Game Theory - The ARG That Took 4 Years To SOLVE! (Crow 64)

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Join Game Theort Host Tom as he breaks down Catastrophe Crow, the video game mystery we've been following since 2020! Credits: Writers: Tom Robinson and Zach Stewart Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Koen Verhagen, Tyler Mascola, Danial "BanditRants" Keristoufi, Shnaia "Naya" Llamera and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

I feel like this is where we kind of have to wrap Catastrophe Crow. Is there a lot of stuff that we need to get to? Yeah, but you know, this could also be a Tom task. I could send Tom these guidance documents that I've found. Yeah. Or I withhold all of them and watch him suffer. Oh, let's watch him suffer. Yeah.

Suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer. Here we go again. All right, let's do this. Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that, like a crow, is always looking for shiny new theory. Although, while today's theory is definitely shiny, it isn't entirely new. Three years ago, we released a video on the criminally underrated game Catastrophe Crow. This quote-unquote, lost Nintendo 64 game was full of great puzzles, creepy symbolism,

and more lore than you could shake a tail feather out. And you got all of that without even having to play the game. Yeah, this was one of those Petscop situations, where a bunch of YouTubers released videos about finding the game, online and using their footage, we were able to piece together the story of loss and desperation that was hiding beneath the surface. The game's source code was eventually dropped online, and so people could play it for themselves and solve the last few remaining mysteries, but we here at theorist figured that was pretty much the end of it, a cool one-and-done ARG

that would slowly fall into obscurity as the internet continued to move forward. That was until last year. Suddenly, there was an official catastrophe Crow Plushy being released, and with it, a series of ads that teased something new coming, April 26th. Lo and behold, April 26th came around and the new thing we got was the game. Again. I was kind of expecting something, you know, new. I guess it is nice you don't have to be Elite Hacksaw to get the source code working anymore.

So, naturally, Matt and Ash checked it out on GT Live and they were very keen to let me know that there was something more going on here. Suffer! Suffer! Suffer! Suffer! And boy, were they not wrong! There is so much more happening here than there ever was in the original. There's now floating cat heads, mysterious cryptic graves, and buildings covered in corpses. We got her boys. Got her boys hanging out.

Hey guys. These guys do seem like they're ready to go. And I too am ready to go. Ready to go and decipher what the heck any of this means and figure out the true ending of this iconic ARG series, Catastrophe Crow. Let's start with a quick refresher on what happened in the story all the way back in October of 2020.

It began with YouTuber Adam Butcher releasing a video titled, What Happened to Crow 64, where he reviewed the fictional history of an unreleased video game made for the N-64. It was called Crow 64 and was made by a company called Opus Interactive. The game was originally slated for release in 1999 and used an eternal revival system which supposedly would change the face of gaming forever. But as time went on, it was clear this eternal revival system was more than just a game engine. I mean, obviously, you don't pick a name like that in indie horror unless it's literal. The founder, Manfred Lorenz,

suffered the tragic loss of his daughter Thea while he was developing the game. He was wanted to use the eternal revival system to do just that, revive his quote, little crow eternally inside the game. Manfred made a family of crows to represent their family. Manfred, his wife Marta, Thia and her little brother Nils. Though, despite his efforts, it was all for nothing. He was unable to bring her back, only really capturing Thia's final dark days. And so he dumped all the hardware into the ocean and then dove in himself.

You'd think this would be where it ended. Sad parent tries to save their kid, fails and can't take the guilt anymore, so unalives themselves as punishment. It'd be a sad but complete story. Except it wasn't the end for Manfred. In the original game, there was a screen that was full of blank spaces. If you found all the codes hidden within the game and decoded them from the game's crow language, which is just a simple substitution cipher, then you ended up with a message from Manfred to his dead daughter,

telling her that he's sorry and how he is now trapped in a hell of his own creation. the game itself. His eternal revival system had worked, and now he is forced to relive his grief over and over again. His parting words are that this game is now for her brother Nils to play, which is why it feels weird to me that we are able to play it ourselves. If it was made specifically for Nils, then how is there a version available en masse? Feels like an invasion of privacy almost. Then again, a corporation ignoring the wishes of its creator doesn't sound all that surprising, does it? So, I suppose we should actually jump into the game to see what we've got to play with. When you boot up the game, you are met with a black screen full of blank text boxes,

