new website.
Players were greeted with one final 6 character password to put in. Players found the password to be t#30r%, from the merchandise bags. The first 100 players to solve the puzzle received a prize for completing it so quickly.
The Holiday Merch ARG
What is MatPat Hiding?
On September 16, 2018, The Game Theorists YouTube channel released a video titled What is MatPat HIDING?. In it, MatPat did a post-mortem on the Merch Mystery and what his plans for the future are. He also hid 3 clues within the video. 2 were red herrings and 1 was real.
At the 0:08 mark an encrypted message was shown:
Uifsf bsf op Fbtufs Fhht jo ifsf. Hp bxbz.
When decrypted with a ROT25 cipher, players discovered the following message:
There are no Easter Eggs in here. Go away.
At the 12:38 mark a string of numbers with dashes is shown:
23 5 - 23 15 21 12 4 - 14 15 20 - 13 1 11 5 - 9 20 - 20 8 1 20 - 5 1 19 25
When decoded with a letters-numbers cipher, the message was:
we would not make it that easy
Finally, a suspicious looking tag may appear within the video description, titled #UCVNTZJXAuvE3C7SfOsPNgEA. This was found to be a YouTube channel ID, which led players to a YouTube channel titled tenretni olleh.
The channel's banner consisted of a black image with the message "patience is the key" repeated across it.
The channel icon consisted of a red, inverse Game Theory logo, with the text pow zNb Xdd MnH instead of yroeht emag. This may be interpreted as it is, or can be turned upside down to give HuW ppX qNz mob.
Some players also tried going on thetheoristgateway.com again after discovering these clues, and were greeted with this message:
We ju5t wanted to say thank you 2 everyone w4o participated in our firs7 ever Merch Mystery Treasure Hunt. lt was somet4ing fun we wanted 2 test out, and sure, we thought some of you would enjoy it, but W3 had no idea how absolutely deep down the rabbit hole you were willing 2 venture. l mean, HEX conversions? Really?? I am thrilled you all went th3re, and let me tell you that you've made me the proudest Theorist on the planet. This first experience really wa5 just our “toe in the water." Consider it our open b3ta. We’ve read your recommendations for future ARGs and we’re ready to go all out! So my dear friends and fellow T4eorists, get ready, because it’s about to get real.
Concatenating the numbers gives "524742323534". This can be converted from hex into text, giving the following result:
RGB254
This hinted at altering the image so that each of the RGB values of colour are changed to 254, 1 less than 255. This was also hinted at in the filename, ff is 255 in hex, therefore fe is 254 in hex.
When the image was altered according to these instructions, a timestamp was discovered. The timestamp is dated 29/9/2018 at 00:00:01 PST (08:00:01 UTC).
If you also look at the source code for the site, you will find the hidden message "Return on the date which is hidden."
The 7 Gates ARG
Prelude: You Are Prepared
At 8:00 UTC, https://www.thetheoristgateway.com was updated, changing from the letter to a broken countdown.
The file's name (patienceisthekey6974736a75737461636c6f636b6775797372656c6178.gif) contained hex that translated to itsjustaclockguysrelax .
The only other clue on this page was located on the css of the page. Mysterious class names called "patience" and "enter the URL" suggested there were other clues to be found.
At the same time, A video was released on the tenretni olleh channel. The video was a distorted 1-minute version of the intro to game theory videos. Many clues were hidden within it:
- At 0:06 and 0:07, a string of hex characters can be seen for one frame. When translated, they read:
july 15 1983
the first 1
- At 0:17, the title screen at the end of the intro changes the usual Koopa to Link from Zelda. As of now, it holds no clue but Matpat may change it again in other videos revealing clues.
- Between 0:35 and 0:57, a sentence made up of unique, never seen before symbols are shown. When converting each symbol to a separate letter of the alphabet, and then using a cryptogram solver, it reads:
FIND THE SEARCH - READ THE NOTES - FEAR RABBITS THAT VENTURE INTO HOLES - THE GATES SHALL SUMMON YOU - PATIENCE - AND KNOW THIS - YOU ARE PREPARED
- When the audio is but into a spectrogram, more symbols are discovered. These are believed to be a complete alphabet of all characters, including letters, numbers and operation signs.
