What appears to be a complex alternate reality game, or ARG, started last week with the announcement of the Potato Sack Pack, a collection of 13 indie games ranging from Amnesia: The Dark Descent to Killing Floor to Toki Tori. Purchasers of the collection were promised a Potato Hat in Team Fortress 2 on April 5.
Then things got interesting.
Valve and the developers of the titles included in the Potato Sack Pack began sneaking glyphs, codes and hidden messages into those games. Some messages were buried in simple text files. Some games had all-new levels based on potato themes. Super Potato Boy became playable in Super Meat Boy. Potatoes were popping up everywhere.
Today, encoded messages were discovered in the latest Portal 2 promotional video. Decoded, phrases like “You found many.Find the rest.” and “Here’s Da Beens, Dougtato:” were discovered. Team Fortress 2 was also updated via Steam, making the Potato Hat available but further deepening the mystery with the game’s update notes, which read:
Team Fortress 2
- [ restricted ]
What does it all mean? Right now, we’ve got more questions than we have answers. But the exhaustive Valve PotatoFoolsDay ARG Wiki is archiving everything that the community has unearthed from the 15 games involved.
Is this all leading up to some Portal 2 announcement? Is this related to the surprise that Valve’s Erik Wolpaw promised us last month?
What we do know is that the last time Valve went to such lengths to confuse and confound its biggest fans, there was a Portal 2 announcement at the end of it. So we’ll keep watching.
Gordon
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 3:19 PMoh valve
Bish
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 3:25 PMGOD DAMN YOU VALVE WHERE IS HALF LIFE 3
Garrick Bortignon
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 3:41 PMId settle for HL2: Ep3
Bish
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 3:52 PMGOD DAMN YOU VALVE WHERE IS HALF LIFE 2 EPISODE 3
Jason Miller
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 5:42 PMYou’d SETTLE for it?! What is this madness you speak…
Doug Sherry
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10:47 AMSomeone needs to remind Valve of the meaning of Episodic
Ross Moir
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 3:27 PMThe cake is a lie, the potato is a red herring…
I’m calling it right now that this is not a Half Life 3 or 2: Episode 3 announcement, in the hope the universe will twist itself around my statement to prove it false.
Luke
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 3:30 PMWow… Valve certianly puts a lot of effort into marketing their games… Look back at the stuff they did for teasing Portal 2.
James Mac
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 4:30 PMWay to go… Idaho.
As an Irishman, I approve of all potato based ARG’s.
Nicholas Lythall
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 6:45 PM+ rep.
Fred The Oyster
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 6:24 PMSo GlaDOS has now determined that what all humans really want is chips, not cake?
Nicholas Peace
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 10:24 PMWhy do they waste time doing this instead of workin on actual games :(
Cody Pollock
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 11:16 PM<3 Valve. Always.
Ryan Shanahan
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 11:44 PMi have a sneaking suspicion that this has nothing to do with portal 2. its too soon, the games coming in like 3 weeks, i reckon it has more to do with half life (it freaking better, i think freeman has had a long enough break) could GLaDOS make an appearence in HL2+++/3? or be like a recording?
xWisp
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 12:43 AMum. wouldent this just be an ad for the potato sack indie games pack they are selling on steam atm?
Trent Strickland
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 1:30 AMIt’s all going to lead up to HL2:EP3 somehow! You’ll see! You’ll all see! They wouldn’t just us hanging there! No sir they would not! It’ll all lead into HL, maybe Gordon has to destroy a potato factory in order to stop the Combine. Yes! That’ll be it! Yes! STOP LOOKING AT ME!!!