The new Game Changer ARG just launched, but it’s not tied to the newly released season of the show. Instead, it’s a community challenge for backers of the Game Changer Home Edition Kickstarter campaign, which is itself playing out as a play-at-home edition of Game Changer, where the points actually do matter because they unlock additional upgrades to the game.
The current challenge: figure out how to leave a voicemail on the Game Changer Hotline. Sounds simple enough…but the challenge is actually a multi-layered puzzle adventure that asks players to do everything from escaping a virtual greenroom to identifying randomized clips from past episodes, on the fly.
…and yes, if you’re looking for answers, scroll to the bottom of the article and you’ll find a few.
Wait, “Welcome Back?” This Isn’t Game Changer’s First ARG?
Dropout’s hit variety show Game Changer is structured so that its players are presented with a completely different game show every episode, so it’s no surprise that this isn’t Game Changer‘s first puzzle rodeo. For the show’s fifth season, the show’s host Sam Reich (or rather, his evil magician counterpart Sam Dalton) locked three contestants in the show’s greenroom, forcing them to complete an escape room to free the real Sam Reich and escape with their lives intact.
Over the next few seasons, fans picked up on suspicious details and thought the show was running an alternate reality game on multiple occasions…a trend that continued until near the end of season 7, when the show finally did run an ARG by hiding a series of puzzles in playable minigames featured in prior episodes.
As players progressed through the game, they learned that frequent guest Brennan Lee Mulligan conspired with the video game developers to hide secret easter eggs in each of the games, culminating in the discovery of a secret phrase that would unlock a secret final episode after it was entered 100,000 times on a website. The result: the episode Samalamadingdong, where Sam Reich was subjected to an escape room of his own, riddled with references to past shows.
Game Changer Home Edition and the Game Within a Campaign
Shortly before Game Changer launched its eighth season, the Dropout team presented fans with yet another surprise: a crowdfunding campaign for a “home edition” of the game, featuring playable versions of three particularly beloved episodes of the show:
- Bingo (s06 e05), where players are trying to guess how other people will respond to prompts;
- Name a Number (s05 e04), where players bid on challenges before knowing what the numbered bids actually mean; and
- Sam Says (s04 e01, s05 e01, and s06 e03), a modified game of Simon Says designed to catch players in all sorts of clever loopholes.
Smosh and Parlor Room ran playthroughs of the home edition games to give fans a chance to see the home edition versions in action, and the campaign has already raised over $5.5M from over 38,000 backers as the campaign nears its June 6th cutoff date.
What makes this campaign particularly notable is that it acts as its own version of Game Changer, with daily prompts providing backers with multiple opportunities to play along at home. One early prompt, for example, asked something fairly simple: at least 300 players needed to give their name and phone number, no questions asked. Players who responded to that prompt were given a follow-up task yesterday, informing them that they would be getting phone calls from a number ending in -GAME within the next 24 hours. In order to score points, at least half of those called would need to answer the phone by saying, “Hello Game Changer, I’ve been here the whole time.” Over the past month fans have created edible arrangements of the Game Changer logo, submitted fake bird calls, written Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, and even replayed some of the minigames used for the original alternate reality game.
One of the key challenges with Kickstarter campaigns for projects with built-in audiences is the vast majority of the project’s most die-hard fans are going to back on day one…and while stretch goals offering new perks can help incentivize sharing the campaign, the most ardent supporters are left on the sidelines with nothing left to do.
Luckily, a number of crowdfunding campaigns solved this problem, by turning the campaign itself into a spectacle. Machine of Death did it by offering comedic backer tiers like the “Goat Stare” level (where goats would stare at your copy of the game before it’s mailed), while campaigns like Exploding Kittens gave fans lighthearted achievements to unlock. Many of the puzzle Kickstarter campaigns featured on ARGNet have used puzzles to keep early backers engaged, with Maze of Games hiding puzzles in interviews, and PostCurious added secret puzzle perks rewarding solvers with free pins or even a chance to get written into the game as a minor character.
The Game Changer Home Edition campaign has dabbled in a little of everything: to date, three backers have supported the campaign at the “Cuck” tier of support, where for $2,500 they get absolutely nothing from Dropout. At the same time, a number of challenges have tasked players with writing game prompts for Kickstarter Community expansions to the game. And then, there’s the puzzles. Which brings us to the Game Changer: Home Edition Challenge Hotline ARG itself.
How Hard Can It Be To Leave A Simple Voicemail?
