Buckshot Roulette has stumped me not once, but twice. I wanted so desperately to find the lore of this game when it first came out, but it was so well hidden that it just didn't seem possible. Then, out of nowhere, we got ourselves an official ARG inside the game.
Finally! Something that could give me the answers I needed! Except, I can't solve it.
Once again, I felt the lore slipping out of my theorist grasp. So, for this one, I'm gonna need some help from you. Hello internet!
Welcome to Game Theory, the show that knows that every theory is about taking big risks. And today, we are talking about a game that has been requested a lot since the start of this year. Buckshot Roulette.
A simple game that's already blown the brains out of over 2 million players. This game was super enticing to everyone online thanks to its simulated high stakes, its ability to make you wince at a fake scenario, and of course, a feeling that there was more to this game's story than meets the eye. But that final point never really revealed itself.
Sorry Mark. Don't get me wrong, I certainly tried, as did many others, but it never felt like anyone had a full grip on what this game was supposed to be about. That was, until April of this year.
Hidden inside the April update for the game was a small detail that changed everything. A live email address. And from there, came a website, and a whole ARG that was designed to do just that.
Help us understand the Buckshot lore. Immediately, my passion was revitalized, and I threw everything I had at this ARG, trying desperately to find the answers. And while I and the community have certainly found a good amount of stuff, we're still missing one vital clue to busting this whole thing wide open.
So grab your YouTube friendly firearms theorists, because I'm going to need your help to solve this. Let me show you the story we have so far, and then reveal what you can do to help uncover the lore of Buckshot Roulette. You start Buckshot Roulette in the bathroom of a club.
You don't really have many options except to click on the door in front of you and move out onto a catwalk where a smoker overlooks the club below. From here, click on the next door and you enter into a small room stuffed with various tech. This is where the Shotgun Roulette begins.
If the name didn't give it away, this game is based on Russian Roulette, where someone uses a gun loaded with a single live round, aims it at themselves, and hopes it doesn't go off. In Buckshot Roulette though, things are a little more complicated. There are only two players, yourself and the dealer, and you have a shotgun with a certain amount of live rounds and blank rounds.
Using a combination of counting bullets, logic, and power ups, the player needs to figure out the order of the shells and use them to deal damage to the dealer while avoiding any themselves. If you get it wrong, you end up with a face full of lead and you're brought back with a defibrillator. Which feels like putting a bandaid on a severed limb, but regardless, the third round is where things get exciting.
The defibrillators get cut. No more revivals this time. Either you or the dealer are getting buried after this.
If you win however, a machine emerges from the darkness with a briefcase full of cash, up to $70,000 worth, which you now get to spend on facial reconstruction surgery. Woo! Totally worth it.
Or at least it would be if after your victory, you didn't wake up again in the same bathroom ready to go again. They even give you a bottle of pills to activate the double or nothing endless mode if you really fancy a challenge. And that is the game.
It's a very fun gameplay loop and it allows for some really interesting mental gymnastics while trying to outsmart the dealer. But from a lore standpoint, there wasn't really much to go off of. Obviously there were questions like, what the heck is the dealer's deal?
How is he able to survive a shotgun to the face with no defibrillation? Why is he playing this game at all? But there just wasn't anything I could find to even speculate as to what the answer might be.
But then came the April update, and it changed everything. With this update, there was one more change made to the bathroom once you beat the game for the first time. A computer that has been smashed through the mirror with a brain sticking out of it?
Checking the monitor reveals it to be a Koni brand monitor that tells you the stats of all your runs. But it also has a strange invitation to register the computer via email. You'd have thought that would have been registered to the building already, but nope.
Instead, we are given an email address. Contact at volta standardelectronics. com.
And this email address actually works. Though it doesn't really matter what you send it, you'll just get an automated response back. But that doesn't mean it's useless.
Far from it actually. It says this, Greetings, and thank you for reaching out to Volta Standard Electronics, the perpetual pioneers of technology. Our Volta Standard Electronics Helpline is specifically designed to help you with any questions you might have.
For example, here's what we found regarding your query. And then it just spits out this assortment of letters, numbers, and symbols, only following up with, in case of any new developments, the Volta Standard Electronics Helpline will reach out to you directly. If you guys have been around for a while, you probably think you know where this is going.
Because yes, that is Base64. But simply copy pasting it into base64decode. org isn't gonna get you the full solution.
