Featured on the YouTube channel Game Theory
Voted Best Coolmath Original in the Coolmath Game Awards 2023
"20xx_@3!1#3@2#2!1#3_v4.zip" is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) I created with the marketing team in October 2023. This was a two-week campaign that told the story of an employee at Coolmath Games finding a strange prototype for the game Hangman. From October 17 to October 26, the employee would post the findings from their investigation on Twitter and Instagram. These included messages from a co-worker and puzzling text to decipher. Coolmath Games made the prototype available to play from October 26 to October 31. The game was then re-released after winning Best Coolmath Original in December 2023.
The game follows a young boy lost in the forest. He's looking for his friends and must travel various paths. On some paths, clicking on a strange object will have the player solve a Hangman word puzzle. Once they complete the puzzle, they will receive a red balloon. The player can leave the path or click on a glitched bug to solve another puzzle. Solving this second puzzle gives the player a glitched black balloon. There are three possible endings:
- Bad Ending: The player collects no balloons. At the end of the path, a beast eats the boy.
- Neutral Ending: The player collects all six red balloons. At the end of the path, the boy floats out of the forest. However, this is not the end.
- True Ending: The player collects all six red and black balloons. At the end of the path, the boy meets the beast. This time, the beast doesn't eat the boy. The two float out of the forest together, but did they escape?
Ideation Process
I created this project with the director of Coolmath Games' social media, Maddy Marcus. With a love of horror and ARGs, I suggested the idea to Maddy in late May 2023. She loved the idea! Together with our product team, we worked to craft a narrative surrounding the ARG.
The ARG was about Coolmath Games' version of Hangman. The game would focus on the two main characters: Balloon Boy and Beast. We wanted to create a fake backstory for these characters and the creation of Coolmath Games' Hangman.
In the spirit of Halloween, we injected little bits of horror. The narrative focused on a solo developer contracted by Coolmath Games to create a Hangman game. After approving the character designs and mechanics, the developer got to work. However, while developing the game, strange errors would appear. The puzzles could only have specific answers since using anything else resulted in an error. The developer had a worrying thought: what if the game were alive?
The game then began to take a darker turn, with darker routes being created. The team reviewing the game immediately cut ties with the developer and worked with a new one to create what is now the current version of Hangman.
But a curious employee found a suspicious, misplaced folder in the office one day...
Game Development
I developed the "prototype" in Unity from June to October 2023. The game went through various iterations and debugging before becoming what it is today. The game was polished enough to play, but buggy enough to feel like a lost prototype.
The story puts players in the shoes of Balloon Boy as he searches for his friends. The player can explore side paths with Balloon Boy commenting on the creepiness of the forest and feeling that things are not as they seem. There are two texts at the bottom of the game: one that says "found" and another in garbled text and symbols (which deciphered to "found"). Exploring these side paths gave the player a puzzle to solve. Once the puzzle is solved, Balloon Boy receives a red balloon. The player can then go back to the main path or click on a glitched bug to solve a second puzzle. Solving the second puzzle gave Balloon Boy a black balloon.
Depending on the number of balloons collected, the player got one of three endings. The endings were meant to be vague to allow players to interpret what actually happened. My concept showed that Balloon Boy and Beast were trapped in this game and knew something weird was happening. The True Ending results in them trying to escape the game together, but alas, that could never happen.