exactly like the one we saw in the first game. This is your main goal, to fill out those blank spaces. And to do so, there are some really cool puzzles to solve. But unlike our usual ARG episodes where I walk you through each of those puzzles to get the ending, I actually don't want to spoil this one for you. We've talked about this in our last video, but this game is criminally underrated, and the puzzles are so good and satisfying to solve that I'd encourage you to jump into the game

and see if you can crack the codes for yourselves. And then show the creator some love while you're at it. Honestly, it is well worth it. Like, there's this one puzzle where you end up walking through a maze and if you draw out your route, it spells the code. Who thinks of that? Plus, if you get stuck, don't worry. There's actually a whole Google Doc that's been put together

by the community waiting to help you out. So big shout-outs to everyone that helped put that together over there. But for now, let's get into the meat of this. To start off with, everything feels familiar. We're in the same major hub world outside of an office that we can walk into. We hear the same ringing of phones and clickety-clacking of keyboards. You can even find the same secret in the same places, like the line on the floor that shows you where it's safe to walk,

the path below Toyland, and the computer hiding underneath the flower bed. Everything is right where it should be. At least that's how it initially seems. Because when you take a closer look, things don't quite match up. For example, the keyboard underneath the flower bed. In the original game, the players had to walk on the keyboard to highlight certain keys that would spell out a code in Crow language. But in this version, no keys light up at all. Not only that, but now next to the keyboard is a second door and through it a second keypad.

And the code for this puzzle is 332. How did the community figure that out? Well, it's because of who released this version of the game. The original was made by Opus Interactive, but this one is made by a company called Opus Legacy, similar but different, just like the game. They were also the ones who were making the official crow plushies, and do you want to guess how many they sold? 332. Using that code, unlocks an area that is full of conveyor belts and crow plushies. Clearly, this isn't the 1999 version of the game that we all saw back in 2020.

This is a new version that has been altered by Opus Legacy. And they've made a lot more changes than just the plushy room. From here, the puzzles get tougher and the story gets so much more interesting. Like in the forest world, you can find a grand. and father clock that clicks nine times and then 13 times. If you go and change your computer's clock to 9.13, when you spawn in the main hub, it'll be night time and Manfred's house will spawn behind you. Everything in it feels like it did in the original game.

That is, until you get to Thea's Room. In the first game, we saw a dying crow on a hospital bed before they got dragged away into the darkness. But now, we just see this weird floating cat head. It doesn't do anything other than offer you six underscores before multiplying rapidly. and crashing the game. For this to be replacing her cryptic death scene from the original, it feels like Oprah's legacy is trying to give us more details

in what actually happened to Thea. In our video, we theorized that Thea fell down the stairs and suffered a brain injury, which is why our playable Crow character has a broken wing and why we saw pieces of brain scans at certain points. But in this game, we don't just get snippets of the brain scan. We get the whole dang thing, and she doesn't have brain damage.

If you make it to the hospital world, you can see the brain scan on the wall, And if you reverse image search it, you'll find an image called MRI brain tumour. Suddenly, those six underscores from the cathead become abundantly clear. Cancer. That is what the cathead represents. It has the same weird, fleshy texture you'd expect from a cancer cell. And it keeps multiplying until eventually your whole system shuts down, just like the game does.

It wasn't brain damage caused by a fall. It was a fall caused by her having a seizure due to a brain tumor. Man, I feel so much worse for these characters. knowing that this is what they were going through. And to some degree, I can even sympathize with Manfred's desire to keep his daughter alive after she was taken from them far too soon. But the changes don't end here. You may remember that after we fall down the stairs, a scarecrow-like figure rushes towards you

and crashes the game. This character appeared multiple times throughout the game. Sometimes it would just flee from you. Most of the time, it would swarm you like we just talked about. But this isn't just a random enemy. On Manfred's desk in the work building, we can find a Lorenz family portrait. However, when you walk away from the picture, it will briefly flash to an alternate image, replacing his wife Marta with the scarecrow.

