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

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he SOLVES The Cool Math Games ARG! *Credits:* Writers: Matthew Patrick, Mike Keenan (The Pokémon Biologist) , and Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Tyler Mascola, KL Allen and Warak Sound Designer: Yosi Berman Intro Song: The Stupendium

Let me just come out and say it. I love Air G's. The interesting and creepy stories told through the intense levels of puzzle solving is what us theorists live for. Cracken password encrypted websites like Alex Bale's Happy Meat Farm, untangling the hundreds of shorts from the shorts wars, hacking through the game files for something like inscription, it truly makes you feel like real-life detectives. And each time we do one of these things, we learn something new, a new cipher, a new technique, something to help us on the next adventure. ARGs literally embody the reason that I started this channel, to learn new things,

and in turn, share those new things with you guys. Because at the end of the day, in every level you beat... Sorry, let me take that one again. Because at the end of the day... Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory. Where that wonderful soundbite you just heard was a brand new song by the incredibly talented stupendium.

If you thought that chorus was fire, then the whole song is an active volcano. This collaboration has actually been a year in the making. So what I want you to do, go and check out the full video over on their channel. I was honored that Stoops actually approached us with the idea of making a song all about us and the history of game theory and all the great stupid ideas that we've had over the years. But then we got our editor tie to put together the music video.

And you know that when our editors get involved, there's gonna be a buttload of references and Easter eggs crammed into every second. And who knows, there might even be a secret ARG thrown into the mix as well, with a little prize at the end for anyone who's curious enough. Or maybe not. Speaking of secrets hidden in unusual places, today we're gonna be talking about another ARG mystery full of corporate espionage and deception. But this one actually came from somewhere no one would have predicted. Typically, AERGs show up as something completely new, like a new YouTube channel or a random website. But this one came from a website that's been around for decades. A website so completely unassuming that never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined an AERG spawning from it,

which makes it the optimum place for an AERG. This one comes from the Educational Flash game website, Cool Math Games. Yeah, seriously. Now, for those of you who haven't been exposed to this masterpiece of educational nostalgia, Coolmathgames.com is a website that hosts thousands of Flash and HTML games. that started all the way back in 1997. This site was designed to be an alternative to all the other flash-based websites at the time, like addicting games, armor games, and of course, the ever-popular new grounds.

While all these other websites had a ton of games, they also tended to be heavy on violence and gore and mature themes, which wasn't a problem in and of itself, but maybe not what you want your teacher to find you playing in the middle of class. This is where Cool Math Games came in. They still offered entertaining games, but they removed all the violence and mature stuff, and instead made the games that were so fun that, quote, you forget that you're getting a mental workout, at least according to them. You could learn spatial awareness in Run 3. Cooperative puzzle solving and Fireboy and Watergirl,

multitasking with every Papa Pizzeria spin-off in existence. Clearly, some of these games are more mathy than others. And according to one of our writers and a former teacher, Mike, the reason for the name was just there to avoid school firewall blockers. Sadly, this turned out to be nothing more than a schoolyard rumor. Sorry, Mike. But while Cool Math Games was happy to debunk that conspiracy theory, clearly the idea stayed with them.

Because in honorous spoopy month, Cool Math Games decided to reawaken those theory fires, launching a new type of game on their site, an alternate reality game. But before I even had the chance to dive into it, it was already gone. All social media posts, blogs, every shred of evidence of this game's existence, completely wiped clean. So, I booted up the Wayback Machine to find every detail that I could about this ARG. And when I did, I realized that something was clearly going wrong at CMG HQ, something that they're not telling us. We've got ourselves a rogue employee trying to blow the whistle on a company-wide conspiracy,

a game that was never meant to see the light a day, and the life of a child quite literally hanging in the balance. Grab your calculators and ciphers, theorists. It's time for us to solve the Cool Math lore of Cool Math Games. The AirG kicked off on the official Cool Math Games Instagram back in October. Normally, this is just a haven for the dankest of memes, but on this particular day, something changed. We're introduced to Maddie, the company's social media manager,

as she discovers a strange folder that contains development documents for a new prototype game. It has a character collecting balloons by solving poloids. puzzles, and a monster waiting for you to fail. Which, if you're a cool math veteran, you might recognize this sounding very similar to their version of hangman. Well, they certainly wanted to help kids with spelling. They needed to get around the more traditionally violent premise of hangman. Instead of hanging from a noose, a little boy would instead hang on balloons.

