Aug 09, 2015  It’s actually extremely boring. Then again, I found the clone boring anyway once I saw what all the fuss was about. If you want to go into depth about this game, here is a link to the reddit page: Sad Satan Reddit. Note that you will NOT find a download link to.

Sad Satan is a PC game built with the Terror Engine,^[1] first reported on the YouTube channel Obscure Horror Corner on June 25, 2015.^[2] Following initial reviews, the channel's video of the game was picked by a number of English-language publications^[3][4][5] and later internationally.^[6][7] The creator of the game was allegedly a man from Lubbock, Texas named Gary Graves. The current whereabouts of Obscure Horror Corner are unknown.

History[edit]

In an interview with Kotaku, the channel's owner claims to have downloaded the game from a Torhidden service after receiving a tip from an anonymous subscriber. The subscriber in turn claims to have found the link via a deep web internet forum, from a user only known as 'ZK'^[8] Initially, some followers were skeptical of the game, fearing it may contain gore or child pornography (as both are common staples of media traded throughout the deep web). However, the owner of Obscure Horror Corner shared that, so far in his playthroughs, the game had not contained any such material.^[9]

Following the Kotaku interview, the subreddit '/r/sadsatan' was formed on the website Reddit to discuss the game and quickly realized the .onion address provided by Obscure Horror Corner contained invalid characters. Three days later, another interview with the Obscure Horror Corner owner appeared on Kotaku, claiming that the link was purposefully given in error since the game itself did in fact contain such graphic material and the Obscure Horror Corner channel owner did not want to be responsible for disseminating such material. In an update to the Kotaku article, Patricia Hernandez states:

I should have presented the tale of its discovery with more skepticism. I apologize for that. While the original article admits that the game exists in a more mythical state than a tangible one, it could have gone farther to make clear what was concrete about Jamie's tale and what wasn't.^[8]

Minutes before the update, a new version of the game was posted to 4chan by someone claiming to be ZK, claiming that Obscure Horror Corner had not been showing their viewers the 'true' Sad Satan.^[10] Members of the 4chan community downloaded this version of the game and attempted to play it. Some users complained that their computers began running sluggishly, and a few even reported that their computers became completely unresponsive while trying to run the game. A few users even reported that their computers would not turn on anymore after running this version of the game.^[10] One Reddit user attempted to play the game from a Live USB instead of from his computer's main hard drive. Later, when this user tried to boot up his computer, the computer failed to start up normally.^[11] This version of the game, dubbed the 'clone' by most of the /r/sadsatan community, contained images of violent gore and child pornography, some of which were accessible right from the title screen; resulting in another version of the game with this graphic material removed (which is often called the 'clean' version) being created by Redditors and subsequently redistributed.^[12]

In 2017, a man from Lubbock, Texas named Gary Graves was arrested on counts of child pornography possession, he ran a YouTube channel Scarebere which had posted a video titled Sad Sad Satan. The YouTube channel in question can be traced back to a Reddit account that was created 4 days before the post containing the link to the 'clone' was posted on 4chan, the Reddit account that was created was ScarebereZK. Another video found on the channel also showed a middle aged man, the credits in the video identified him as Gary Graves. The man in the video is identical to another Gary found in the 2017 Lubbock criminal registry; which led some to assume that Gary was indeed the creator and poster of the 'clone' game.^[13]

Speculation[edit]

Sad Satan was the last game covered by Obscure Horror Corner, and since then, the YouTube channel has been abandoned for unknown reasons. There has been speculation that the game was in fact created by the owner of Obscure Horror Corner in an effort to increase viewer subscription count, and that the Deep Web story was a complete fabrication to give the whole account more intrigue.^[1] Some believe that Obscure Horror Corner created the clone as well in an attempt to lend credibility to the claim that there was actually gore and child pornography in the game.^[14]

It is also possible that Sad Satan was not created by the owner of Obscure Horror Corner, and that in truth, the owner of the channel decided to go into hiding because of all the controversy after the malware version of Sad Satan was released.

Others also speculate that ZK and the owner of Obscure Horror Corner are the same individual.^[13]

Content[edit]

The original game posted by Obscure Horror Corner features walking down monochromatic corridors while various audio samples are played and looped over each other. Audio in the game leans heavily on recordings of interviews with various murderers, such as Charles Manson. The game also depends heavily on distorted or reversed audio of such interviews or musical clips, such as the song I love Beijing Tiananmen, played in the beginning. Reversed clips from the Swedish Rhapsodynumbers station can also be heard.

Sad Satan Game Download Mac Torrent

While the player controls their character through the hallways, images may intermittently display, taking up the entire screen and preventing the player from progressing any further until the image automatically closes a few seconds later. Most of the images seem to reference child abuse, especially people indicted in Operation Yewtree, such as images of Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris. Other images revolve around crime, and include people convicted or accused of murder such as Japanese murderer Tsutomu Miyazaki. Included also are photographs of Lady Justice statues, and political figures such as former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Images of accident victims and murder victims are also shown, including the aftermath of a person struck by a truck, and a beheading. Additionally, at least one version of the game contains an image related to the case of Corinne Danielle Motley, a Florida woman who was arrested for producing child pornography, the image being a screencap from a video that led to her arrest.