- Finally, At 0:13, a sequence of binary is shown for one frame. When translated, it reads:
www.thetheoristgateway.com/notthefirst18fc17.html
[www.thetheoristgateway.com/notthefirst18fc17.html That website] shows an incomplete website link with a spinning red game theory logo replacing a directory.
Using the HuW ppX qNz mob and pow zNb Xdd MnH from the channel profile picture of tenretni olleh, 2 new URLs are discovered:
https://www.thetheoristgateway.com/3932396663/HuWppXqNzmod.html
https://www.thetheoristgateway.com/3932396663/powzNbXddMnH.html
The first URL shows a still image of an equation, a word search and some symbols from before. The symbols translate to that's not a tvpo , and the filename of the image (HuWppXqNzmod_57656c6c20746861742077617320656173792e20446f6e277420676574207573656420746f2069742e.jpg) contains hex which translates to Well that was easy. Don't get used to it. .
The second url shows a gif of a changing crossword, with a longer equation and more symbols. The symbols translate to must be a typo , the filename of the image (powzNbXddMnH_536c6f70707920776f726b2c20796f756e67205468656f726973742e203c696e7365727420534d48206d656d653e.jpg) contained hex which translated to Sloppy work, young Theorist. <insert SMH meme> , and the numbers in the equation can also be translated as hex, which read deadend .
At the bottom right corner of the first image, using imaging software revealed a clue: the first 17
Through a jump in logic, it was suggested this could be referring to the first 17 games made by Nintendo. This was confirmed when the games could be found within the word search in the first URL.
These game titles also all had one symbol within them that could be translated. These symbols also had a specific color. When ordering the titles by release date and grouping by the color of the symbols, a message could be deciphered from it: lucktoheaven .
This was the final clue, and inputting it into a bit.ly link (bit.ly/lucktoheaven) lead to the final URL: https://www.thetheoristgateway.com/leavelucktoheaven.
This image is believed to be the end of the "warm-up". In similar fashion to the notebook from the first ARG, the image contained a wealth of information about the ARG and the plans moving forward. The image also reveals a date for the arg to start. The time on the iPhone next to the notebook reads 12:07 11/24/18. Assuming the date is in PDT, The confirmed start of the arg (and release of new merch) was 12:07:01 PDT (19:07:01 UTC) 11/24/18 November 24th was also the release of the Until Dawn theory, but no link between the future ARGs and the video has been found as of yet.
By converting the numbers from the barcode of the pen in this picture from hexadecimal to text, the word yoshi is outputted.
Upon checking the file titled "main.css" on this image, MatPat leaves a message: Wow you guys are digging deep. I guess we could put something in here, couldn't we?
Later, a theory was uploaded to the Game Theorist channel which included a section in the intro with the Tenretni Olleh logo and a long string of repeated phrases: "THAT'S JUST A THEORY" and "THAT'S NOT JUST A THEORY." Converting the former phrase to 1's and the latter to 0's revealed an incoherent string of binary. Altering the string to make it decipherable revealed the phrase the clue is purple, however, many players found the method used to find this result to be questionable at best.
All Answers and hints to puzzles will be revealed after the arg is over.
Gate 1
The Gate Opened on 11/24/18 at 20:07:00 UTC, and contained 5 keys. Each of these consisted of a puzzle related to old retro video games. The format of each word was given to players, showing how many words were in the key, and how much letters were in each word.
