Game Theory: The Cool Math Games ARG Goes To Some Dark Places...

Let me come out and say it: I love ARGs. Interesting and creepy stories told through intense levels of puzzle solving are what us theorists live for. Cracking password-encrypted websites like Alex Bale's Happy Meat Farm, unraveling the hundreds of Shorts Wars shorts, hacking into the

game

files for

some

thing like Inscription, really makes you feel like real-life detectives. And every time we do one of these things, we learn

some

thing new. A new encryption, a new technique, something to help us in the next adventure. ARGs literally embody the reason I started this channel: to learn new things and in turn share those new things with you.

Because at the end of the day, every level you beat... Sorry, let me address that one again. Because at the end of the day... Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, where that wonderful snippet you just heard was a new song released today by the incredibly talented Stupendium. If you thought the chorus was fire, then the entire song is an active volcano. This collaboration has actually been a year in the making, so what I want you to do is go and watch the full video on their channel. The link is in the description, it's in the top right corner, it's everywhere you could possibly link another video.

I was honored when Stupes approached us with the idea of ​​making a song about us, the history of

game

theory

, and all the great and stupid ideas we've had over the years. But then we asked our editor, Ty, to put together the music video. And you know that when our editors get involved, there will be a ton of references and Easter eggs crammed into every second. And who knows, there might even be a secret ARG in the mix, with a little prize at the end for anyone curious enough. Or maybe not, who knows? Anyway, that full song is available on the Stupendium channel, I'd love for you to give them some support.

They are an amazing and underrated music channel. If you like nerdcore music, you'll love what you find there. Go to that video and tell them in the comments what your favorite topic to theorize is. Speaking of secrets hidden in unusual

places

, today we'll talk about another ARG mystery full of espionage and corporate deception. But this one actually came from somewhere no one would have predicted. Typically, ARGs appear as something completely new, like a new YouTube channel or a random website. But this one came from a website that has been around for decades. A website so simple that never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined an ARG appearing from it.

Which makes it the optimal place for an ARG. This one comes from the educational flash game website, CoolMath Games. Yes really. Now, for those of you who haven't been exposed to this masterpiece of educational nostalgia, CoolMathGames.com is a website hosting thousands of flash and HTML

games

that started in 1997. This site was designed to be an alternative. to all the other flash-based websites of the time, such as Addicting Games, Armor Games, and of course the ever-popular Newgrounds. While all of these other websites had a ton of

games

, they also tended to have a lot of violence, gore, and mature themes, which wasn't a problem in itself, but maybe not what you want your teacher to find you playing on. the middle of class.

This is where CoolMath Games came in. They still offered entertaining games, but they removed all the violence and mature stuff and instead created games that were so fun that you forget you're mentally training. At least, according to them. You could learn spatial awareness in Run 3, cooperative puzzle solving in Fireboy and Watergirl, multitasking with every Papa Pizzeria spin-off out there. Clearly, some of these games are more

math

ematical than others and, according to one of our writers and former teacher, Mike, the reason for the name was there simply to bypass school firewall blockers. Unfortunately, this turned out to be nothing more than a schoolyard rumor.

I'm sorry, Mike. But while CoolMath Games was happy to debunk that conspiracy

theory

, clearly the idea stuck with them, because in honor of Spoopy Month, CoolMath Games decided to reignite those theoretical fires, launching a new type of game on their site, a alternate reality game. But before I had a chance to dive into it, it was already gone. All social media posts, blogs, every shred of evidence of this game's existence, completely deleted. So, I started the Wayback Machine to find all the details I could about this ARG, and when I did, I realized that something was clearly wrong at CMGHQ.

Something they don't tell us. We have a rogue employee trying to expose a company-wide conspiracy, a game that should never have seen the light of day, and a child's life literally hanging in the balance. Grab your calculators and figures, theorists. It's time for us to solve CoolMath Lore by CoolMath Games. The ARG started on the official CoolMath Games Instagram in October. Normally, this is just a haven for the dankest memes, but on this particular day, something changed. We are introduced to Maddy, the company's social media manager, as she discovers a strange folder containing development documents for a new game prototype.

She has a character who collects balloons by solving puzzles and a monster waiting for you to fail. Which, if you're a CoolMath veteran, you might recognize sounds very similar to their version of Hangman. While they certainly wanted to help kids with spelling, they needed to get around Hangman's more traditionally violent premise. Instead of hanging from a rope, a small child would hang from balloons. If he failed to guess the correct letters, one by one, the balloons would burst and he would eventually fall into the mouth of this monster called The Beast. I'm not entirely sure that solves the whole violence issue, but as they say, I guess it's okay.

