Spike Chunsoft's Mysterious Puzzle Is Turning Heads
Spike Chunsoft stirred up its fanbase yesterday with a link to a mysterious website called Nine Eyes TV. The site features nine floating eyeballs of different sizes, complete with a puzzle behind each of them. These puzzles lead to a password that readers must enter on the page.
Along with the link to Nine Eyes TV, the official Spike Chunsoft Twitter account posted, "Truth is only an illusion... Can you see past it?"
Spike Chunsoft has a reputation for publishing murder mystery visual novel games such as "Zero Escape" and "Danganronpa." Naturally, the company attracts puzzle-loving fans who like to dissect clues like these. Fans found that, after solving the puzzles for each eye, the combined letters spelled "Nirvana Initiative." Entering this phrase into the password box at the bottom of the site leads to a countdown page with a callout to "share the truth." The skull appears to count back seconds in the right eye while the left eye keeps track of minutes.
Twitter user @RoundtableSe, who solved the puzzle early, suggested that there might be an announcement in about 48 hours from the time they posted. Dividing the left eye's number by 60 leads to what could be the number of hours until that announcement. However, a full 15 hours after @RoundtableSe's post, the number that resulted from inputting the Nirvana Initiative password led to "38" as the answer, meaning that only 10 hours would have passed in this apparent countdown. In other words, their theory may not hold up entirely.
So what does Nirvana Initiative mean?
One Twitter user dug into the source code and found a link with the phrase "ai-nirvana" in the path name. However, the page doesn't show any important information at the moment. It just displays a "Not Found" message, which likely means it wasn't meant to be viewed before the end of the skull timer's countdown.
"AI: The Somnium Files," one of Spike's newer IPs, has a similar name to "ai-nirvana." So this could be Spike's way of announcing a sequel of some kind. Alternatively, some pointed out that "Nine Eyes" could have to do with the first "Zero Escape" game, "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" (also known as "999"). Another chunk of the fanbase thinks this tease could be related to the "Danganronpa" series, which is receiving a Nintendo Switch port later this year.
Of course, this is all speculation, and none of it has been confirmed yet. Fans are advised to keep an eye out for an announcement in two days and see if any more clues appear in the near future.
Luckily, gamers are more than equipped to get to the bottom of this mystery. In the past, fans have deciphered all kinds of bizarre marketing, from solving ARGs and revealing the trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War" to spotting clues for unannounced games hiding in plain sight.