Puzzle 1
1 word (7 letters)
The first puzzle consisted of a blurry gif with the clue released: july 15, 1983. The date provided was found out to be the release date of the Famicon, with the object in the gif provided matching as a distorted version of that same Famicon. Thus the first key was found to be Famicon
Puzzle 2
2 words (5, 6)
The second puzzle consisted of an Image of Link with the text "The one replaced" below him. Alongside that image was a link to the "The END of Princess Peach" video on the Game Theory channel. Hidden in the intro of the video at 00:53s is the same photo of Link. Looking at other videos in the channel, players were able to find out that Link isn't usually there. Instead a Koopa Troopa is usually seen in that spot of the video. Using the clue The one replaced, the second key was found to be Koopa Troopa
Puzzle 3A
2 words (6, 6)
All of the remaining puzzles for this gate use this provided YouTube video. By running the audio of the YouTube video through a spectrogram, several clues were found. These included a barcode that says YOSHI, the message THE YEAR IN COINS, and the link https://bit.ly/lucktoheaven. By following the link and counting the value of the coins in the image on the page it gave you 93 cents, which correlated to the year 1993. After searching Yoshi and 1993, players were able to find a game called Yoshi's Safari which came out in 1993. Thus, using the format provided the third was found to be YOSHIS SAFARI
Puzzle 3B
1 word (9)
Hidden in the spectrogram of the video was also a picture of the Twitter logo with the clue KEY 3B. This led to a cryptic tweet posted by MatPat (the creator of the ARG), which told players to play the video in reverse at quadruple speed. By playing the section of the audio with this spectrogram in reverse and at quadruple speed, it played out the Overworld theme of the original Legend of Zelda. Given the key was 9 letters long, players were able to deduce that the key was OVERWORLD.
Puzzle 5
1 words (11)
In the same video alien glyphs, using the same alphabet as show earlier, were found surrounding the countdown that when translated said Seek two brothers and the bot / Unhex the purple perpetrator. By going to another part of the video which contained two brothers and a robot, a link was found on the television that contained a broken link www.imgur.com/4469384a784d67 with the letters and numbers at the end of the link in purple. By using the second part of the clue Unhex the purple perpetrator, and converting the hexadecimal value to ASCII produced Di8JxMg, and our correct link [www.imgur.com/Di8JxMg www.imgur.com/Di8JxMg]. By changing the brightness, contrast, and hues of the imgur image, produced three separate clues: The cipher is hidden, Change the hue to see the clue<code>, and finally a link in hexadecimal.
The gif provided makes reference to the Konami code <code>UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A START. By substituting these values with the corresponding letters flashing on the screen in the gif, the final key was found to be OOHHYAYAMP!<code>.
The keys for Gate 1 are:
Key 1: Famicon Key 2: Koopa Troopa Key 3A: Yoshis Safari Key 3B: Overworld Key 3C: OOHHYAYAMP!
Final Clues
After completing all of the puzzles in the gate a mysterious image clue was given to players. The image is the box art for the Japanese version of the game ActRaiser. At the top of the image are the longitude and latitude coordinates <code>61°27'18.5" N 143°46'03.5" W, which led to 27 McCarthy Rd, Chitina, AK 99566. At the time that Gate 1 was solved the purpose of these clues were unknown. These clues would not be used until Gate 7 was released.
The Beta Gates
During the launch of Gate 2, the ARG site was not able to handle the traffic load of all of the players participating and crashed. Gate 2 was subsequently postponed while they fixed the issued. In the meantime, they introduced three Beta Gates to help test their site to make sure it wouldn't break again.
Beta Gate 1
The first of the Beta Gates already hid a clue, even before it opened. In the time leading up to the gate's opening, the gate flashed a message in Morse code, which translated to "Break Me". Prizes were given to the first 77 to finish in the form of free Game Theory merchandise, and the first 10 to finish also received a $50 Creator Ink Gift Card.
On December 20th, the first Beta Gate opened. Unlike the main gates, it only consisted of 3 keys, but they were still as hard as usual. The site stayed up this time, unlike with gate 2, but the leaderboard still had problems.