Whimsical child murder. We are very familiar with that on this channel. Also, that kid? In fact, the developers give it a name. He is Balloon Boy, because everything I touch turns to dust and turns into FNAF. Anyway, while the documents Maddy shares seem to closely match the game we all know, this original prototype apparently didn't turn out as expected. Branching paths? Strange endings? Are the word solutions more negative words like loneliness and

dark

ness? This unknown developer insisted on all of these elements, and in some cases even said that the game physically failed if they were not included.

So the team decided to scrap the prototype and start over with a new developer, resulting in the Hangman game we all know, love, and play a ton of during our computer time at school. However, the document ends on a somewhat ominous note. Quote: This developer still has that game and wants the world to know about it. Naturally, Maddy is confused about this and asks if any of her colleagues knew about the folder. She receives a response from Antonia, who asks where Maddy got the folder from because, according to them, they thought they had gotten rid of everything from that project.

Antonia says they can discuss it over lunch the next day. As expected for an ARG, the next day comes and everything in the office feels different. Colleagues don't show up for work. Those who do act strangely, such as missing their lunch date with Maddy. Maddy knows she must have discovered something, so she investigates further and discovers an email exchange between Antonia and the mysterious developer from 2017. After days of messages back and forth, the developer gave Antonia a version of the game, but he joked. she that the game had a mind of its own, ending the exchange with a simple, Good luck.

Clearly, there's more to this prototype than just some

dark

images. But the strange thing is that in the initial report the developer seems to be warning CoolMath Games about the game and its demands. But now he offers it freely with some ominous warning? What have you seen? What has changed here? Needless to say, at this point, all of us here were hooked. And this is where we move from Instagram storytelling to full-blown ARG territory. Maddy showed us that hidden in the source code of the real website were these cryptic messages. Let me out. I can not see.

Help me. You can see me? Immediately, this gives me some Welcome Home vibes. Someone trapped inside the website, unable to see us, asking if we can see them and wanting us to free them. The question is: is this a force for good or something much more threatening? We started getting an idea the next day, because now there's a gaping hole on the home page for everyone to see. Of course, you can click this hole and it takes you to this page, which has not one, but three encrypted messages that we need to unzip. Oh boy! Christmas really came early this year.

The first thing that caught our attention was the URL of the page. Instead of just being a glitchy text or ominous message, it was a random string of two-digit numbers. 24, 32, 31, 34, 43, 44. The strange thing is that all the numbers are two digits and all the digits are between 1 and 4. Is this a coincidence? No. The CoolMath team actually came out with a new cipher that we've never explored here on the channel. And it's actually really

cool

. It has a couple different names. A nihilistic cipher, a Polybius square cipher, but probably more commonly known as a tap code. Tap codes work by transmitting pairs of 1 to 5 taps, separated by a pause.

Each possible combination of 1 to 5 touches corresponds to a letter of the alphabet according to this table, with C and K occupying the same space. It's similar to Morse code, but it's actually much more versatile because you don't need a way to have different lengths of sounds. This makes it especially useful for one group in particular, inmates. You see, if you touch a bar on your phone, it will continue to vibrate for an imprecise amount of time. There is also no guarantee that you will have two different elements to create two obviously separate tones for use in Morse code.

So instead, the faucet code became popular. How does it work for our mysterious URL? Well, two taps followed by four taps means we go down to the second row and move to the fourth column, which translates to an I on the chart. 32 means that we go to the third row, second column, translating to M. We continue like this until we reach the final code, I am lost. I'm willing to bet that this person here is the same person who has been communicating with us through the source code. The person who was trapped inside the website, like a prisoner, needed to be freed.

What I have to say is just an extra level of clever storytelling. Using a prisoner-based code for a digital prisoner. Good

math

games! More like CoolMath Storytellers. CoolWriter Games. Creators of CoolLore. Did you know? Stay with CoolMath Games. The tab title of this page is also a code, a Morse code, which also translates to I'm lost. But the last riddle on this page offers us something different. It's a huge wall of ones and zeros, obviously binary code, that says: Hello, can you hear me? I'm looking for someone. I hear strange noises. Please help. Finally, we have a little more to play with than just the same two words.

