Alternative Reality Games (ARGs) have recently been under the  limelight for a while now. ARGs are games or videos often shrouded in mystery. They see users going through trials outside a game or video, and across the internet, to solve a bigger puzzle within said game/videos. Due to this immense mystery, and requiring a lot of skill and time to pull off. ARGs can provide a sense of great communal accomplishment when finished, which led to their popularity among online spaces.

A commonality between many ARGs is horror. Usually, detailed ARGs require people to find hidden meanings within words, subtitles, files, audio, and more just to get further and further down the rabbit hole of solving them. Ciphers are often used to further narratives in ARGs. Morse code: Caesar Ciphers, and Binary are among the most popular cyphers for users to solve. 

ARGs were said to have been first popularized by the ARG, “I Love Bees”, which was used by “Halo 2’s” development team, Bungie to promote the release of their game back in 2004. In the years following, ARGs stuck around but have gotten less and less popular; They were mainly used to promote a game or product. More recently however, popular Minecraft YouTuber Wifies gave ARGs a well-needed resurgence. The success of his two popular YouTube ARGs, “Searching for a world that doesn’t exist” and “Destroying a world that doesn’t exist” sparked a lot of interest in the ARG community, popularizing the genre once again. 

Ultimately, ARGs are very tough puzzles that send users on rat chases across the internet to solve. This sense of mystery and puzzle-solving skills are what make the genre so popular in the first place. Dq DUJv vhqvh ri pbvwhub jhwv d xvhu jrlqj, wkdw ihholqj ri dffrpsolvkphqw diwhu vroylqj rqh lv dpdclqj; olnh wkh rqh brx brx mxvw vroyhg qrz.

Solve the cipher and check your work here DeCode!