Overall, however, the first beta gate was a huge success, just as Creator Ink tweeted about after the event. See Tweet
Puzzle 1
1 word (13)
The first clue contained a hidden series of alien pangram glyphs when the brightness of the image was increased. By translating the glyphs, the first key was found to be tenretniolleh
Key 1: tenretniolleh
Puzzle 2
4 words (3,2,3,4)
The second puzzle gave players two clues: Complete this sentence: BLACK IS ZERO... and a link to the YouTube video "◉youareprepared◉", by tenretni olleh. Hidden around 0:14 in the video there is a frame that says BLACK IS ZERO RED IS ONE OBVY. By completing the sentence provided, the second key was found to be RED IS ONE OBVY
Key 2: RED IS ONE OBVY
Puzzle 3
The third puzzle lead to a video called "break me" by tenretni olleh. In the spectrogram of the video, a link can be seen.
https://www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/h3r3isyourpassw0rd/tenretniolleh.html
The page from the spectrogram shows a custom 404 error image. By downloading the 404 image and increasing the brightness it gives us alien glyphs that translate to the file name is the password. The third key was thus found to be the file name of the 404 image, V29udCBjcmFzaCBUSElTIHRpbWUh. The file name of the image name was base64 that when decoded said Wont crash THIS time!".
Key 3: V29udCBjcmFzaCBUSEITIHRpbWUh
Beta Gate 2
The Second Beta Gate opened on December 28, 2018 at 20:00 PST.
Puzzle 1
The first clue wasan image telling players to watch Game Theory: Gamers will NEVER solve This Mystery! (Accounting Plus Zoo Level). This video turned out to be a red herring, with the actual clue hidden inside of the message. Increasing the brightness of the image revealed the message Ok that was mean. You didn't really have to watch the video but while you're at it, give it a like and a subscribe. Oh by the way if you want to advance to key 2, the password is NO CRASH FTW..
Key 1: NOCRASHFTW
Puzzle 2
1 word (14)
The second puzzle led to an image giving instructions on how to convert a series of blinking lights into letters.
Going back to the "◉youareprepared◉" from Gate 1, players were able to translated the blinking lights from the logo into MARIORIOMAOOOO.
Key 2: MARIORIOMAOOOO
Puzzle 3
The third puzzle linked to a video called "77696C6C627265616B796F7572626F6E6573" by tenretni olleh. When translated from hexadecimal to ASCII it decoded to willbreakyourbones.
Near the end of the video a series of flashing lights under the phrase "leave. no. stone. unturned" spelled out unturnnostone/code>. Additionally, by using a spectrogram on the audio at the end of the video it shows a series of lines followed by ".com". By combining these two clues, it led to the website [www.unturnnostone.com www.unturnnostone.com].
On [www.unturnnostone.com www.unturnnostone.com], there was an image with the unfinished link <code><www.unturnnostone.come????????????.gif/code>. By clicking on the coloured question marks players were redirected to https://www.unturnnostone.com/themissingtones.html
On the page were seven sets of stones with alien pangrams on them. Each set of stones contained a sequence of characters with characters missing at the end corresponding to the sets of coloured question marks at the end of the unfinished link.
Sequence 1
The first set of stones translated to <code>A C E G I K ... ?. The pattern for this sequence is that each stone is two letters after the previous stone in the alphabet. Since the last letter in the sequence is K, the answer for the first sequence is M.
RED QUESTION MARK: M
Sequence 2
The second set of stones translated to Z W T Q N K ... ?. The pattern for this sequence is that each stone is three letters further back in the alphabet than the stone before it. Since the last letter in the sequence is K, the answer for the second sequence is H.
GREEN QUESTION MARK: H
Sequence 3
The third set of stones translated to A B D G K P ... ?. The pattern for this sequence is that the difference between the positions of each letter increases by one for each stone. The second stone is one letter after the first stone, the third stone is two letters after the second stone, the third stone is three letters after the second stone, etc. Following this pattern, the answer for the third sequence is V.
