"Hello please,
and welcome please
to theorist plus.
Please press continue to continue."
Okay, so if we view this button from the back side are there any secrets there
No?
Can I look under the floor? Maybe I need to literally look
Into the continue button myself. If I just glitch my head in round here--
"Uh... What are you doing? You can just press
continue." Oh hohoho!
That's just what you want me to think, game!
I'm not falling for your tricks.
How about these Rubik's cubes laying around? They seem pretty random.
Can I solve it? No, I can't solve it.
Can I throw it at the button?
(*smack*) Uuh... that doesn't seem to work either.
"Put. That. Down.
This is supposed to make things more efficient!
You're ruining the game with too much attention to detail.
You know what? I'm just gonna press the damn button."
[Game theory intro begins]
Hello Internet!
Welcome to Game Theory.
The smartest show in every layer of virtual reality.
I gotta ask, Internet, what keeps you up at night?
Is it the one thing that you did back in sixth grade that's really embarrassing
and you still can't live down? Is it playing endless rounds
of Fortnite while you're laying in bed?
Well, let me tell ya: the thing that keeps ME up at night is the
secret zoo level in Accounting Plus VR.
Underneath this game's crass facade of niche Rick and Morty references
lays a mystery that we started digging into last episode.
A mystery that was spread across video game award shows, trailer drops,
secret stages, and an endless slew of ciphers, all hiding
something that we're told is gonna be very special.
As we've heard time and time again, it's hiding a secret zoo level, "which is very hard to find".
Last time I introduced you to the story so far - some of the dangling loose threads that exist in this mystery:
An odd sound file, and a password that tells us to "dig deeper into clown ass".
But today, I tackle the problem in a different way, all to answer the question: Is there a zoo level at all?
You see, despite everything I covered last time, the problem with this zoo level mystery is that my usual
tactics of research just won't help. Usually, there's enough oddities in a game to trigger my Theorist Senses™.
Something feels off - a line seems out of place. And once you start digging into what's really going on.
A solution presents itself. In this case, though, Accounting Plus's universe just doesn't have
enough logical consistency to make a clear testable hypothesis.
("It's VR! You can do anything in VR!")
A great example of this is actually Five Nights at Freddy's. The first three games
clearly set up the idea of murders and ghost possession. Is it a hundred percent realistic? No!
Definitely not. But it WAS a consistent logic within those three games. When things die in
animatronics, their spirits go on to possess them. Purple guy is not literally purple, he's just a
consistently colored and mysterious sprite. That's why Sister Location's ending caused so many issues for the franchise.
Magic remnant metal that's allowed to have multiple souls get possessed in them,
and then can possess a body, and then puke itself up from that body,
allowing that body to rot and turn purple!
You just broke from the established logic of the universe.
And then, with the established rules thrown out the window,
anything can become fair game. Literally anything can be possessed by any number of souls, and anyone could either be living, or dead, or a
zombified monster. Doesn't matter. But in Accounting Plus, you never get a solid footing because
everything in the game is super random. A VR headset in the game could bring you down a level into a park, or
inside of a person's body. Eating an apple could take you outside the game entirely, where suddenly you're meeting an
obsessive player whose headset sends you into a twisted version of the same game that you just played!
Is that invisible object on the torch over there a glitch, or is it something essential to solving this overall zoo level mystery?
You don't know because there are no rules.
Everything has you running in circles. There are just too many possibilities in a game that is unrestrained by logic.
Not to mention one with so many items to interact with and throw around!
And think about this - if there WAS some very specific order in which I had to do everything,
not only would it be really tough to figure out what I had to do in the first place,
it would then require even more time and a lot more players engrossed in this mystery
to figure out, "okay -- this is what we have to do". But now we have to figure out the order in which to do it!
I mean, take this as an example: In the king of VR's stomach, there's a bone xylophone.
It is used for literally nothing. That's unusual, right?
So, obviously, my Theorist Senses™ are like,
"hey, this might be a clue to unlocking the secret zoo level!" So maybe you need to play a
sequence of notes on it. But then what song do you play? Remember, we're dealing with the minds behind
Stanley Parable and Rick and Morty. The library of song references and meta jokes that they could use
are endless here. And believe me, I tried a LOT of different options.
From the obvious... to the not so obvious, even going so far as to try a classic Looney Tunes
exploding xylophone gag on the bones, since it's one of the most iconic xylophone scenes in all of entertainment,
and also it's the type of humor that they would appreciate -- but it turned out that the bones were actually in the wrong musical key.
I also noticed that if you pour stomach acid on the bones for long enough a techno song
starts to play that sounds like it has a xylophone track in the background.
<𝑇𝐸𝐶𝐻𝑁𝑂 𝑆𝑂𝑁𝐺>
But now, to test whether that could possibly be a solution, I would need to transpose the music, learn to play the song,
-- which is a 4-minute song! -- and this is all assuming that the xylophones even mean
ANYTHING in the first place! You could do all of that and it could still lead to just another dead end.