If he failed to guess the correct letters, one by one, the balloons would pop, and he'd eventually fall into the mouth of this monster called the beast. Not entirely sure that gets around the whole violence thing, but as they put it, quote, it had some whimsical charm to it. So, I guess it's fine. Whimsical child murder. We're very familiar with that on this channel. Also, that little boy? The developers actually do give him a name. It's balloon boy, because everything I touch crumbles to dust and becomes fnaf.

Anyway, while the documents Maddie shares seems to match up closely with the game that we all know, apparently this original prototype didn't come out quite as expected. Franching pathways, strange endings, words, solutions being more negative words like alone and darkness. All of these elements were insisted upon by this unknown developer. In some cases, even saying the game physically crashed if they weren't included. And so the team decided to scrap the prototype and start fresh with a new developer, which would go on to result in the Hangman game that we all know and love

and play a whole heck of a lot of during computer time at school. However, the document does end on a bit of an ominous note, quote, but this developer still has that game and wants the world to know about it. Naturally, Maddie's confused about this, and so asks if any of her colleagues knew about the folder. She gets a response from Antonia, who asks where Maddie got the folder, because, according to them, they thought that they'd gotten rid of everything from that project. Antonio says that they can discuss it over lunch the next day. Unsurprisingly for an ARG, the next day rolls around, and everything in the office feels different.

Colleagues don't show up to work, those that do are acting strange, like missing their lunch date with Maddie. Maddie knows that she must be on to something, and so she keeps digging, uncovering an email exchange between Antonia and the mysterious developer from 2017. After days of back-and-forth messages, the developer gave Antonia a build of the game, but joked 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 imagery. But what's strange is in the initial report, the developer seems to be warning cool math games about the game and its demands. But now he's offering it up freely with some ominous warning?

What's he seen? What's changed here? Needless to say at this point, all of us here, we were hooked. And this is where we move from Instagram storytelling into full-blown ARG territory. Maddie showed us that hidden in the source code of the actual website, there were these cryptic messages. Let me out. I can't see.

Help me. Can you see me? Immediately, this has given 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 of good, or something far more menacing? We start to get an idea the next day, because now there's a massive hole on the main homepage for everyone to see. Of course, this hole is clickable, and it brings you to this page, which has not one,

but three encrypted messages that we need to unpack. Oh boy, Christmas really did come early this year. The first thing that caught our eye was the page's URL. Rather than it being just glitchy text or an ominous message, it was a random string of two-digit numbers, 24, 32, 31, 34, 43, 44. The weird thing is, all the numbers are two-digit numbers, and all the digits are between one and four. Is that a coincidence? No! The cool math team actually pulled out a brand new cipher that we've never explored here on the channel.

And it's actually a really cool one. It goes by a couple of different names, a Nihilist cipher, a Plybius Square cipher, but it's probably most commonly known as a tap code. Tap codes work by transmitting pairs of one to five taps, separated by a pause. Every possible combination of one to five taps corresponds to a little letter the alphabet based on this chart, with C&K taking up the same space. It's similar to Morse Code, but it's actually way more versatile thanks to not needing a way to have different lengths of sounds.

This makes it especially useful for one group in particular, inmates. You see, if you tap on a bar of your cell, it's going to continue to vibrate for an imprecise amount of time. There's also no guarantee that you'll have two different items to create two obviously separate tones for use in Morse code either. So instead, the tap code became popular. How does it work for our mysterious URL? Well, two tabs, followed by four taps, means we go down to the second row,

over to the fourth column, translating to an I on the chart. 32 means we go to the third row, second column, translating to M. We carry on like this until we get to the final code, I'm lost. I'm on the bet that this right here is the same person that's been communicating with us through the source code. The person that was trapped inside the website, kind of like a prisoner, needing to be let out. But you have to say, is just an extra level of smart storytelling, using a prisoner-based code for a digital prisoner. Cool math games, more like cool math storytellers, cool writer games, cool lore, You know what, just stick with the cool math games.

The tab title for this page is also a code, a Morse code, which also translates to I'm Lost. But the final puzzle on this page does give us something different. It's a massive wall of ones and zeros, obviously binary code, which says the following. Hello, can you hear me? I'm looking for someone. I hear strange noises. Please help me. Finally, we have ourselves a bit more to play with in just the same two words. Based on them saying that they're looking for someone, we know that there's more than one person involved in this mystery. Is it perhaps linked to Maddie's missing colleagues?