BLUE QUESTION MARK: V
Sequence 4
The fourth set of stones translated to AB EF IJ MN QR UV ... ??. For this sequence each stone translated to two letters, and thus the answer gave us two letters as well. The pattern for this sequence is that each stone gives two consecutive letters, with each new stone skipping two letters in the sequence. Since the last two letters are UV we skip W and X, and thus the answer for the fourth sequence is YZ.
ORANGE QUESTION MARKS: YZ
Sequence 5
The fifth set of stones translated to ZA YB XC WD VE UF ... ??. The pattern for this sequence is that the first letter of each stone is one letter behind the first letter in the alphabet in the previous stone, and the second letter is one letter ahead of the second letter in the previous stone. Since the last two letters in the sequence are UF, the answer for the fifth sequence is TG.
YELLOW QUESTION MARKS: TG
Sequence 6
The first set of stones translated to 77 143 198 242 274 297 ... ???. The sequence for this pattern is that each stone is the addition of multiples from 77 going down for each new stone. For example, the first stone is 77 which is the seventh multiple of 11. For the next stone we can get it's value by adding the multiple of 11 below the previous, in this case 77 + 66, which is 143 the value of the second stone. Following this pattern we can add 11 to the value of the last stone, 297, to get the answer for the sixth sequence 308.
PURPLE QUESTION MARKS: 308
Sequence 7
The first set of stones translated to 34 41 46 56 67 80 ... ??. The sequence for this pattern was that you needed to add the individual digits of the previous stone together, and then add that to the previous stone's original value to get the next number in the sequence. Since the last number in the sequence is 80 we can add the individual digits together to get 8, which when added to 80 produces the answer for the seventh sequence 88
BLACK QUESTION MARKS: 88
Putting it all together
By opening the "blank image at the bottom of the page and increasing the brightness of the image you are actually given a simplified version of the instructions above.
thefirststone:
Add two starting from A
thesecondstone:
Subtract 3 starting from Z
thethirdstone:
A +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6
thefourthstone:
Skip two letters starting from AB
thefifthstone:
Start with ZA. Subtract a letter and add a letter respectively in pairs.
thesixthstone:
77+66+55+44+33+22+11
the seventh stone. Stuck eh? Here's a hint: Addition is all you need.
By combining the answers from above and inserting them into the unfinished link according to their respective colours led to 
. The gif consists of even more stones with the alien glyphs on them. The falling glyphs at the top of the screen when translated from alien glyphs to hex, and then from hex to text translated to yourpasswordis
The flashing stones on the bottom translate to unbreakable. The flashes on the stones could also be decoded using Morse code into inhex. By converting unbreakable into hexadecimal it produced the final key 756e627265616b61626c65.
Key 3: 756e627265616b61626c65
Beta Gate 3
Puzzle 1
The clue given for this puzzle site was an image requiring players to find the title of a painting from a frame in a YouTube video. By adjusting the image settings the title of the video "GameTheory: Gaming is BROKEN! …What Comes Next?" could be found over MatPat's head. Alternatively, the video could be found using the date shown on the painting which corresponded to the release date of the video. In the video, the title of the painting was Pretentious Internet Ramblings.
Key 1: Pretentious Internet Ramblings
Puzzle 2
For this puzzle players were tasked with collecting and assembling nine different puzzle pieces to get the key. The first clue was an image containing more alien glyphs, and the message Enter the date in this format: MMM DD YYYY, which told us the format of the key. Decoding the alien glyphs gave the message enter the date price found.
Piece 1
At the bottom of the image there were letters in a lighter colour that spelled out the link [bit.ly/bg3thefirstpiece bit.ly/bg3thefirstpiece] which redirected to a dropbox which contained the first puzzle piece and some further instructions.
The instructions read:
1. Download "The_First_Piece.PSD" to your hard drive.
2. Go to www.photopea.com
3. Open the file.
Tip: "The_First_Piece.PSD" is a multi-layered image file that must be Downloaded. Saving the preview image won't work.
The first puzzle piece was this image which would be 1 of 9 puzzle pieces that players were to find.