Based on them saying they are looking for someone, we know there is more than one person involved in this mystery. Maybe it's related to Maddy's missing colleagues? Is this a classic story of people getting sucked into a game for disobeying the AI ​​within? If that's the case, we should probably make sure we don't look bad to anyone. Wait, it looks like they're sending us another tab code. SUBSCRIBE. Subscribe. YouTube even made the button glow when I said that, which means it has to be important. You better go ahead and click on it so you don't suffer the same fate as Maddy's colleagues.

See, you even get a bang when you hit the subscribe button. We have to be on the right path. Let's keep going. So, we have several people trapped inside the website, but that's where the puzzles end. We're a little lost as to what to do about it. Luckily, Maddy arrives to save the day. She finds and uploads the mysterious prototype we've heard so much about directly on the Cool Math Games website. The prototype's anonymous developer also comes out of the woodwork to email Maddy, giving her this warning. I saw you've been trying to locate my game.

No. You'll thank me later. Which is precisely the kind of thing we theorists like. Tell us not to investigate a mystery, and we surely will. The game begins by leaving us in the middle of a black and white forest, with arrows on the screen to help guide the character, both features that were mentioned in the initial reports of this prototype. Our protagonist has separated from his friends and has to search the forest to reach them. This is the one who has been calling us. I'mlost. I'm looking for someone. Please help. He is our main character. They are looking for their friends in the forest, they get lost and need us to help guide them to a safe place.

But that is not the only thing that is presented to us on this first screen. At the bottom left, we have a counter that says Found Zero. Obviously we'll have to start collecting something. The bottom right has glitchy text, which I suspected was important, because all glitches tend to be important. Then I realized that they could actually be decoded. You see, those special characters, each one of them lines up with a number key on your keyboard, as long as you're using the American keyboard. Creative director Tom was getting very confused at this point in the script.

By taking your American Freedom keyboards, you can now replace all those special characters with their respective numbers and then translate them to another touch code, which translates to another found counter. You have three options to advance further into the forest. You can go left, right or forward. If you continue straight, the last screen is a scare from The Beast. The screen

goes

black and you return to the beginning of the game. Our main character recites the same monologue and we're off again. Just the typical game respawn stuff. The goal of the game is to go from left to right on each screen to solve hangman-like puzzles along the way.

Wrong, boom! Jumps scared, fades to black, restarts. However, solving each puzzle correctly will reward you with a glowing red balloon and the counter found at the bottom left ticking. But balloons are not the only thing you will find on this trip. We also discovered a bunch of burst balloons with glitches and a white hat. Our character points out that he doesn't remember any of his friends wearing a hat like this. In fact, he says it looks identical to his. Suddenly, the pieces start to fall into place. If you take a look at the real hangman game, we can see that this hat is exactly the same as the one Balloon Boy wears.

Clearly, we're playing like the Balloon Boy prototype. And worse yet, the hat and the popped balloons tell us that this game loop we've been in isn't the reboot of the game, it's a new version of Balloon Boy every time. When he is devoured by the Beast, he is actually being devoured, leaving behind only his hat and balloons, only for another Balloon Boy to begin entering the ride. Every time we fail in this game, we send another Balloon Boy to his grave. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again, okay? Upon collecting all six red balloons and reaching the end of the forest, you will be rewarded with a final cutscene.

In it, Balloon Boy is lifted into the air by his balloons and says: I tried to look for them. I was afraid that a monster would follow me, but there was something I never found. It's not just me here. There is another that has not found a way out. Maybe I need to return to the darkness. At the end of the monologue, the next button is replaced with glitchy text that says "Find me." The interesting thing is that the words highlighted in yellow are the answers to the hangman's questions, which, as you remember, are answers that were forced. by the game itself, not by the developer.

Without these answers the game would crash, so they are trying to tell us something. But before you can begin to decipher that message, you'll be transported back to the beginning of the game. Another dead Balloon Boy, another bad ending. Therefore, we must aim for the darkness, and to achieve this, we must do what theorists do best: click on all those glitches. After solving a puzzle and being offered a red balloon, a strange glitchy insect appears hidden somewhere on the screen. If you manage to click on it, you will access another hangman puzzle, a more difficult one.

If you give the correct answers this time to Sight, Descend, Other, Appear, Become, and Together, you'll get these black glitched balloons and that glitched found counter increases. After collecting the 12 balloons, 6 red and 6 black, heading to the end of the game allows us to choose between the light path or the dark path. We were told we needed to return to the darkness, so I guess the choice is clear. This brings us directly to the beast itself. Like Balloon Boy, he uses the words from the hangman's riddles in his final monologue. Then the screen

goes

black once again.