That particular version also contained a virus that caused a wide range of negative effects, from causing the infected computer to become sluggish to a permanent shutdown, once the executable was run. The only other 'characters' in the game are children who simply stand in one place and do not move or interact with the player at all. In the final video posted by Obscure Horror Corner, one of these children does begin to follow the player, causing 'contact damage'. Since the player has no means of self-defense or any ability to heal damage, the player will inevitably die at this point in the game.^{[citation needed]}

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abBarton, Hannah (23 July 2015). 'The spooky, twisted saga of the Deep Web horror game 'Sad Satan''. Archived from the original on 2015-11-23. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
2. ^'There's A Game That's Surfaced From The Deep Web And It's Scary As Hell'. BuzzFeed. 7 October 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-11-19. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
3. ^'Is Sad Satan the scariest video game ever? Or is it even more disturbing than that?'. 7 July 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-11-24. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
4. ^Holger, Harold (14 July 2015). ''Sad Satan' Is A Bizarre And Creepy Game On The Deep Web And It Has Players Totally Freaking Out'. Archived from the original on 2015-11-23. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
5. ^Gonzales, Dave (2 July 2015). 'Mysterious deep web horror game Sad Satan has terrified and confused the internet'. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
6. ^Berger, Jonas (29 October 2015). 'Das rätselhafteste Spiel aus dem Darknet'.
7. ^Aguila, Nicolas (27 October 2015). 'Sad Satan, le jeu qui fait peur au Deep Web' (in French). Archived from the original on 2015-11-23. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
8. ^ ^abHernandez, Patricia (1 July 2015). 'A Horror Game That May Be Hidden In The Darkest Corners Of The Internet [UPDATE]'. Archived from the original on 2015-11-19. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
9. ^'Owner of Obscure Horror Corner claims Sad Satan game does not have gore or child porn in it...' 7 July 2015. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
10. ^ ^ab'Archive of 4chan's /x/ post'. 7 July 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2 December 2015.
11. ^'Took down the sad satan DL link...' 9 July 2015. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
12. ^Leighton, Susan (April 30, 2005). 'Deep Web Terror: Come play Sad Satan, the most disturbing game ever'. 1428 Elm. FanSided Network. Retrieved June 17, 2019.
13. ^ ^abMax, Mama (October 18, 2019). 'The FBI will arrest you for playing this game'. Youtube.
14. ^'Speculation over who created which versions'. 7 July 2015. Retrieved 1 December 2015.

External links[edit]

Rarely does a guy who reviews horror games discover something that genuinely freaks him out. But for Jamie Farrell, an Irish YouTuber who runs the channel Obscure Horror Corner, Sad Satan — a game without an author, buried on the Deep Web — did exactly that. Farrell called it the 'creepiest game' he'd ever played.

As Farrell navigated the throbbing corridors and glaring halls of Sad Satan, he heard various indecipherable sounds and audio clips. Famous photographs revealed sinister and Satanic imagery. It generated weird text files that blipped on and off. Farrell saw coded messages and Nazi-era photography. At one point, he came across a malformed little girl who let out a blood-curdling scream so loud it clipped the audio in his headphones. The game even started threatening him. So he deleted it.

Farrell released all five videos he recorded before uninstalling the game. Internet sleuths then picked up the trail and began to parse and decode the sinister messaging in Sad Satan. Now, the hunt is on to find an original copy of the game, a version anyone can play. The project has fascinated a fanbase obsessed with an emerging genre of Internet horror.

'Sad Satan' is the first game to ever be discovered on the Deep Web, hidden on a part of the Internet unindexed by search engines like Google and unreachable without specialized tools.

The first game born from the darkness of the Deep Web: Sad Satan is hardly a game so much as an experimental platform. In the videos, it's difficult to tell if Farrell is moving or not moving, if he's taking a single, prescribed path or one of many paths, or if there's even a path at all.

Sad Satan is the first game in memory that, like an obelisk or artifact in a horror movie, was discovered hidden away on the Deep Web,' abandoned and out of sight on a part of the Internet unindexed by search engines like Google and unreachable without specialized tools.

It's not particularly well-made either. The audio is messy and the graphics are rudimentary; there's little actual gameplay or narrative and little to learn as you go alone. But like the hidden nature of how it was found, it adds to the fundamental eeriness of Sad Satan. 'The game is fairly shoddily made, but it's shoddy and rough in a deliberate way,' Farrell told Mic. He guessed that it was done deliberately.

As Patricia Hernandez writes for Kotaku:

Sad Satan is remarkably unsettling, even if you're just watching the game being played on YouTube. Partially, it's the audio, which works wonders for setting up a creepy tone. But in some ways, the crudeness of the game is exactly what makes it so potent. It adds authenticity. Horror is not a genre that revels in polish. It's often defined by rawness, by its sharp edges. This is why found footage horror movies are a thing. This is also why early survival horror games with shitty controls still managed to become classics. Horror is messy, in the same way real life is messy. It's ordinary, in the same way real life is ordinary. Which means it could happen to you.