Piece 2
For the second puzzle piece players had to turn up the opacity of the ‘UNHIDE ME’ layer to 100% which revealed a link to [www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/the_2nd_piece.png the second puzzle piece].
Piece 3
On top of the second piece was [bit.ly/bg3rdstreet bit.ly/bg3rdstreet], a link to the third puzzle piece.
Piece 4, 5, & 6
The third puzzle piece contained hexadecimal which decoded to openmeinatexteditor.
Opening the image in a text editor and scrolling to the bottom, revealed the following message:
You are one third the way.
This will get you two thirds the way: https://www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/456/
Going to the link in the text file gave players the fourth, fifth, and sixth puzzle pieces.
Piece 7
The fourth, fifth, and sixth puzzle pieces contained golden alien glyphs on them which translated to:
4th piece: www.unturnnostone.com/0011
5th piece: 0111011101000110
6th piece: 1000.html
Combining all three translations, produced the link [www.unturnnostone.com/001101110111010001101000.html www.unturnnostone.com/001101110111010001101000.html] which gave players the seventh puzzle piece. The binary code at the end of the link translates to theseventh.
Piece 8
The seventh puzzle included to three sets of binary encoded as black and orange dots. Alien glyphs translating to 1,2, and 3, were also included next to the binary sequences to explain the required order. The binary consisted of:
1: 0110100001110100011101000111000001110011001110100010111100101111
2: 01101001011011010110011101110101011100100010111001100011011011110110110100101111
3: 00110101001110010110101000110100011101010011010101100001
When converted from binary to ASCII it produced the link [imgur.com/59j4u5a imgur.com/59j4u5a] with the eighth puzzle piece.
Piece 9
The eight puzzle piece had a QR code, which when scanned took players to https://www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/thefinalpiece/index.html. The alien glyphs on the outside of text translated to wwwdotthetheoristgatewaydotcomslashsupersecretslashthefinalpieceslash.
At the bottom of the image it tells players to open the image in a text editor which revealed the following message:
Hello again, Theorist.
Instructions: Extract the first 11 capital letters of the text.
Extract the first 11 numbers of the text.
Add them to the end of the hidden URL, letters first followed by the numbers, then add .PNG.
You shall have your final piece.
By following the instructions provided it produced [www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/thefinalpiece/ECADSISSRIA33063373121.PNG www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/thefinalpiece/ECADSISSRIA33063373121.PNG] which linked to the final puzzle piece.
The Finished Puzzle
After completing the whole puzzle it shows a blurred image of Ratchet and Clank, Spider-Man, and Spyro, a completed map, and the coordinates 34°11'36.8 N, 118°20'42.0 W. Through the coordinates and the game characters provided, all of the clues pointed to the video game company Insomniac Games. Using the clue from the beginning of the puzzle (Enter the date in this format: MMM DD YYYY), players were able to deduce that the final key was Feb 28 1994, the founding date of Insomniac Games.
Key 3: Feb 28 1994
Gate 2
Key 1
4 words (1,6,2,5)
The first puzzle started with a black-and-white cartoon of Bendy with the message Complete this sentence: Bendy is being threatened by.... By going through all of the Game Theory videos on the video game Bendy and the Ink Machine, players were able to find Game Theory: How Bendy Will END! (Bendy and The Ink Machine) which matched the picture and the sentence. Finishing the rest of the provided sentence, the key was found to be a symbol of death.
Key 1: a symbol of death
Key 2
Similarly to the last puzzle players once again had to finish the sentence to get the next key. In this case players were given an image of Sans from Undertale alongside the message Complete this sentence: Not killing him, but turning at least part of him into.... Much like before players were able to find Game Theory: UNDERTALE - Sans's SECRET Identity! which matched the image and sentence. Finishing off the rest of the provided sentence, the key was found to be a pile of bones.
