what about the nasty spirograph in New n Tasty? haha

There’s no stars in the original image. They would show up if the levels were adjusted the right way, and I’ve checked.

No, they for some reason appeared when i added colour.

Some sort of watermark perhaps? though that seems unlikely.

It's killing me not to have access to the oddworld.com/soulstrom page while at work. I saw on my mobile they updated it yet again with the announcement Jim would do some voice work but can't check if they added something in the code.

Somehow I hope that the chest reveal will point us in a direction, right now I don't have ideas anymore where to look.

Can someone tell me what an ARG actually is? I know what it stands for but I don't know any examples.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and Afterbirth have had a couple involving the community working together to unlock secret characters. Often it's unknown what an ARG will eventually reveal or unlock.

The only new thing I can see is an empty comment tag on line 207, which is meaningless as far as I can tell. Perhaps later it will have more information added to it?


I think at this point it’s safe to say we need to wait on more clues. Nothing seems to be going anywhere with what little information we have right now.


A good example is the ARG set up around Portal 2’s release: http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Portal_ARG

I thought ARG was an Alternate Reality Game.. Which is where the game uses real life issues/themes to tell stories. Which Oddworld does. Does that make Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus ARG games?

Pretty sure people refer to these kind of "mystery solving to unlock a surprise secret things" as ARGs no matter what nowadays, its gotten a broader definition than that now

This seems like it's some elaborate stuff, which it hopefully is because it's always cool to have something to do like this. This whole ARG-ish aspect is also making the whole thing kind of creepy in a way, although it might be because of what I think of when I think of ARGs.

Has anyone used any steganography software to try and see if there are any hidden images in the ones we found? I'd be surprised if there were, but who knows.

Lorne literally mentioned ARG style updates and communication in the period between now and Soulstorm's release during the Kinda Funny Games podcast. He said they wanted to avoid the previous method of announcing a game and then falling off the face of the Earth for 10 months until it's almost ready. So I think we can expect a fairly steady stream of promotions in the next 1,5 years.

I'm all for that.

Seems like a better way of going about it, too.

If there’s an ARG afoot then it’ll be interesting to see how the community develops around that. From what I’ve seen in the past ARGs usually end up with a whole mess of people actively working together on them.

I hate to be a party pooper, but have you considered that this might just be a cool approach to promotion with a few in-jokes, and not a full-blown ARG?

I'm just being the voice of calm, saying not to assume anything definite until we know for sure.

Of cource I did, on the other hand this:

So I think it's fair to keep an eye out for hidden messages.

There’s new code on the website:
Line 69:
Line 233 has been updated (angle brackets removed):
EDIT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL



A frame from around 1 second before the end of twitching.mp4 (in the site header)

Blown up and levels adjusted:
http://i.imgur.com/sms0CLv.png

I read:

19C--
vblmxg yhk fx

EDIT: It’s actually

19<--
eblmxg yhk fx

FFS, Navi, will you ever shut up

Just found a hidden code, see above post!

EDIT: The code reads:

This is encoded with a Caesar cipher.

I think the “19C” means it is a Caesar cipher (the C), and that it is decrypted with 19 “shifts” through the alphabet.

Doing so (with this online decrypter, shift 19) gives the following:

That actually *looks* like a good indicator of ARG

http://i.imgur.com/9D8KF78.png
And it's in caesar cipher

Fucking knew it. Great find Manco!

So now the question is: what are we listening for?

Gr8 job, Manco, doing the same thing I did

I think it's a hint. They will maybe release the vinyl of SoulStorm.

References to future audio files of little voice acting previews maybe?

It’s definitely possible, but more likely it’s setting up for a future clue. Perhaps the next clue will be hidden in an audio file.

For the record, I checked twitching.mp4 and there doesn’t seem to be any hidden audio in there.

It's obviously partly a reference to the blind mine workers only relying on sound to listen for, Sherlock Holmes reporting in but im surprised noone else mentioned it yet

Imported into Audacity, almost went deaf, can confirm.

Little in the way of context there, it could be interpreted two ways. 'Listen for me' as in, 'try to hear me', or 'listen on behalf of me'?

Who knows, maybe one of those new features they're adding is deaf mudokons? I have no idea how that might work gameplay-wise, just a thought!

Michael, are you talking about hearing impaired Mudokons?