It turns out, this Base64 code is protected by a key. Much like you'd find in a Vigenere cipher. All we have to do now is find the key.
And that comes not from the email, but from a website. If you take a look again at the email and think about it for a second, you'll notice that this wasn't Gmail, or Yahoo, or some online email hosting platform. It came specifically from the domain voltastandardelectronics.
com. So I figured, we try putting that domain into the search bar. And I was rewarded with this glorious vision of 90s nostalgia.
It's not quite Space Jam levels of 90s glory, but it's definitely up there. On this website, we learn that Koni not only created the monitor that we've been using, but also a cell phone called the Koni Arikson. Obviously, this is a playoff of the Sony Ericsson, but regardless of whether or not Sony is actually running some kind of underground Russian roulette ring, Koni does stand by their word when they say they're designed to help.
As part of the April update, the Koni Arikson was added as a power-up to use during the game. Using it calls a mysterious number that tells you if one specific future shell is blank or live. It's definitely helping, and it makes their tagline, embrace the future that we see on the website, very apt.
But that's not the only way it helps. At the bottom of the webpage, there is a nice big red number, which is dead. But that wasn't always the case.
In the early days of the ARG, this number would play an automated message from Volta's helpline. Initially, this sounds like any other automated phone message. However, we then get this piece of information.
Now we're getting somewhere. This world is currently on a government-issued lockdown. While we can be seen driving off at the end of the game if we succeed against the dealer, we clearly aren't going to be able to go far.
Most likely, we're really only able to travel within the city, or at most within the country. This idea of being locked down by a potentially authoritarian government isn't exactly new territory for this developer either. Mike Klubnika focuses pretty much all of their games on these dingy looking facilities with people either trying to break out of them, or trying to take advantage of the system in some way.
Some of those games even share direct connections, with both Carbon Steel and Control Room Alpha showing the same logo in each facility. Mike has gone on record to say that his games are connected, though not every connection is going to be obvious. So it's likely that Buckshot's lockdown is connected to that shared universe too.
But something that is clear is that thanks to this voice message, we now have the key for that email we've been deciphering. That's right, it turns out the thing that got my theorist ears to prick up are also the words used for the key. The shutdown.
Maybe this would give us the connections we were looking for. But there was still one minor hiccup. This Base64 code not only used a key, but it was also scrambled using a non-standard algorithm.
To de-scramble it, we needed to use the same algorithm or website. And despite trying a bunch of different websites, nobody could figure it out. The answer eventually had to be revealed to us by the ARG's creator, Rita Radium.
This pointed the community to Gillmeistersoftware. com, and with that, we could finally read the email we got right at the start. They won't ever forgive me, or will I not forgive myself?
I made a wish upon a falling star, and it brought me nothing but misery. The machine hungers, fed by booming shots and blood and luck. It is fed constantly.
It's chewing, metallic and vile, and it still brings more comfort than the dance of hell below. This poem offers some pretty obvious parallels to what we've been experiencing in the game so far. The dance below would be referring to the nightclub we see below the catwalk as we start the game.
The line about booming shots matches us shooting each other with shotguns. And the fact the machine is fed by it, as well as blood and luck, seems to be referencing the dealer himself. It would make a lot of sense for him to be a machine of some sort, able to survive a shotgun to the face and not needing any kind of defibrillation to be revived.
That phrase, the machine hungers, has also shown up before. It's how Mike signed off one of his community updates. Quote, the machine hungers for more.
Greed everlasting. Mike Klubnika, CR Channel and Volta Standard Electronics. Him signing off with Volta Standard Electronics, along with that phrase, the machine hungers, would seem to indicate that Volta is responsible, not just for selling cell phones and computers to this strange facility, but for the monster that's running these backroom roulette games.
Although, the idea that it hungers does seem to imply a lack of control over the situation. Like they are somehow responsible for bringing the machine to life, but are now unable to keep it satiated. Could whatever the dealer is be responsible for the shutdown?
Or is it just a part of something much bigger and much worse? It's all possible, but to find out, I had to keep digging. And when I did, I found something I wasn't expecting.
Steam cards. If you don't know what these are, it's pretty much what it says on the tin. They're just virtual trading cards that you can get through Steam.
Typically, they're associated with specific games, and you can use them to raise your Steam level, earn cosmetics for your profile, or earn coupons for DLC. But that's not the case for Buckshot Roulette. Just like it's Game of Roulette, it plays by different rules.