Key 2: a pile of bones
Key 3
Once again this puzzle requires players to find the matching Game Theory video. In this case the image was of a series of base64 characters with the message Complete this sentence: Using base64, the text reveals a creepy hidden poem titled.... These matched the video Game Theory: Doki Doki Decoded! (Doki Doki Literature Club), with the third key being Open Your Third Eye.
Key 4
The final key for Gate 4 had a different type of puzzle. The fourth puzzle gave players a link to a video called one. At the end of the video players were told that the goal was to find zero. By viewing the audio of the video through a spectrogram players were able to find the word "one." alongside the message "the emerald will guide you". During the video a green version of the Chaos Theory logo would briefly appear on the video. Players soon found out that every time that this happened a glyph would also be shown on screen. There were 27 glyphs in total that combined to spell out CHIBIXXIDOTDEVIANTARTDOTCOM which was the link [chibixxi.deviantart.com. chibixxi.deviantart.com].
The image contained the following instructions to solve the rest of the key:
1. Search zero for the hidden location.
2. A graveyard lies beneath the ancient hex.
3. Search the graveyard for these three symbols.
4. Once found, look deeper.
5. Seven+seven+seven names and their location shall be revealed to you.
The image also contained three symbols for "death", "bone", and "eyeofRa". Additionally, there were more alien glyphs at the top of the image which decoded to [bit.ly/67327a65726f bit.ly/67327a65726f].
The bit.ly link redirects players to another YouTube video called "zero". At this stage in the puzzle players were on the first instruction to search zero for the hidden location. Much like the first video "one" this video contained a secret message in the spectrogram, in this case containing the message "zero." alongside "follow the crimson". Additionally, there is another spectrogram message at the end of the video which states "find RA".
Hidden in this video were twenty-one occurrences of the crimson chaos theory logo. At each appearance a letter is missing from the text. Combining all of these missing letters spells out WWWDOTMICTLANTECUTLI.COM which is the link [www.mictlantecutli.com www.mictlantecutli.com].
After passing the first instruction, according to the second instruction players were told that a graveyard lies beneath the ancient hex. On the new page lay a single image with a file name encoded in hexadecimal. Decoding the hexadecimal gave the link [www.mictlantecutli.com/01110100011010000110010100110011/THE.GRAVEYARD.zip www.mictlantecutli.com/01110100011010000110010100110011/THE.GRAVEYARD.zip].
In "THE.GRAVEYARD.zip" were a large collection of 177 different images with assorted morbid and mythological iconography. At this stage players from the instructions players were told to search the graveyard for these three symbols. The three symbols mentioned here were the symbols of "death", "bone", and "eyeofRA" showed on the instructions image. Each image in the graveyard have names in binary. By converting the names of the icons provided in the instructions into binary or looking for the image with the hidden icon in it gave players the three images they were looking for.
Now according to the images once found, look deeper, hidden inside the data of the images were a series of binary strings as shown below:
LIST 1: Wallyfranks Aliceangel Boristhewolf Shawnflynn Undyne Elyssa Libitina
URL part 1: http://www.mictlante
LIST 2: Asrieldreemurr Flowey Toriel Alphys Natsuki Sayori Monika URL part 2: cutli.com/746865666
LIST 3: (The others have escaped. FIND THE FINAL SEVEN. Only then can you enter my gateway. -RA) URL part 3: 96e616c37.wav
Combining the URL parts in all three images together produced the link http://www.mictlantecutli.com/74686566696e616c37.wav. Using a spectrogram hidden instructions to reverse and double the speed of the audio were found. Following these instructions players were able to decode alien glyphs in the spectrogram into [mictlantecutli.com/gatewaytora mictlantecutli.com/gatewaytora]. Additionally, by speeding up the audio the names for "List 3" could be found: Sammy Lawrence, Protagonist, The Projectionist, Mettaton, Joey Drew, Yuri, Papyrus.