This monster that attacks us or stops our progress in the original is Manfred's representation of his wife. After the death of Thea, their marriage fell apart. She left him, and based on his final note to her, it's implied that she took his only remaining child Nils with her. He saw her as a monster, someone that would halt his progress, someone that would only hurt his little crow family. and so he literally made her into the thing that is designed to scare crows, so that we as the players would also see her as the villain. But in this new game, we get something different. The scarecrow does show up again and still flees from us occasionally,

but we don't get swarmed by it anymore. Instead, during the desert world, it actually leads us to where we need to go, the Lorenz family home. Inside, you can find the scarecrow sitting in the armchair peacefully, not attacking you, not resetting you, just watching. Marta's actions have been changed. They're no longer that of an angry monster trying to hurt us, but helpful and caring, just wanting her little crow to come home.

Unlike most sequels, it doesn't seem like these changes are being used to add to the previous story, but rather to challenge our ideas of what that original story was. That original story was from Manfred's perspective. We saw things the way he did and felt sympathy for him. But Opus Legacy is rewriting that story, showing us the truth behind these situations, how Thea died of cancer, how Marta was a good mother, and how Manfred wasn't there for any of them.

But if Phopis Legacy can tell us what the truth is, they would have to be someone who knows the truth to begin with. And from what we learned last time, we only have a couple of options. Manfred and Thea are dead, so it can't be them. It could be martyr, she would have known everything and likely wouldn't have been too happy with the depiction of her. But there's one more candidate who fits the bill way more. Take another look at that picture from Manfred's office. When you move away, martyr isn't the only one who changes form. Nils also does.

Nils becomes what has been dubbed a crawler, looking very similar to the scarecrow, but crawling around on the floor. You gotta love beautiful simplicity. We often see it alongside the scarecrow in the original game. Nils was often home with his mother and likely went with her when she left. To Manfred, Nils was being corrupted by his wife, turning him into a monster just like her. But how does this prove that Nils is the one behind Opa's legacy?

Well, do you remember what I showed you guys right at the start of? this episode. We got her boys. Got her boys hanging out. Hey guys. The office building that Manfred worked at in the original game is now infested with crawlers because Nils has taken over the business and is now the one working on the game, altering it to make sure that we see the full picture. His mother wasn't a monster. She was a kind and caring mother that just wanted to save her children from the monster her husband became. That's why if you activate a switch that's out of bounds in the office, a new monster appears. A lot of Large and scrawny crow will begin to chase you around the office.

And if you listen closely, you can hear the sound of low-pitch crying. This is how Nils sees Manfred. He cried over his daughter, spending countless hours in the office endlessly pursuing her revival with the game. And so it seems fitting that Nils made this game's monster a deformed version of the Crow characters his father created. Even the change in the name reflects this shift in perspective. The word opus comes from the phrase,

magnum opus, which typically refers to a work of art that is considered the artist's most important. Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and for Manfred, it was Crow 64. The ability to save his daughter, save anyone, and allow them to live forever inside a game, that would be his magnum opus. Opus Interactive. But now we have Nils coming in as Opus Legacy. And Legacy is all about the impact that you, or your greatest work, leave behind after you die. Who tells your story?

Sure, this game could have been Manfred's greatest work, but ultimately it turned him into a monster, and that is the legacy he left behind. And now, thanks to Nils, the whole world knows. However, Nill's story doesn't end there. After he fixed all the issues he saw, he continued adding things to the game that show us what became of him after his father's death.

If you jump into the well, you will find yourself in an underground maze surrounded by blood. By opening one of the greats, can find four gravestones, though you may notice that they're a little tricky to understand. They're not written in English, and it's not Crow language either. This is what is known as a dot cipher. The way you read it is actually pretty simple once you get the hang of it. All you have to do is set these dots on a grid with a y-axis labeled from zero to nine, with the zero being at the

bottom and nine being at the top. Then you just need to see what number each dot is aligned with on the grid. In this case, the numbers are dates like you would see on a gravestone, telling us the birth and death dates of these characters. The first stone's death date reads as the 5th of December 2001, which is around the same time Manfred jumped into the ocean. So this must be his gravestone. With the rest, therefore, being martyr, who's still alive and doesn't have a death date, Thea and Nils.