Because these trading cards contain some in-universe lore, though one of them is more interesting than the rest. The Burner Phone. If you look closely, on its screen you can find a binary sequence which decodes to 2 Chronicles 26:15, a passage from the Bible.
This particular passage is about a king named Uzziah. Uzziah was a godly king that saw much success during his reign. However, because of his achievements, he became proud.
And one day, he attempted to burn incense in the temple, something which was reserved only for the priests. He was essentially saying that he was above the law and greater than the holy priests, leading to God giving him leprosy. The specific verse we're given, verse 15, comes from just before Uzziah's fall.
And it says, quote, In Jerusalem, he made devices invented for use on the towers, and on the corner defenses so the soldiers could shoot arrows and hurl large stones from the walls. His fame spread far and wide, for he was greatly helped, until he became powerful. We're being told about a man in authority who was building something to defend his nation.
A man who became prideful of these achievements, and in doing so, fell from grace and was cursed because of it. It matches quite nicely with the poem we've been given. They won't ever forgive me, or will I not forgive myself?
I made a wish upon a falling star, and it brought me nothing but misery. Again, it's a story about someone doing something they felt was good, but for it to eventually backfire on them. However, this isn't the only biblical reference we get.
There's actually one other moment that you can find in the second round of Buckshot Roulette. At the start of the game, you sign a liability waiver. Yeah, go figure.
If Volta is behind the machine that hungers for death, good to know that they've protected their own butts. Other kind of butt, in round two we come across a different liability waiver, one that has already been signed by someone else, covered in blood, showing that that person has died. And it is signed by someone, I don't know, fairly important, God.
That's right, the big G man himself. God has not only played this game, but lost it too. Mike himself has said that all hell broke loose when God lost the game, which we can see when we die in the game ourselves.
You end up at the pearly gates, though they're a little more spiky than I remember from Sunday school. That being said, if we consider this alongside the Bible verse about Uzziah, it makes me think that we may not be talking about a literal God here. In that quote from Mike about hell breaking loose, he also describes God as just your average creator of the universe type of guy.
What if God in this instance isn't actually the biblical God, but instead a man who considers himself to be God? A man who, much like Uzziah, built a great and prosperous world, and so began to become prideful, thinking himself greater than everyone else, a God amongst men. But also like Uzziah, this would lead to his eventual downfall.
When taking things into his own hands, our poem writer saw everything around him collapse, all because of his pride and hubris. The question is, who is this mysterious writer, and what is it he did to cause this downfall? This is where Mike's other games come into play.
After selling 1 million copies of Buckshot Roulette, which is really commendable by the way, we got a new trailer for the game, and in just a few frames, we saw some words pop on screen. Remember August 5th, 1998. According to the phone powerup, this game takes place on August 21st, 1998, which not only explains the old look of all the technology, but that whatever caused the shutdown, it only happened 16 days prior to the events of the game.
I did search for this date online, but I just couldn't find anything of specific interest. That was, until I went back through Mike's catalog of games. Because this date has shown up in at least one of them before.
In the game Carbon Steel, we are conducting unethical experiments on creatures living deep underground and collecting data from them. After the very first day, we have a nightmare about these fleshy creatures covered in ice breaking up into our little chamber. And as time goes on, the creatures we begin pulling out are more and more violent.
At the end of the game, we blow up our lab in order to escape, but in doing so, we totally destroy the containment tube that we've been using to retrieve and analyse these creatures. We may now be free, but so is whatever was down there. We also learn from the emails we get in the game that this lab hasn't been used in decades.
So our first day on the job was the day that something changed. The day this facility came online and began digging around the depths of the earth for creatures to analyse. And do you want to hazard a guess as to when our first day on the job was?
Yep, August 5th, 1998. I don't think that our player character is the one writing this poem. No, no, no.
Instead, I think it is whoever was in charge of this operation that was willing to torture these creatures in the name of science. That is what led our character to look for freedom and in turn cause the shutdown. These monsters that we've angered are now free to take revenge on the planet.
And it all began on August 5th, 1998. Finally, it felt like we were getting somewhere with this game's lore. But sadly, this is where our journey hits a bit of a roadblock.
If you go back to the site, you'll find a big yellow star next to the phone. If you click it, it brings you to a secret login page. Perfect.
We just need to find the password. Well, that's kind of the problem. Nobody can figure out what the password is.
According to the creators, we have all the clues we need to solve the password. And that 1 million download trailer we got? Yeah, that was supposed to try and give us a hint.
