“Whatever you do at the crossroads, don’t turn left.”
Minecraft. Everyone and their mother has heard about Minecraft. It’s the most popular game ever based on sales, with over 350 million copies sold worldwide. On Youtube, Minecraft videos have accumulated over 1.5 trillion views, making it the most popular game on the platform. Minecraft is a game entirely based on cubes and pixels. It’s the most popular sandbox game of all time, meaning that there is no real goal to it, which leaves many players to do whatever they want in the game.
Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs have existed on the internet since 2001. These ARGs exist for a variety of reasons, from promoting a movie to just internet fame. ARGs are transmedia stories (video, audio, web) where players can uncover parts of a story or clues to solve a mystery of said story. These stories are solved after a rigorous amount of research and puzzle solving goes into investigating one piece of media left behind by the creator of the ARG. ARGs can span across many platforms and be in many different games as well. This includes Minecraft.
These Minecraft ARGs are incredibly popular on Youtube, with the creator of the videos of these ARGs covering the entire story and how they solved it. Though this may not apply to all Minecraft ARGs on Youtube, it’s most likely that the creator of the video is also the creator of the ARG itself, as most of the video creators “accidentally” stumble upon Minecraft videos with 2 views. Other than that, when you search up, “Minecraft ARG,” on Youtube, you get a dozen results, the most famous one however, being titled, “Searching for a world that doesn’t exist.” This, my friend, is in my opinion, the best Minecraft ARG ever made.
The video starts off with the line at the beginning, “Whatever you do at the crossroads, don’t turn left.”
The video creator, Wifies (Who I very much recommend watching) gives context of the video he found this line in. Wifies goes over how he stumbled upon a Youtube channel by the name of “AveryTheMayo,” who uploaded a video of his minecraft world and how he found a weird book and mineshaft he did not create. Avery tells the viewer how he found the laptop he is currently playing Minecraft in, in a storage locker. (Keep this in mind for later) The rest of the video is Avery showing the rest of the contents of the book, with it ending with a jumble of numbers.
Putting these numbers into a cipher-code website will get you zero results. Chat gpt couldn’t even solve this. So…That’s it? We don’t know what happens next?
Not quite. You see, Avery flashes his inventory for nearly 2 frames before ending the video. In these frames, we can see his inventory is filled with random blocks, all in quantities of 1 and 2 of the items. This time, it’s a code.
I don’t know if you got it, but the code is simply just the 1st character that the block starts with, and capitalised if it’s more than 1 of the item. By doing this, you get a string, a string that leads you to a Google Drive. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Zv7eBKziKf5Rb_IhlFNFxMizdhn3lYwk
The folder contains two videos and a Google Document.
The first video titled, “footage 1,” starts with a player entering the same mine that Avery was talking about. Avery looks in the chest, with the book Avery found on his youtube video, nowhere to be seen. Avery ends up mining into a new wall, and finding a cave. Avery goes down into the cave, finding multiple strange things you wouldn’t normally find in a minecraft cave, such as trees and grass everywhere. The greenery ends up spreading out more and more the deeper Avery goes through the cave. Eventually, Avery sees a light at the end of the cave.
I don’t know if you’ve played Minecraft before, but this is NOT a normal generation in Minecraft.
Something about the way the trees are stacked makes them look as if they are a gate, a gateway to another area Avery needs to go through. The walls, all stone, making the viewer feel claustrophobic in a way, by the way it’s surrounding Avery. So, who made it? And why is it in the world?
Avery goes through the trees, seeing a tunnel at the very edge of the area.
While walking through the tunnel, Avery keeps looking back. Which is weird, as this world seems like it’s in singleplayer, meaning nobody else BUT Avery should be in this world, right? This all seems a bit odd until torches start going out behind Avery, little by little. Every time Avery walks, more torches go out behind him, his only light source, gone, for no reason at all.
“I’m not scared of torches going off.” Avery types into the chat.
“I don’t know what kind of practical joke this is,”
“But I already heard you in the cave.”
What?
Avery. Heard. Something? Someone? In the cave?
