Discuss your findings & theories here.
The forest is calling you · By
It's not peiyx://ehl.vnzz.vp/riitn but rather peiyx://ehl.vnzz.vp/riitns
This is the result of the decryption https://www.miro.gg/maxeen. It leads to this video.
I used this tool https://github.com/bruvzg/gdsdecomp
I have some Godot Engine background so it allowed me to make sense out of the output. The only thing I had trouble with were the STEX files which I didn't even try to convert to readable formats due to the lack of time. I doubt that there's anything worth looking for anyway so I'm going to leave it as it is.
I've also had some troubles with a couple of the stex files, but since the game is so small it's pretty easy to figure out what the textures are and if there are any textures we haven't seen.
Bark003_1K_Color.jpg
Bark003_1K_Color.png -- these 2 are the tree bark textures, I think one of them is just unused.
cracks.png -- the cracks that appear on your screen when you die
Ebar.png -- energy bar (full)
Ebarbottom.png -- energy bar (empty)
Finale.png -- most likely the text that gets revealed after pushing all 5 buttons
Ground.png -- the ground texture for the trees
icon.png -- just the godot logo
Instructions.png -- I assume it's the thing that shows you the controls
Leaves.png -- tree leaves
Noise.png -- the texture that is used for concrete
Pain.png -- probably gets used when you get hit, this one actually converts to png and its an outwards white gradient fading into read around the edges of the screen
Purchase goods.png -- should be pretty obvious
Rosetta.png -- probably the text that says 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'
Saggitarius.png -- the enemy black hole thing
soft noise.png -- the texture that is used for benches
Very soft noise.png -- the texture that is used for the gem things that light up when you push the buttons (unless I read the file wrong)
these are all the textures in the pck
I've taken measures to reverse engineer the project. I imagine the author expects someone to do so because of the message you get once you die. (If this is in fact not the case then please delete this reply or notify me so I will do it myself. I'm not sure how itch.io goes about editing/deleting posts like mine.)
Anyway... Line 98 of link.gd happens to contain the body of the establish_link() function which looks like this
func establish_link():
if 1 == 0:
print("If Earth's crust rings like a bell")
print("And the forest does not wish you well")
print("And if time flows another way")
print("Then the Chatae has been here today")
As far as my knowledge goes, this method is not called anywhere although I may be wrong considering some of the scripts are built-in onto world objects which I have not looked into yet. The function itself doesn't do anything as the only code is executed under a conditional statement that never will return true (this reinforces my belief that the author expects someone to reverse engineer the project).
I'm really not sure what to make of the messages contained inside the function. Personally, I consider it a part of some puzzle that someone may stumble upon in the future.