Using the link players were greeted to a large word search of different UTF-8 characters with some highlighted in red. At the top of the image was a hidden message stating "TRAIL OF BLOOD WILL HIDE THE KEY". Using the last instruction seven+seven+seven names and their location shall be revealed to you, players had to solve the word search by finding all of the provided names. After finding and marking down all twenty-one names, the characters in red that weren't part of the names when ordered from left to right and top to bottom produced a YouTube video https://youtu.be/576bjygaMc8.
With the final video in player's hands, it was revealed to be... a rickroll. With "RA" standing for "Rick Astley". The final key was given at 1:00 in the video as Ñê¥ê®9@ñ#å9!¥£ÝÖûܶ.
Key 4: Ñê¥ê®9@ñ#å9!¥£ÝÖûܶ
The keys for Gate 2 are:
Key 1: a symbol of death Key 2: a pile of bones Key 3: OPEN YOUR THIRD EYE Key 4: Ñê¥ê®9@ñ#å9!¥£ÝÖûܶ
Gate 3
KEY 1
Opening the image given on the website in a text editor and scrolling to the bottom reveals text that read:
Six powerful stones have been stolen, but a seventh remains hidden.
You must journey across space, time, and alternate realities to discover the stone's identity and location.
Begin your search here:
www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh
Godspeed, theorist
www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh clicking on the gate on the website took players to https://www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh/spaceandtime.html
https://www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh/spaceandtime.html has the text:
well met theorist,
you have entered the dimension of spaceandtime.
your next step is to travel to alternaterealities
you have everything you require to go.
changing the end of the URL to alternaterealities = https://www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh/alternaterealities.html
https://www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh/alternaterealities.html had the text:
well done theorist,
the seventh stone is trapped between two dimensions.
the first is 444. the second is hidden. find it.
multiply the two dimensions and add .htm to journey forward.
the 2 dimensions of the image were 444 x 333 which = 147852 + adding .htm = 147852.htm https://www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh/147852.htm
the image on https://www.unturnnostone.com/theseventh/147852.htm had the text:
the theory stone
you have found it! it's so... beautiful.
but this is only a hologram. the true theory stone lies beyond.
return to the gateway and enter 'enots yroeht eht'
to enter the portal. GO!
Key 1: enots yroeht eht
The keys for Gate 3 are:
Key 1: enots yroeht eht Key 2: how did i get herw Key 3: lasernavel Key 4: vaderisnice Key 5: McDonald's Happy Meal
Gate 4
Gate 4 does not contain any puzzles, instead consisting of a shooter-style minigame where players must shoot balls through a revolving set of walls without hitting them.
Key 1
The first stage of the gate is a video breaking down how the minigame works. At the end of the video players are told that to get the first key you must add all of the scores shown in three screenshots during the video. The three scores shown were 44, 24, and 9. Adding these together gave you the first key 77
Key 1: 77
Keys 2, 3 & 4
The remaining keys are all unique to each player's game and are only received after beating the different stages of the minigames.
Keys 2, 3 & 4: unique to each player
Final Clues
After completing all of the puzzles in the gate a mysterious clue was given to players. The image is the box art for a game called Defender of the Crown. At the top of the image are the longitude and latitude coordinates 49°50'28.0" N 24°01'42.5" E, which led to вул. Копальна, 4, L'viv, L'vivs'ka oblast, Ukraine. At the time that Gate 4 was solved the purpose of these clues were unknown. These clues would not be used until Gate 7 was released.
Gate 5
The keys for Gate 5 are:
Key 1: fine ass Key 2: 38212 Key 3: nugget Key 4: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE Key 5: BL6M3 J450N
Gate 6
The keys for Gate 6 are:
Key 1: Marle Key 2: everett Key 3: h3 li3d Key 4: p1v0tlng Key 5: erenegiv Key 6: prep4re4hel1
Puzzles
The keys for Gate 7 are:
Key 1: gameover Key 2: heroes Key 3: theincredible Key 4: dearmatpatweforgiveyouforgate4 Key 5: game over heroes the incredible journey's end Key 6: Pangea Key 7: þΩ+¦ΣΠͼΣ
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