Going back to the footage, when Avery pauses every time, subtly, but surely, extra footsteps running on the stone can be heard behind Avery.
More torches go out, “I’m not scared of a game.”
All of the torches go out, Avery runs to the end of the tunnel, where there’s a drop that leads to a huge tunnel system, submerged underwater.
Already, this is such a weird video. What was this world generation? Why are there extra footsteps behind Avery in this singleplayer world? Why is Avery talking to…something?
Going back to the folder, if you look at the document, it reads, “My exploration into a strange tunnel I found in my minecraft world. I’ve been playing this world for a while and just discovered this. This is my documentation of the search. Notably, when I installed Minecraft this world came pre-created. Always thought that was a little strange but I’m not really sure.”
Wait a minute, did we read that correctly? I installed Minecraft? I? But Avery said that Minecraft was already on the computer he found in the storage locker, why is he now contradicting himself? Also, why is Avery’s username now censored in the video on the google drive folder, when it wasn’t in his youtube video?
Oh my goodness, it all makes sense.
That isn’t Avery in the google drive footage. This is the original owner of the laptop. Now two new questions arise: What happened to the original owner? And what caused him to throw away his laptop?
Going back to footage 1, the player jumps down into the water, and swims to a piece of flatland next to the water.
“I don’t know why I jumped down. I wasn’t scared. But I felt…compelled. I’ve never felt like that in my life”
He felt…compelled? What drove this player into jumping down to an unknown area into pitch darkness?
The player ends up going back into the water, where a network of tunnels arise. The player really has no choice but to choose a tunnel and hope for the best, that or drown. Finally, he chooses one, which leads to two paths. One leading to the left, and the other to the right. The player goes left.
The player finds a forest, and decides to explore it.
Before doing so, he leaves a trap, as well as other items he doesn’t need in his inventory such as a grass block, a dirt block, and other miscellaneous items. A simple hopper trap, and he changes his render distance. For those who don’t play Minecraft more than doing their homework, doing this will make the items stop moving if the player walks away. (to explore) The only way for them to continue, is if someone else came in and loaded the chunk the trap was in. Obviously, the player put this to confirm that someone or something was following them. Smart move. The player goes away to explore the forest. In it, he finds 3 signs. Nothing on the signs, however, all point to one area. Before going there, the player ends up going back to their trap to confirm their suspicions. He checks the hopper and…they didn’t move? That’s odd. The player ends up walking away and looks at the two grass blocks in front of them.
Wait a minute. Two grass blocks?
But the player put down one grass block, and the dirt one right next to it. While yes, it’s possible that grass can spread in Minecraft, it’s only possible if someone else loaded the chunk.
Someone, or something, is following the player.
They know what the player does and are smart about it.
“Looks like no one came.” The player says in the chat.
In the text bar however, the player writes, “I’m not scared, but my gut says to keep moving.”
“Maybe I am scared.”
This player is smart. But the thing following him is smart too.
The player goes to the area the signs were pointing to, a tree. He mines down, and falls into another tunnel. The tunnel, leading to a maze, leading to a giant room with a cipher over the door.
Putting these letters into a cipher-code website, again we get no results. Seems just like the book I guess, it will go nowhere. Footage 1 ends.
Footage two begins with the player just staring at the cipher. For seventeen minutes.
“Got it.”
It was solvable? But how? None of the cipher-code websites worked?
“Good poem. But cipher stacking is pretty bad practice, you know.”
Cipher stacking is what it sounds like, stacking more than one cipher code over a text, making it practically impossible to figure out with just a cipher-code website.
Who knows how this player solved it, either way, the door still is not open. The player just mines through the door, the most logical decision. “Unfortunately for you, I have a pickaxe,” He says in the chat.
Wait a minute. Are we seeing this right? The player’s username, d3rLord3. It’s uncensored.
We now know the original owner of this laptop.
That won’t get us anywhere though. DerLord continues through the door, which leads to, you guessed it, another tunnel. The tunnel leading to a village.