Is this a classic story of people getting some of someone? into a game for disobeying the AI that lies within. If that's the case, we should probably make sure that we're not getting on anyone's bad side. So we have multiple someone's trapped inside the website, but that's kind of where the puzzles end. We're kind of had a bit of a loss on what to do about it. Thankfully, Maddie comes in to save the day. She finds and uploads the mysterious prototype that we've heard so much about directly onto the cool math games website. The anonymous developer of the prototype also comes out of the woodwork to email Maddie, giving her this warning.

I saw you've been trying to track down my game. Don't. You'll thank me later. Which is precisely the kind of thing we think. Theorists thrive on. Tell us not to look into a mystery, and we most certainly will. The game starts off by dropping us into the middle of a black and white forest, with arrows on the screen to help guide the character through, both features that were mentioned in the initial reports of this prototype.

Our protagonist has gotten separated from his friends, and he has to search the forest in order to catch back up with them. This right here, this is who's been calling out to us. I'm lost. I'm looking for someone. Please help me. It's our main character. They're looking for their friends out in the forest, getting lost and needing us to help guide them to safety. But that's not the only thing that we're presented with on this first screen.

In the bottom left, we have a counter that says, Found Zero. So obviously, we're going to need to start collecting something. The bottom right has glitchy text, which I suspect it was important, because all glitches tend to be important. Then I realized they could actually be decoded. You see, those special characters,

each of them line up with a number key on your keyboard, providing that you're using the American keyboard. Creative Director, Tom, he was getting very confused at this point of the script. By taking your American Freedom keyboards, you can now replace all of those special characters with their respective numbers, and then translate that into another key.

tap code, which translates to yet another found counter. You have three options to progress further into the forest. You can go left, right, or forward. If you just keep going straight, then the last screen is a jump scare by the beast. The screen fades to black, and you're brought back to the beginning of the game. Our lead character recites the same monologue, and off we go again. Just our typical game respawn stuff. The objective of the game is to go left and right on each screen to solve hangman-like

puzzles along the way. Get one wrong? Boom, jump scare, fade to black, restart. So often each puzzle correctly, though, rewards you with a shiny red balloon, and the found counter in the bottom left ticking up. But balloons aren't the only thing that you find on this journey. We also uncover a pile of glitchy popped balloons and a white hat. Our character notes that he doesn't remember any of his friends wearing a hat like this. In fact, he says it looks identical to his own. Suddenly, the pieces start to click into place. If you take a look back at the real hangman game,

we can see that this hat is exactly the same as the one balloon boy wears. So clearly we are playing as prototype balloon boy. And worse yet, the hat and popped balloons tells us that this game loop that we've been in, it isn't the game resetting. It's a new. version of Balloon Boy each time. When he's devoured by the Beast, he's actually being devoured, leaving behind only his hat and his balloons, just for another balloon boy to start entering the journey. Every time we fail at this game, we are sending another balloon boy to his grave. Let's just make sure that that doesn't happen again, shall we? By collecting all six of the red balloons and making your way to the end of the forest, you're rewarded with one final cutscene. In it,

Balloon Boy gets lifted into the air by his balloons, and he says, I tried to search for them. I was afraid of a monster following me, yet there was something I was something I never found. It's not just myself here. There's another who hasn't found an escape. Perhaps I need to trek back into the darkness. At the end of the monologue, the next button is replaced by glitchy text that says, find me. What's interesting is that the words highlighted in yellow are the answers to the hangman questions, which you'll recall are answers that were forced in by the game itself, not by the developer. Without these answers, the game would crash. So they're trying to tell us something. But before you can even begin deciphering that message, you get transported back to

the beginning of the game again. Another balloon boy dead, another bad ending. So we need to aim for the darkness. And to do that, we need to do what theorists do best. Click on all them glitches. After solving a puzzle and being offered a red balloon, a weird glitchy insect appears hidden on the screen somewhere. If you manage to click it, you're treated to another hangman puzzle, a more difficult one. If you give the correct answers this time of sight, descend, other, appear, become, and together, you get these glitchy black balloons, and that glitchy found counter ticks up. After collecting all 12 balloons, six red and six black, heading to the end of the game grants us a final

choice of the light path or the dark path. We were told that we needed to trek back into the darkness, so I guess the option is clear. This leads us directly to the beast himself. Just like Balloon Boy, he uses the words from the hangman puzzles in his ending monologue. The strange forest is something I once called my home. Yet when I descend further, I see things are not as they seem. This forest is like no other. We cannot stay.

