Soulstorm ARG Summary

First phase: Establishing communication with Ed

Step 1: Soulstorm is announced

Oddworld Inhabitants announce their new game Oddworld: Soulstorm during GDC 2016. Along with the announcement the oddworld.com/soulstorm page is launched. Upon closer inspection of the Soulstorm page the community stumbles on some weird HTML comments, a hidden picture (reveal1.jpg) and a encrypted code in a video. At this point there was no doubts anymore, ARG had officially started!

Date: 14 March 2016

Clues:

• HTML messages on oddworld.com/soulstorm page
• http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/images/reveal1.jpg
• http://www.oddworld.com/soulstorm/twitching.mp4

Messages:

• Pictures:
  • CAN YOU S- HARD TO K- IF BREAKING- THROUGH HA- ON NEED A D-
• HTML Code:
  • Far too many video game characters were harmed extremely badly in the making of this experience. In a sane world this would never have happened. We're sorry.
  • <<< TRYING TO BRE===== -lostqmwaittypo- >>>
  • <<< CAN ANYBO============================================ NEED TO TREYR ====== so thirsty need brew fol==== -->
  • <<< listen. >>>
  • are you l/os/t ?
  • message INTERCEPTED -->
  • there's got to be a wa_
• Video:
  • Listen for me

Step 2: Dialog Box

Finding the message in the video seemed to have triggered and update on the oddworld.com/soulstorm page. The main update on the page was the apprition of a dialog box in which users could input messages and get answers, sometimes encoded, sometimes in plain text.

Date: 23 March 2016

Clues:

• Weird dialog box to communicate with an unknown entity

Messages:

• Look on the Wikia for the full converstation table of the dialogue http://oddworld.wikia.com/wiki/Soulstorm_ARG#Communication_channel_opens

Step 3: Ed?

The dialog box revealed a weird picture after the user inputed 75 messages in a row. This picture allowed us to find multpiple clues hidden behind [magic eye stereogram], morse code and weird text formatting]]. The clues ultimately all to pointed to the same message: Ed.

Date: 24 March 2016

Clues:

• http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/attemptnumberseventyfive.jpg
• http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/intercepted.txt
• http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/0451.jpg
• http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/spiritof1029.jpg
• http://oddworld.com/soulstorm/lsot.mp3

Messages:

• Pictures
  • findme
  • hear me
  • rescue me

Not long after we find out a misterious page called Ed with one single message.

Date: 25 March 2016

Clues:

• http://www.oddworld.com/soulstorm/ed/

Messages:

• i can hear you, just. it's faint, but i can hear you.

Step 4: Finding Ed

The Ed page changed multiple times in the days following its discovery. The final message had a block of 140 '/' characters and had a lot of '#' in it. It was telling us to look for a Twitter account, note that at the time Twitter had a maximum of 140 characters per message. This ultimately led us to the @edmudokon twitter account which was full of criptic tweets.

Date: 4 April 2016

Clues:

• http://twitter.com/edmudokon

Messages:

• Hello
• Did somebo-------
• Is anybody listening
• Where am I?
• Can you hear me
• One Zero Two Nine
• I can hear you, faintly.
• Yes! Yes! You are getting closer
• If I could just… I can’t… Find me.
• Where are you? Can you hear me?
• We’ve stopped the progress… I need to show you the truth about this place.
• You can hear me! Just, please, listen.

The tweets also contained partial codes that once put together and inserted in the Dialog box ultimately unlocked the next major phase of the ARG.

Date: 4 April 2016

Messages: *** IT WORKED! IT WORKED! OK, NOW I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION - LISTEN, THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU SOMETHING. SOMETHING IS WRONG. VERY WRONG. YOU NEED TO LISTEN. YOU NEED TO HELP ME. I NEED TO HELP YOU... ***