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Frictional Games is trailing breadcrumbs to tease its newest game, and eagle-eyed enthusiasts are ankle-deep in the ARG (via Eurogamer).
The developer’s official website shows a pulsating… thing in the centre of the site. It’s got little tendrils, and seems to be growing in size. Unsettling stuff, but the critter is shrouded in mystery for the time being. Frictional Games fans are undeterred, and they believe the developer has begun an alternate reality game—or ARG—to tease its newest game.
So, there’s a funny symbol of an eye in the bottom right corner of the official website. Hover over that and it gives a part of a YouTube URL. Follow that link and it shows a short video titled, “Box 52, Tape 16.” The camera shakily pans over a collection of rocks, with one that seems to have been cut clean in half. This rock has a blue outline on it, and part of it looks like the eye from the website. The description for the video reads, “Video Cassette 16/2/83, copy from a private collection. Marked Shetpe, KSSR.”
“KSSR” refers to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, which existed from 1936 to 1991, until the USSR dissolved, upon which it returned to being the independent nation of Kazakhstan. Scrying the official website’s code leads to a second clue. There’s another YouTube link that leads to a black-screen video titled, “Box 7 Reel 2, Partial Success.” Unnatural screaming is heard, and the description says that this is, “Artefact 1/7/115, marked ‘Triple Crown’. Video unrecoverable, Audio track fragment reconstructed, denoised.”
Some have suggested that the “Triple Crown” is connected to the Triple Atef Crown, or Hemhem crown, which was an ancient Egyptian ceremonial head piece. “Hemhem” means to “to shout,” which once again, links to the sounds in the video, and the crown often accompanied representations of sunrise and rebirth. The little beastie on Frictional Games’ website has been “born”; we’ve watched it grow from a cell, to a worm-like thing, to this… fetus?
We’ll keep an eye on it for you. I’m sure nothing will go wrong.