There is no other solution. Do not fear me. I want to become your friend. Perhaps we can escape together. The beast then gets carried into the air on the glitchy black balloons before you too join him, via your red balloons. There is no fear. Join me, he says. The screen then fades to black one more time, but we don't go back to the beginning because finally we've escaped. Hazzah! Hurray! That should be a good thing, right? We did what we set out to do. We freed the little boy along with his little beast friend.

No more death loops, no more glitchy text, no more dead kids. Except, we all know the truth. That's never how these stories go. Here's what's really going on. Looking again at that final monologue, it became clear to me that it wasn't Balloon Boy that was crying out to 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 isn't what it seems, that was him figuring out that this isn't a real world, but a video game world. And so he feels lost, unable to go anywhere. The phrase, I'm looking for someone.

Wasn't him looking for balloon boy, he was looking for us, the player. By trying to speak to us, he got our attention and forced us to look into this mystery further. He was looking for someone smart enough to solve his codes and answer the questions that would lead us straight to him and his ultimate goal of escape. Now, that might not seem like a bad thing on the surface. The Beast was kind of nice, and I think we'd all get bored living in a loop like that forever and ever. But when you pull back and remember the context of this ARG, it reveals a darker twist to the whole thing. The question that's bugged me the whole time is why were the cool math games team so afraid of this prototype? The original dev said the game had a mind of its own, which from what we've seen would most likely be referring to the Beast,

the one forcing messages into the game and speaking to us outside it. Naturally, a video game with the mind of its own, it's creepy enough, but it felt like there was something more here, especially when you then had the dev actively trying to spread the word about the game. The detail that stood out to me the most was the monster's name, the beast, especially because it wasn't just a normal name, but more of a title, the beast. It felt odd, felt like you could have just named it a monster and called it a day, but no, the dev chose a title.

A title that's associated with one character from across pop culture and religion, Satan. The book of Revelation from the Christian Bible talks of the beast, this monster that's coming to destroy God and the saints and to rule over all of earth. But other than the name, this connection felt a little bit loose, or was loose, until you take note of who accompanies the beast. There's 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 they do is actually in pursuit of evil.

They help in the creation of the beast, which they breathe life into, allowing the image of the beast to speak to humans. Does any of that story sound familiar to you? Because it should. this is the exact behavior that we see coming from the prototype developer. They were tasked with creating a normal game, and they seemed like they were going to do it, only to instead create something evil and twisted.

They created a game containing an image of the Beast, which they then brought to life. It's now able to talk to us to live on its own with its own free will. When people start looking into it, he tells them to not track down the game, appearing to be on the side of good, but in reality, we know, according to Maddie's logs, that his plan is to make sure, quote, the world knows about it.

It's reverse psychology. It's tricking math. a true theorist into looking deeper, exactly like what the false prophet does in Revelation, using lies and deception to spread the word of the beast, getting people to join his cause, which also might explain the beast repeating the phrase, join me. The false prophet in the Bible also marks people with the mark of the beast, which in pop culture is regularly depicted as 666. And what number follows us everywhere in this prototype game?

The number 6. 6 balloons, 6 questions, 6 glitches. And once we've gathered all the 6s's, the beast is able to rise up out of the game, free from its prison, able to wreak havoc on the world. That is why all the employees of Cool Math Games are afraid of this prototype, trying to destroy all trace of it. They know the evil it can cause, either indoctrinating people into the false prophets cult, or worse, letting the beast free to destroy everyone and everything that gets in its way. So, there you have it, the lore behind the Cool Math Games, AERG,

a story of demonic entities living inside a simulated reality and using false profits and unsuspecting players to break free of its digital prison, a company that realized its mistake and tried to bury it only for one employee to try and release it out into the world, potentially sealing everyone's fate. Fortunately for us, we actually got a note from Balloon Boy at the end of all this that told us, quote, I thought maybe Beast and I could escape through floating away, but it seems we're still stuck. So, it looks like we're safe for now. However, we all know from the real life Maddie and Antonia that they want to do more projects

like this in the future. So the Beast may just try his luck again to bring about the end times. And when that happens, it'll 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.