And that is just one object in one room of a game that, in order to unlock some of the trophies,
requires you to do things like stand there and hold a brick for nearly five minutes or knock on the same door
21 times to listen to super repetitive dialogue over and over and over again for over ten minutes.
And that's just to unlock the normal game's achievements!
If they wanted to keep you there drinking this adult beverage for a full 24 hours to unlock the secret zoo level, they absolutely could!
Unlocking this thing could be time-based. It could be action based. It could be code based! You don't know.
So after hours and hours of testing a lot of different hypotheses all across the game,
from recreating things that are happening in the game's trailers to flexing my xylophone skills to trying to boundary break any chance I got,
that's when I did the theorists equivalent of throwing in the towel. I dug into the code of the game.
Utilizing the Unity engine and a decompiler, I had Zack (who is one of the researchers who helps with episodes like this)
pull apart the files from the game in an attempt to find the level.
At first things actually looked promising! There were 16 level files in the game, and on a quick count we could only come up with 14 that were known,
so we were getting excited. And then we found it - the smoking gun that PROVED that there would be a zoo level.
An asset that was so undeniable that ... it was a misdirect. We found the zoo entrance sign.
For a minute we thought we'd solve the mystery until we realize that that asset was just used in the game's
waterpark level. A level that, it's worth mentioning, is entirely dedicated to the zoo level conspiracy.
(Clown:) Whoa! whoa, okay okay okay, so! You're interested in the secret zoo level, right?
Things only became more discouraging from there.
The body of a 3d object is called a mesh, and there are mesh elements for every character, object, and scene in a game.
While there were certainly some funky looking meshes, there weren't any of the things that you would expect at a zoo.
Or anything that went beyond the characters and items that we already knew about.
The newspaper I mentioned in the last episode had an explicit image of the level,
so maybe we could find the buildings that we see. Or the courtyard. Or the palm trees! But none of these
assets were found in any of the mesh files. And then we looked through the level assets themselves.
You might be surprised to learn that by the time the game is rendering, a level like the accounting office -
- with all those filing cabinets, doors, and even the desk - are all part of one solid object.
But when you look at all the assets that are marked as levels - which all use the phrase root_scene in their name files -
none of them match up with a supposed zoo level at all.
We see nothing like the image on the front page that newspaper,
nor any level that hasn't already been discovered by hardcore players of the game.
Another dead end. So with two massive strikes against the zoo level even existing within the game's code,
I wasn't feeling too much hope. But I still refused to give up! so I went two-dimensional.
After all, maybe the zoo level is actually procedurally generated like Minecraft is.
All that would require is some good generic 2D assets to fold over whatever procedural generation creates,
but once again we couldn't find anything that indicated any sort of zoo level whatsoever.
No orange and brown spotted skin for a giraffe, no grey elephant skins, no woolly bison skins --
-- and really, if your zoo doesn't have any woolly bison present, then what kind of a zoo ARE ya?
Even though we had a zoo entrance sign and a zoo level cartridge that we talked about last episode,
there was nothing else to indicate that the actual level existed anywhere in the game's code.
But 𝐰 𝐡 𝐨 𝐤 𝐧 𝐨 𝐰 𝐬?! Maybe this is just a really clever level and it's just reusing assets from other levels in the game.
Maybe it's less of a "zoo" level and more of a "level-labeled-as-Zoo-to-throw-us-off-the-tracks-of-what-it-really-is" kind of level.
So there was still one final thing to check: Audio.
Obviously modern games utilize fully pre-recorded voice-acted audio. Whenever the Tree Guy opens his to verbally berate you,
it is a fully pre-recorded line that Justin Roiland made in the studio.
By chopping the lines up into different files, the game can maybe play some of those lines in a different order,
or play one line instead of another based on the character choice, but the game only has the choice of the lines
that Justin Roiland put into the microphone himself at one point in time.
It's not like Justin or any of the other voice actors who worked on this game
went into the studio and proceeded to record every phonetic sound, just so that their voices could be synthesized into sentences.
(They would totally do that, wouldn't they?)
So maybe -- JUST maybe -- if we could find an unused audio file somewhere in the batch,
we would be able to suggest that there's a level out there somewhere, ANYWHERE, where it could possibly be used!
Who cares about the character, the level, who's voicing it, the 2D texture of it, the 3D grid model of it -- whatever,
just that there are more assets in the game's files waiting to be rolled out to whoever does whatever
random arbitrary task that these sadistic designers set out for us to do! And there was....!
Nothing. No unheard loop, no new characters.
There were sadly no audio files that indicated that there was another level that we hadn't found yet.
Unless the zoo level were to be entirely narrated by a text-to-speech bot,
those audio files would need to be in the game's code. And with that said, with the files picked cleaner than the bones in VR King's stomach,
I have no other choice than to cast my ruling. Is there a zoo level in Accounting Plus?
No. No there is not.
All of this - All Of This - has been a professional level troll by people who know and understand Internet culture.
They weaponized theories against us.
What started as a game with maybe two hours of solid play time has become a multi-year treasure hunt for a treasure that was never there to begin with.
All it took was a few random easter-eggs and a few key quotes at award ceremonies, and Accounting+ becomes the Rey's Parents of gaming.