Whatever the reasons, the Internet is working madly to decode the puzzle. After the game broke out on Obscure Horror Corner, small community of sleuths are attempting to parse out the clues, source the bits of photography and recorded audio and find the answers. On Reddit, a user named _cooI has begun a thread where a team has identified almost each piece of the Sad Satan puzzle. (We've laid out their findings below.)

'I can track you. U are on my list,' the game threatens. '5 victim!! :) :)'

Many of the game's oddities appear to be codified clues, starting with the name of the game itself. Throughout the game, small clips of Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' play in your ear. The song has a famously controversial segment that, when played in reverse, sound like Satanist preaching, including the phrase 'There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.'

Pedophile imagery and more: A small collection of photos crops up throughout the game, flashing at random intervals and checkpoints for a few seconds on the screen. One is a simple illustration of the Satanic idol Baphomet, or the 'Sabbatic Goat.' Another shows Franz Joseph, Ninth Prince of Thurn and Taxis, at the historical Konopiste Castle after Hitler fell from power. Another is of DJ and allegedly prolific sexual offender Jimmy Savile posing with Margaret Thatcher. Roman Polanski and other child abusers appear as well.

Sad Satan Download

Other pieces include audio from Polish spy transmissions (sufficiently creepy without the help of any editing) and speeches by Hitler slowed down:

There is no explanation or consistency taken all together, except for their common theme of classical theistic Satanism — like horns, pentacles and the number 666 — and general expressions of evil and horror. As _cooI puts it in the concluding notes from exploring the videos:

The game surrounds you with delusions, severe paranoia and most importantly, images of trauma from ritualistic abuse that they are not trying to scare you with but inform you of. Because of the nature of this, 'Sad Satan' may actually be a campaign to denounce Ritualistic Abuse for the public, but it's much too soon to know.

Toward the end of Farrell's third video, his latest, the game starts playing Charles Manson monologues, and eventually it gets stuck on the classic Manson refrain, 'If I started murdering people, there'd be none of you left.' That's when you spot these creepy messages:

There are a small handful of these white keycards, written in a Unicode jumble. With substitutions, one redditor was able to come up with this summary of translations:

'I can track you. U are on my list,' the game threatens. '5 victim!! :) :)'

Could the game be viral marketing? Some commenters think that the buried clues in Sad Satan could be a 'trailhead,' or the starting point for an alternate reality game. This means that the game was made to be found and decoded to kick off a journey into a deeper mystery, with more videos, texts or sites awaiting, either as part of some narrative project or viral marketing scheme. (Farrell says he has no idea where the videos came from and isn't behind the game himself.)

Hernandez, for her part, thinks this video from 2013, with its eery audio and disjoined editing, could be a possible next step in the path:

Sad Satan Game Download Mac Pc

'I honestly have no idea what could be behind the game, if it's an ARG or something else,' Farrell told Mic. 'I wouldn't really rule anything out at this stage and just hope that someone who sees the videos might be able to shed some more light on the game.'

Unless he can find a duplicate of the original file, his remaining videos could be the last traces of 'Sad Satan.'

The new age of Internet-based urban legends: No matter what Sad Satan is, it's entered the realm of 'creepypasta,' or frightening Internet memes that begin as digestible bits of Internet horror. Like the old oral traditions of urban legends, these myths start spawning new branches and repopulating across Web forums in the form of videos, audio clips, fake reports and stories.

Creepypasta uses the Internet and all its possibilities as the medium instead of as the plot device. Internet-native horror is viral in the truest sense of the word; it infects the imagination, grows new stories, splinters off into untamed branches and takes unexpected turns. The most famous of these is, of course, Slender Man, an Internet myth about a creepy white figure. Its legend culminated in the chilling story of two real 12-year-old girls who stabbed their friend 19 times as part of a sacrifice to appeal to the fictional Internet entity.

Even if Sad Satan was only meant to be a self-contained project, the aching void left behind by a lack of answers could inspire others to contribute, in turn creating more media, more questions and deeper mysteries.

All we can do is wait to see if more clues emerge, unless, like other times in the history of Internet horror, the story takes on a life of its own.

As for finding another copy of the game, Farrell is in touch with the original subscriber — the only person who knows which forum the game originally surfaced on — who tipped him off and is working on finding a second download link so that more people could find the game. Unless he can find a duplicate of the original file, the five videos Farrell created are the only evidence that remains of Sad Satan.

For now, all we can do is wait to see if more clues emerge — either from Farrell or the game's creator, if he or she is out there watching — and wonder if we've just stumbled into a claustrophobic corner full of cobwebs and empty of answers, or the mouth of a rabbit hole leading to more questions, and possibly darker places. Unless, like so many other times in the history of Internet horror, the story takes on a life of its own.