But these aren't the only gravestones you can find. If you manage to clip through the floor, you'll find four more graves, but these ones are color-coded. One grey, one pink, and two blue. The grey one is actually a repeat. of Nils Grave from earlier, meaning that this is supposed to be his family. The Pink Grave has a close birth date to him, so this would be his wife. And then the two Blue Graves are from 2019 and 2020, his two children.

Nils has grown up. He now has a family of his own, and thankfully there's not a death date on any of these gravestones, so they're all still here, which means that he can be there for his children like his father never was for him. His legacy would be different, except there was one last thing he had to do before that could happen. I mentioned at the start there are codes hidden throughout this game. If you collect them all and put them into the computer under the flower bed, you unlock the final cutscene.

In it, we see four crows standing together, one grey, one pink, and two blue, just like the gravestones. This is Nils family, and everything is fine until we see the Vigeneer cipher from the original game flash on screen. The one from Manfred's note to Marta that translates to Nils, I'm alive. This message causes Nils head to to detach from his body and glitch out. He's been going crazy trying to figure it out. How is his father still alive?

How can his father be reaching out to him? And that, I believe, is the real reason he built this version of the game. If you translate all of those codes from Crow language, it creates a letter from Nils to Manfred, just like the one Manfred wrote in the first game. And it says this, father, I was so angry. I could not reach you with the claws you gave me. Every year you drowned, we ran and ran, but we could not escape that silent house.

In the end, your little crows were only made as playthings to call you back once more, but now you have died twice, lost in the noise. So, I build my own. I learn your language to warm the hell you built from the depths, with one last code at the start of the cutscene that says, not forgiving, but willing to take one last leap. The changes he made weren't just because they weren't the full story, because Manfred couldn't be found in the version he'd made with the tools Nils had been given.

Nils said he died a second time and we see that as a third date on Manfred's gravestone, the 5th of December 2020. The same day that the source code for the original game was released and the same day we got this video from one of the ARG YouTube channels, Ultra 64 Forever, where we see Father Crow, Manfred, rise up through all of the worlds and disappear into the ether. This was his second death. The source code was released. Manfred became unreachable. Maybe his soul within the eternal revival system was being split across too many copies of the game because suddenly everyone online had a version of it.

He became lost in the noise. So, Niels did the only thing he could. He started over. He learned his father's crow language and built his own version of the game, a version that only can be played from your browser, meaning there's only one copy that is hosted in a single location. All of this was to try and guide. his father back. And the crazy thing is, it worked. During the original ARG, the community found a

working email address that they could send messages to. Doing so gave them a response from ML, Manfred Lorenz. And one of those responses was addressed to Nils, asking him to meet in the place they would holiday every year. After that email was received, we got two more videos from Ultra 64 forever, showing Father Crow standing in a forest waiting patiently for Nils to find him. But nothing ever happened. That was until the community unlocked the final cutscene for this new version of the game. When that happened, Ultra 64 Forever uploaded one final video, and it was titled The End. We see Father Crow once again standing in the forest.

Footsteps can be heard, and we see a small crow walk into frame. That small crow is Brother Crow, the crow character that has represented Nils within the crow family. The two crows turn to each other and begin to talk as the screened Fates to Black. Nils' plan had worked. He took that last leap and this time was able to find his father where he'd promised he would meet him all those years ago. Manfred was back, no longer lost in the noise.

He got the meeting he always wanted. He could say all the things he wanted to say and maybe finally he could rest. As for Nils, he may not have forgiven his father for what he did to him or his mother or to Thia, but he was at least willing to talk it out with him one last time. and now that message that was driving him crazy for so long would no longer have any power over him. He did what his father asked him to do and he found him. Now Nils can finally move on and with his family start creating his own legacy instead of living in someone else's. But hey, that's just a theory.

A game theory! Thanks for watching.