In November 2019, a strange indie horror called No Players Online appeared on the network.

Which made a lot of noise. He presents himself as an old-fashioned online shooter from the 90s with the flag capture mode, though all his servers have long been abandoned, and there is not a single living soul on them. However, nothing prevents you from entering one of the servers and running around on the map for a bit.

about after a couple of minutes of the game, you will begin to think that you are not alone in this session. And soon after a little digging, you will realize that this simple indie game is fraught with many secrets that go beyond the limits of the game itself.

When the game starts, a VHS cassette will appear on the screen of your monitor. And by clicking on it, you kind of insert it into a video player. So all subsequent events, this is a typically taped gameplay made in 4: 3 aspect ratio. The game itself is called the 1986 Flag Capture Project. Then you will boot up the MS BOSS operating system. Then you will see a list of servers on which there is no one. Choose one of them, boot and you can run on the minimap, made in the style of Quake or Unreal Tournament.

And since there is nobody else on the server except you, all that remains is to run to the respawn point of the opposite faction and pick up the flag from them and bring it to your base. After that, you will begin to notice strange changes on the map. The first of these is a gramophone at an enemy base. When approaching him, he begins to play annoying music. However, you can turn it off by shooting at him.

Returning with the flag to the base, you will notice that in the distance is a strange dark silhouette. Which with each subsequent appearance will be closer and closer to you. And when the second time you return to the base with the flag, your character will simply cease to respond to control. Having taken the 3 flag and approaching the base, you will again lose control over your character and this time BEHIND YOU will appear on the screen. You will turn around and again the black silhouette will rapidly approach you. At this point, another player joins the game as a spectator, a game developer named JOHN.

The game developer will tell you that this project was created to resurrect his beloved. The very gramophone that you destroyed played his wife’s favorite tune. And that was the connecting thread. Also, JOHN says that if you take 3 flags to the base, then the server will crash.

And here the player faces 2 ways.

1. Take the third flag to the base and indeed all the game servers will fall,
2.  Leave this server and reconnect to another. In this case, repeating all the steps that were previously and reaching the control point. JOHN will reconnect and ask the question, why are you doing this, why can’t you leave him with your wife alone? But this time he will no longer be as a spectator, but as one of the players. But no matter how you try to find it, you won’t succeed. But if you return to the place of the first appearance of the ghost, in the sky above the map you will see the EYE – this is John himself.

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
If you shoot in the eye, a video will load in which John draws obscure squiggles on a piece of paper, at the end of which he draws the Enter key. At the end of the video, we will be thrown back to the list of servers, which again will be empty, and the image of the eye <o> will appear on top.

Mysteries begin here.

With one of the updates, the game developer on the site added a file called 100 percent save, which you need to drop into the game folder and activate using 5 digits. At first glance, this is a normal Save file, but if you open it using any image editor, you will find that this is a picture with a flashlight. If you increase the brightness level, then in the left corner the numbers 13.11.19 will become clearly visible

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
It was on this day that the game version 2.0 was released and subsequent events are available in this version.

Here it is worth making a digression and tell where this picture with the lamp came from. On November 16, the developer released another update in which he fixed a bug related to multiplayer. According to the developers, players will now be able to play online. But since the network code is not his, he asks to write to the old Enuit game developer – John Mulard. Multiplayer unfortunately does not work, about this the players wrote to John’s mail.

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
In a reply letter, John said that he was going on vacation from March 31 to June 2, 1975, and at the end of the message he provided 2 links. One led to the locked Enuit game server, and the second to John’s personal site, where we see the familiar image of the lantern and the signature of EYE. Where you will be asked to download the game of the same name.

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
Running Exe will start a short game. In which we play for John himself and walk a dog on a leash. During the game we will go to the barking of the dog. And in the end we get to the pier. The bark will subside, and the leash will lead into the water. As you understand, not only his wife died at John, but he also lost a dog.

As soon as the player falls into the water, the next video cassette will appear. On which will be an image of that same eye.

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
By launching the video cassette, a cryptic video will be downloaded to the song Nat King Cole – “Blue and sentimental”. In the last verse, John removed one word that he quickly found. This is the word HAUNT (shelter).

At the same time, the players realized that if you enter this word on the keyboard during server selection, a library of sounds will open containing 1389 songs. Each sound in the game, whether it is a shot, or raising a flag has its own code in the library, consisting of 5 digits.

Players found a combination of numbers. And after activation, an audio file is launched with a heart-rending female cry. Together with the scream, the inscription appears – “Collision with wall 345 is disabled”

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
In the center of the map there is an abyss, which is surrounded by an invisible wall. Now after entering the five-digit code, it will become open. So jumping down you will find yourself in a large room with dim lighting. On the walls of this room there are various inscriptions. Some of them are already encountered by the player during the game, others are not yet.

In the center of the room is a large terminal with a capsule, which (according to John) is a machine for transferring a person’s soul to a computer game. In order to start the capsule, we are asked to enter a six-digit code.

The key to this was the weapon in the hands of the hero. Players noticed that after each reload the number of rounds in the clip changes. Counting them, they got such a number here:

The frequency of the numbers was repeated. So finding out from the phone book, it turned out that this is a Belgian number. By calling you will hear the Morse code and the following message.

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
Having translated the morse code, which was after the text, the players received a hint KEY = DOG. Then, taking the last letters of the longest words in the sentence and replacing them with the letter number in the Latin alphabet, under which they stood in this sentence, they received 3 numbers:

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
The word DOG, which is also a key, was also spelled and replaced by their serial number in the Latin alphabet: 4 + 15 + 7 = 26

Then, the users in turn subtracted the number from the resulting number:

26-7 = 19

26-12 = 14

26 – 5 = 21

They got a six-digit code 191421. All that was left to do was enter the code into the terminal with a blue screen, which is located in the center of the room and go into the capsule to transfer the soul (it sounds crazy, but nonetheless).

After that, the player was again thrown into the MSBOS menu, only this time the list of servers was full. and there were 16/16 players everywhere.

When I tried to go to one of the servers, a video opened with captions that mentioned all the players who completed the game, including YOU, because they could get to the bottom of everything.

But this is not the end)

In the Linux version of the game in this room on one of the walls they found another message, decrypting which they received the word – BANDCAMP. This is the name of the site that musicians use when publishing their compositions there.

So they find BANDCAMP ** John Mulard (** Creator of the game, if you have not forgotten). In which, in addition to the soundtracks for the game, they also found a couple of strange audio recordings.

The first record was a set of strange computer sounds. But translating this record into a spectrogram, you can see the image of the forest.

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
The second entry turned out to be more interesting. A riddle with coordinates was encrypted in it. The audio was recorded in a female machine voice.

They decided all this in the following way: If the sentence is followed by the word LETTER, then you need to take the last letter in the sentence, if NUMBER, then calculate the number of words in the sentence.

Thus, they got the following coordinates: 5C2X + 4X. Only for full values ​​did they miss when, which is written before the coordinates. As it turned out later, the game had its own Discord channel, which is currently no longer available, in which they just found the missing part. 9F355C2X + 4X.

The riddle that has passed from the game into real life … Arg, Riddle, Quest, Easter Egg, Long Post, Video, Computer Games
As a result, the obtained coordinates indicated a forest in one of the cities of Belgium. Using a spectrogram, one of the users found this place, and a can that was packed. Inside the note, gratitude was also expressed and a code that meant: “Thanks for the Hunt.”

The game developer said that it was his first ARG, and that he would try to release even more interesting and large-scale.