But we don't go back to the beginning, because we have finally escaped. Hurrah! Hurrah! That should be a good thing, right? We did what we set out to do. We free the boy along with his little beast friend. No more death loops, no more glitchy texts, no more dead children. Except we all know the truth. That's never how these stories go. This is what is really happening. Watching that final monologue again, it was clear to me that it wasn't Balloon Boy yelling at us. It was The Beast. Balloon Boy doesn't seem to have any idea what's going on, but The Beast.

I suspect that when he says that he descended further and realized that the world is not what it seems, it was he who realized that this is not a real world, but a video game world. And that's why he feels lost, unable to go anywhere. The phrase, I'm looking for someone, wasn't him looking for Balloon Boy, it was looking for us, the player. While trying to talk to us, he caught our attention and forced us to investigate this mystery further. I was looking for someone smart enough to solve his codes and answer questions that would lead us directly to him and the ultimate goal of escaping him.

Now, that might not seem like a bad thing on the surface. The Beast was quite nice and I think we would all get bored living in a loop like that forever and ever. But when you step back and remember the context of this ARG, it reveals a darker turn to the whole thing. The question that has been bothering me all the time is why was the CoolMath Games team so afraid of this prototype? The original developer said that the game had a mind of its own, which, from what we've seen, would probably refer to The Beast, the one who introduces messages into the game and talks to us outside of it.

Naturally, a video game with a mind of its own, it's pretty creepy. But it seemed like there was something more here, especially when the developer was actively trying to spread the word about the game. The detail that caught my attention the most was the name of the monster, The Beast, especially since it wasn't just a normal name, but rather a title, The Beast. It felt strange, I felt like you could have called it a monster and called it a day, but no, the developer chose a title, a title that is associated with a character from all over pop culture and religion, Satan.

The Book of Revelation of the Christian Bible talks about The Beast, this monster that comes to destroy God and the saints and rule the entire Earth. But name aside, this connection felt a little loose, or was loose until you take note of who accompanies The Beast. There is actually a second beast here in the story, The Beast of the Earth, also known as the False Prophet. Someone who appears to be good, but everything he does is actually in pursuit of evil. They assist in the creation of The Beast, which they bring to life, allowing the image of The Beast to speak to humans.

Does anything about that story sound familiar to you? Because I should. This is the exact behavior we see coming from the prototype developer. They were tasked with creating a normal game, and it seemed like they were going to do it, only to create something evil and twisted. They created a game containing an image of The Beast, which they then brought to life. Now he is able to talk to us, to live on his own with his own will. When people start investigating him, he tells them not to look for the game, since he seems to be on the side of good, but in reality, we know from Maddy's records that his plan is to make sure, quote, that the world finds it. knows.

It's reverse psychology. He is tricking Maddy, a true theorist, into looking deeper, exactly as the False Prophet does in the Apocalypse, using lies and deception to spread the word of The Beast, getting people to join his cause, which It could also explain why The Beast repeats the phrase. , Join me. The Bible's False Prophet also marks people with the mark of The Beast, which in pop culture is often represented as 666. And what number follows us everywhere in this prototype game? The number six. Six balloons, six questions, six glitches, and once we've collected all six, The Beast can leave the game, free from his prison, capable of wreaking havoc on the world.

That is why all CoolMath Games employees are afraid of this prototype, trying to destroy all traces of it. They know the evil he can do, whether by indoctrinating people into the cult of the False Prophet or, worse yet, letting The Beast be free to destroy everyone and everything that stands in his way. So there you have it. The story behind CoolMath Games ARG. A story of demonic entities living within a simulated reality and using false prophets and unsuspecting players to free themselves from their digital prison. A company that realized his mistake and tried to bury him, only for an employee to try to release him into the world, potentially sealing everyone's fate.

Luckily for us, we got a note from Balloon Boy at the end of all of this, telling us, quote, I thought maybe Beast and I could float away, but it looks like we're still trapped. So, it looks like we're safe for now. However, we all know from real-life Maddy and Antonia that they want to do more projects like this in the future. Then The Beast can try his luck again to bring about the end of time. And when that happens, it will be up to us theorists to be

cool

, learn some math, and play some games.

But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching. And speaking of watching, remember, Stupendium's song about Game Theory is available on their channel and Spotify right now. So please head over there, give it a listen, and be sure to give them a big subscribe. It would be great to help them reach the million subscriber milestone. They produce amazing songs about video games that I think you guys will love. The link to the video and his channel is on the screen right now, so please go there, support a creator who deserves more than your subscription, your views, show him some love, tell him I sent you and Like Always, see you next week.