All a bunch of set up for an epic reveal that never actually comes.
So where does that leave us?
This past June, fellow developing company Crows Crows Crows posted an audio file in the Secret Zoo Level Discord server.
N
I
G
H
T
S
K
Y
?
J
P
G
It was in Morse code and it led to this image: nightsky.jpg.
Crank up the exposure on that image and you get yourself the code F-o-e-c-y-p-3,
which leads to an Imgur page - imgur.com/a/Foecyp3 -
which has an image of the Janitor's Keycard from one of the game's secret space levels.
Converting that number on the Keycard from hexadecimal to text gives us "F*** ARGs".
Except it wasn't just F, it was the full-blown word, that is not brand safe. I don't know about you but that seems pretty
explicit as to whether or not they really wanted to do this thing.
But if there was any doubt, the game's latest update seems to put it all to bed.
The newest level added to the game is titled the "waterpark level".
By finding a yellow pill inside a box of cereal, you're taken to a conspiracy den that is a hundred percent dedicated
to this Zoo Level mystery. The room is filled with assets from the game -- supposed clues that are strewn about the room
in a frantic search for what the hidden meaning of it all is. The character who guides us through this room?
The clown from the first trailer who was seen leaving the Zoo Level.
He's convinced that the Zoo Level exists, and he rambles on and on about the various clues and all the dead ends that people have discovered so far.
(Clown) "...to say, hey, he brings out the secrets of level / a small sliver of the fans that will be able to find it..."
He embodies us. WE are the clowns here.
Chasing our tails, looking for a prize that doesn't exist.
The radio in the waterpark update actually has some backwards dialogue hidden in it:
𝑒 𝑦 𝑏 𝑑 𝑜 𝑜 𝐺
𝑒 𝑟 𝑒 ℎ 𝑡 𝑒 𝑟 𝑐 𝑒 𝑠 𝑜 𝑛 𝑠 ' 𝑒 𝑟 𝑒 ℎ 𝑇
𝑒 𝑚 𝑖 𝑡 𝑟 𝑢 𝑜 𝑦 𝑑 𝑒 𝑡 𝑠 𝑎 𝑤 𝑒 𝑣 ' 𝑢 𝑜 𝑦 𝑡 𝑢 𝐵
𝑠 𝑖 ℎ 𝑡 𝑔 𝑛 𝑖 𝑠 𝑟 𝑒 𝑣 𝑒 𝑟 𝑏 𝑜 𝑗 𝑑 𝑜 𝑜 𝐺 𝑖 𝐻
Reversing the audio gives us this:
On the ceiling of the waterpark level there's a key that just hangs there.
A key that, no matter what you throw at it, will never fall.
It always stays there, hanging just out of reach. That is the symbol of the zoo level: a prize that you can't win,
and it'll just drive you crazy trying to reach.
It all goes back to that opening choice in the game with the Rick and Morty memes that I mentioned last episode.
There is no difference despite what meme you choose. It's all a prank. A big goof.
I talked earlier in this episode about how there's no logic in this game, but that's not entirely true.
The logic is that there IS no logic.
And so expecting a bunch of clues to lead up logically to something that doesn't exist in the game's code is absurd.
I think Clovis, our game's tutorial, may have been the one to say it best
"𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑗𝑜𝑘𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 ... 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑗𝑜𝑘𝑒."
So let's end on the question that I was asking myself when I wrote this: if there really is no Zoo Level,
was there even a point to this big game in the first place, or was it all just another meaningless creation wasting our time?
Of course not. The zoo level even, if it doesn't exist, is still stoking the fires of discovery.
Look at Shadow of the Colossus: a game where hardcore fans became certain that there was a secret 17th Colossus hidden somewhere.
The players spent hours combing over the rich, detailed world that seemed to be full of so many clues and hints pointing to this greater mystery.
People learned that you could hang on to birds and fly to reach secret locations. They started to decipher the secret ancient languages in the game.
But despite all of that, the 17th Colossus never emerged. It was never there to begin with.
But because of that search, the game grew into a far richer experience for the players than the game would have ever been without it.
They joined together in communities. They learned about this world, they learned about game development, they learned about language.
And most importantly of all, they did eventually make a discovery: a secret garden at the top of the temple,
only reachable after beating the game three or more times.
So even if the Zoo Level doesn't exist, we're all the better off for it because its legend lives on.
The Mystery™ continues.
It's gotten hundreds of people who played this game to unite online to solve this collective mystery.
Maybe you didn't know about this game before these two episodes. But now you know a little bit more about how games are constructed,
how developers lovingly hide secrets in them, and hopefully you can see how communities come together
as people swap war stories about going through the games they love,
searching for that mystical level that totally, definitely - ...𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 doesn't exist.
Or maybe it does. Who knows? I have been wrong before.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few more songs that I have to try out on those Xylobones!
The hunt is still on, baby!
But hey! That's just a theory.
𝐀 𝐆 𝐀 𝐌 𝐄 𝐓 𝐇 𝐄 𝐎 𝐑 𝐘 .
Thanks for watching.