Sad Satan
This episode has graphic descriptions of violence, illegal content, and adult material. Please be advised. There is a horror video game that can’t be bought at any brick and mortar store or even online on a video game digital distribution service like Steam. It was allegedly found via a link on an internet forum found only on the Dark Web. One version of the game displayed visuals of violent gore and child pornagraphy. The game came to light after being covered by the Youtube Channel “Obscure Horror Corner” on June 25th, 2015. It would be the last video they would post before going dark. Are you ready to jump down the rabbit hole? Kotaku.com deemed Sad Satan “One of the creepiest games this year” in an article dated july 1st 2015. It is widely considered to not be a very good video game as far as gameplay is concerned. But gameplay isn’t what made the game infamous. In this episode of Clouded we will try and answer 3 questions: What is the game like? What makes it, different? Is it real? What is the game like? Before we get to the gameplay, a brief history of its existence: A user only known as “ZK” purportedly posted a link to the game via a dark web forum. The link was then sent to the owner of the youtube channel “Obscure Horror Channel” by an anonymous subscriber. The owner, first name Jamie, then downloaded the game via a Tor Hidden Service. Sad Satan is a rudimentary game who’s visuals are grainy and dark.It consists of a first person view of your character walking down hallways. The hallways differ slightly in darkness and aesthetics. From almost completely dark to a hallway with a long streak of blood on the ground leading you to what you assume is the source of the blood. There’s not much more gameplay than this. Walking forward down creepy looking hallways is all you ever do. But I think the crudeness of the game lends itself to the horror genre in a weird way. It adds to the feeling that this game was found on the deep dark web. There are some random still pictures that flash on the screen while walking down certain hallways. There only one that seems to mean something is a photo of Jimmy Savile and Margaret Thatcher than appears for a split second. They both are holding signs that say “NSPCC is great!” NSPCC stands for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. More still pictures include Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris (both of whom were caught in a police investigation into sexual abuse allegations called operation Yewtree), Japanese murderer Tsutomu Miyazaki, Andres Escobar - Columbian football player, killed after an own goal, The movie director Roman Polanski who was charged with the rape of a 13 year old girl, and Images of accident victims and murder victims are also shown, including the aftermath of a person struck by a truck, and a beheading. Throughout the second half of the game there are “nightmare” children you run into that simply stand there doing nothing except stare at you and cry. The game ends when you encounter a child that decides to do something about you being there. It follows you and creates “contact damage” You have no no way of defending yourself and then, you die. So the gameplay and visuals aren’t great, but it’s the audio that really gets people. The screaming seems a little too real and interviews with real murderers can be heard in the background. But it’s The overall creepy feeling the game gives is what players remember. What makes the game, different? The game footage I saw of the original Obscure Horror Corner playthrough seemed to be making some sort of statement about child abuse. Not in a completely overt way, but in a subtle way. That being said the next editions of the so called “unedited” versions were not subtle in any way. I have seen conflicting things about what is in the original game and what is not in the original game. We will now dive into what is said to be found in illicit versions of the game. “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. 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 computer would not turn on anymore after running this version of the game. One Reddit user attempted to play the game from a Live USB instead of their computer's main hard drive. Later, when they tried to boot into their computer as normal, the computer failed to load. This version, 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.” Apparently there are many versions of this game that can be found online. But buyer beware, illegal images and malware are in most of them. Is it real? This game unlike our previous video game we covered called Polybius is completely 100% real. The question really is do you believe it’s origin story that Jamie from the “Obscure Horror Corner” told in his Kotaku interview. Is it a deep web created game, or did he make the game himself?
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