But despite all efforts, analyzing this thing top to bottom, we still can't really figure out what it is. For example, in that trailer, there was also a secret caption that read cupio dissolvi. It's Latin for I want to dissolve and refers to the Christian desire to leave life and join Christ in heaven.
But over time, the meaning has evolved to also involve the general desire for one's own death. Feels apt for a game about roulette, but whether that means anything for the password puzzle is unclear. We also have references to other religious ideas.
In the May update, Mike ended his post with a single V and a bunch of blank spaces instead of his usual sign off. When the game got 2 million downloads, another very impressive achievement, Mike posted a different signature that looked like this. If we add the V from the first signature and then use a basic Caesar cipher, we can find the phrase Taci Maledetto Lupo, a line from Dante's Inferno that translates to silence a cursed wolf.
This particular line is known as the Volta of the first sonnet. As in Volta standard electronics? In Italian, Volta means turn and in Italian poetry, it is usually the ninth line of a 14 line sonnet, in which there is a large shift in the tone or subject.
In the official Discord, someone suggested that the poem found in the ARG email has nine lines, just like Dante's Nine Circles of Hell, to which Rita replied smart kitten. Though this post has been removed, so it's hard to say if it's still relevant or whether things got changed. Finally, there's the phone, because it always comes back to the phone.
I didn't mention this earlier, but you may have noticed that this phone's keys aren't exactly standard. The voicemail logo is a sideways ampersand, the number 9 contains a capital LOL instead of WXYZ. There's also an extra line of buttons that contains letters like WTF.
Huh. And cat. Yeah, at this point, I'd agree with that sentiment.
I am 100%. . .
I have tried so many different words translating it in through these keys to try and find the password. My theorist senses are screaming at me that the answer is in there. Otherwise, it's just weird that they've been staring us in the face the whole time and yet don't do anything.
But now, I'm out of options, and it looks like the rest of the community is too. And they've been way more ruthless than I have. They have tried over 1,000 passwords to try and get into this site.
They've tried listing the Nine Circles of Hell all together, with spaces, with underscores, in every possible combination. Nothing. They've tried taking lines from Dante's Inferno, both in Latin and in English.
Nothing. They've even tried typing all of these phrases using the numbers in the phone like I did, and they're still coming up empty. And so, this is where I need your help.
So far, we know we're looking at a story of someone who, in falling victim to their own pride and ambition, doomed humanity by reactivating an abandoned lab that was designed to bring monsters from deep within the earth up to the surface for testing. Sadly, not everyone agreed, and their escape led to these monsters roaming free, causing a government-issued lockdown, where underground roulette rings and dance clubs now thrive as people desperately seek some kind of excitement or financial reward in this broken world. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more connections to Mike's other games as well.
The other side is about someone trying to break out of a giant government shelter, only to realise that they were right and there are monsters out there. That monster is very much spider-like, and in Control Room Alpha and Core, we also encounter spider-like monsters, with Core also showing us a mechanical heart in a facility. A machine that hungers, maybe?
And those spider monsters from Core also look awfully familiar to a certain dealer we know. That's all pure speculation on my part, but Mike has said these games are very carefully connected, and so, with this ARG showing us a connection between Buckshot Roulette and Carbon Steel, I could easily see whatever is behind that password lock, revealing to us more about this connected universe. But if we don't work together to solve it, we may never truly know what's going on in this world.
So, if you'd like to join me in solving this thing, you can head down to the description where I've left a link to the website made by the community to track what's been going on. They have done an incredible job over there, not just enlisting over 1000 passwords that they've already tried, but also breaking down this ARG way more than I ever could. Thanks to some members of their community, we've even managed to find some rules about how this password works, like that it should be 4-20 characters long, not use any special characters, mostly, and that it is case-sensitive.
I would love for us, the theorist community, to rally behind the awesome work being done by these guys. They have worked so hard to try and get to the bottom of this, and we need answers. But I'm sure that with all our powers combined, we will be able to solve this ARG and its cryptic lore.
So, make sure you are subscribed if you're not already, because you can bet your bottom dollar that when we do solve this thing, I'll be covering it right here to help end the story once and for all. But in the meantime, remember, that's just a theory. A game theory.
Thanks for watching. And if solving this website doesn't keep you busy, you can always check out our video on all the secrets hiding within the website of Welcome Home. Enjoy the deep dive, theorists.