Earlier today, the Game Changer: Home Edition campaign dropped a deceptively simple challenge: before Friday at 8pm PT, someone needs to leave a voicemail message on the Game Changer Challenge Hotline, available at US/Canada phone numbers, or through an online portal. As a reward for completion, players will earn 10 points to upgrade the final Game Changer take-home experience. Typically, Game Changer: Home Edition challenges have been worth between 1-3 points and are only intended to last for a single business day, so it can’t be as easy as calling up the number and getting patched through immediately.
So far, players have managed to penetrate three layers of the experience, with no strong sense of how far the rabbit hole goes. Again: if you’re looking for answers, they will be included at the bottom of the article.
The First Phase: Navigating the Phone Tree
The first layer is relatively straightforward, and can be tackled solo by most players. The phone tree presents a number of comedic options: a daily horoscope, a sincere apology from Grant O’Brien, samples of bird calls, a number of lighthearted operator help desks, and “behind the scenes access”.
The “Behind the Scenes Access” option provides a series of three factual questions drawing upon information scattered throughout the other menu options. Getting all three questions correct unlocks additional phone tree options.
The Second Phase: If At First You Don’t Succeed…
The next phase of the experience is a bit more open-ended, with three puzzles themed around the Aviary, Deja Vu, and the Greenroom. Completing each of these puzzles unlocks one third of a message that spells out the next step of the puzzle trail.
The Greenroom is a particularly poignant phase of the experience, as it recreates the Escape the Greenroom in audio format, tasking players with guiding Lily Du through a series of three virtual puzzle rooms that resolve to three-digit answers. It even has a surprise appearance from a tied up Sam Reich, reprising his role as damsel (or dapper dude) in distress. Putting together these clues gives a floor to hand off to the Elevator Operator, to reach the Top Floor.
The Third Phase: Name That Clip
After reaching the top floor, Game Changer fans are presented with a rapid-fire series of audio clips from prior episodes of the show, and are asked to identify which season and episode each clip came from. Only after getting three correct answers in a row are players…placed in “hold routing”.
Players are currently trying to puzzle through what to do next. At least one prior mission hinted that there might be something hidden, as the Survive the Maze challenge helpfully noted “while you’re escaping the maze, keep an eye o0ut for hidden secrets…there might still be something you missed the last time you went down there.”
Players are actively solving puzzles in the comments section of the Game Changer challenge, and on the r/Dropout subreddit. Both sources have been beyond helpful in compiling some of the below information, for those of you looking for solutions.
Note: in the time it took to write this article, a solution was found in the snares. However, additional audio clips have been added, and it now takes five correct answers to proceed.
Solutions and Helpful Resources
Phase 1:
Horoscope: the daily horoscope instructs you to transform all of the answers below.
Challenge 1: sum up Grant’s apologies to 12, and reverse it for 21
Challenge 2: check out the Surgical Operator and get 39 cc’s, reversed for 93
Challenge 3: check out the Forklift Operator and get the answer in pounds: convert to kilograms and get 298, and then reverse for 892
Phase 2:
The puzzles here can be found in Deja Vu (1 of 3), the Aviary (2 of 3), and the Greenroom (3 of 3).
Deja Vu: dial 66-71, and trigger “deja vu” messages with one word missing. Track what was removed and get go / top / is / zero / repeat / at
Aviary: Match the numbers mentioned in Bird Calls from the first phase with the birdcalls in the Aviary to get 6243.
Dial that in at The Aviary and get to / floor / nine / one / first / the
Greenroom: This is a series of three number based puzzles.
Room one: count the sides to get 586
Room two: follow the directions as indicated to spell out 926
Room three: use the T9 phone code to spell out ONE ZERO SEVEN
After that, Lily finds a slip of paper with the / it / two / and / digit / end
Stitching those parts as directed spells out go to the top floor it is nine two zero one and repeat first digit at end. Follow those directions and give the Elevator Operator the number 92019
Phase 3:
Below is an incomplete cheat sheet to work through the clip challenge, for the words that appeared in the first phase.
– …love child between The Grinch and Jared Kushner: 0104
– …how bad are Sam’s impressions: 0105
– …you can eat glue: 0202
– …cut this part so I sound cool: 0405
-…these motherfuckers have glasses: 0407
– …he best flavor: fruit punch: 0507
– …the finished product is disappointing but we had a good run: 0513
– …the 90s called they want a challenge tramp stamp
– …Christmas throne: 0703
– …getting fed grapes: 0708
– …Chainsmokers: 0710
– …I’m busting: 0801
Calacene created a more robust collaborative Google Doc collecting the full list posted to the Kickstarter comments, which appears to be drawing on the full Game Changer catalog of episodes.
I’ve been able to confirm that “2324” is the answer to the next step after making it through the hold music, unlocking the ability to leave a voicemail message, and the following congratulatory message.
