Can you imagine hiding a lot of content for your indie, and making fans work extra hard to get the content out. Does this unannounced ARG sound like a good idea for you? But someone actually dared to try it.
Edmund McMillen, the creator of The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth, made elaborate plans to bring this ARG to fruition. He hid off half the game’s content, and arranged for clues to be left behind for the ARG. He went so far as to risk negative fan reaction. Truly, it was a calculated risk.
Ed gave out information that gamers would have to earn the Steam achievement titled Group Generosity to open up the second half. However, if you did try this, all you would get was a small image of a paper document.
This is where it starts. As a fan figured out, the pixels in that image translated to a series of numbers. Properly translated, it came up with the word LERBEIL. Lerbeil directed users to find this as an Imgur link, of some new McMillen art, and so the game continued.
We won’t go through all the steps here, but it’s worth noting how Ed intervenes at certain points of the ARG to let fans know when they were getting warm, and to share clues to keep the ARG going.
You can read the whole process here, and as of now, the effort of these enterprising fans has earned an unlock of the hidden features for everyone. What do you make of Ed’s elaborate Binding of Isaac ARG? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