The village is…abandoned. If the cobwebs and holes in the roof weren’t obvious enough. But, all of the chests contain nothing inside, it seems almost uncanny—unreal at that. DerLord spots a tower at the very edge of the area. Inside, a secret room which DerLord finds. The secret room? A library. A huge collection of books, and a podium with a book and quill, someone wrote something in it.
“I hate it here. These idiots are insufferable. They think that devotion will save them. Rest assured, it will not.”
There are 8 pages of the book, detailing about the villagers believing “The King” will come. However the author does not believe this and states, “If anything, their king is already here. It’s watching me write this.”
The author warns the reader to not go any further.
But of course, DerLord does not respect the author’s warning, and continues forward by mining through a bookshelf next to the book.
The bookshelf leads to a door, which leads to another tunnel. The tunnel leads to…a cave.
The cave divides two ways, one left, one right.
DerLord goes left and continues onward.
The deeper DerLord goes into the cave, the narrower and darker it gets, it seems as if DerLord is going to have to turn back at some point.
Just then, light appears. It’s the final destination.
It’s another door. A yellow one. DerLord walks towards it.
He hesitates going in the door. The little crack opening the door to the other side.
DerLord stares at the yellow material on the door before going through the crack and sees…
A big square covering the other side?
DerLord stares at whatever is behind this square. As if he cannot take his eyes off of it. He is in some sort of trance. DerLord stares at the thing behind the door before running out. He runs out of the caves and mines, back to the original mines at the start of footage one. He opens the chest and writes in a book,
“Whatever you do, do not turn left at the crossroads.”
He flashes his inventory again, before adding the jumble of numbers at the end of the book.
The numbers. They correspond to each item in DerLord’s inventory.
After decoding, it reads, “Run Avery, it’s here.”
What?
How does DerLord know Avery?
How does he know Avery will get his laptop?
What is it?
We never get a clear explanation for what DerLord saw behind that door. However, many online speculate it to be tied to one thing, The King in Yellow.
The King in Yellow is a collection of loosely connected short stories by Robert W. Chambers, published in 1895. Several of the early stories revolve around a mysterious and forbidden play called “The King in Yellow,” which is said to drive those who read or see it toward madness.
The first story, The Repairer of Reputations, is set in a near-future United States and follows Hildred Castaigne, a young man who believes he is destined to become a powerful political figure. After reading The King in Yellow, Hildred becomes increasingly detached from reality and obsessed with secret conspiracies, royal succession, and violence. The story ends ambiguously, suggesting that much of what Hildred experiences exists only in his mind.
In the Court of the Dragon follows a church organist who is stalked through a city by a terrifying, otherworldly figure after encountering forbidden knowledge tied to the play. The pursuit ends in a surreal and horrifying confrontation inside a church.
The Yellow Sign centers on an artist and his lover who are haunted by a decaying churchyard watchman and a strange symbol associated with the play. As their paranoia grows, reality begins to break down, culminating in death and madness.
Later stories in the collection move away from cosmic horror and focus more on romance and artistic life in Paris, with little or no reference to the King in Yellow. While these stories are less connected, the early tales form a shared idea of dread, suggesting that contact with the mysterious play opens the door to a ruined city called Carcosa and a powerful, unseen entity known as the King in Yellow.
It’s still unknown what the King in Yellow really is. However we do know that The King in Yellow is a mysterious figure who brings madness, despair, and a sense of inevitable doom to those who encounter him. He is often described as a shadowy, otherworldly king whose presence alone can drive people insane. He appears in visions, dreams, or supernatural events, manipulating reality and influencing the minds of those around him, spreading fear and corruption wherever he goes. Essentially, he acts as a harbinger of chaos and psychological torment.
Most online do speculate that DerLord saw the King in Yellow, giving him a vast, incomprehensible vision of the universe, including infinite timelines and realities, and gave him a vision that flooded his mind with divine knowledge and drove him to near-insanity.
This ARG is honestly one of the best ones I have ever seen. The amount of time and research that went into this paid off marvelously well. The subtle hints and clues left behind and the ending, the ENDING! Just pure art. I find it amazing when ARG creators connect their realities with real life stories as well, in this case The King in Yellow. ARGs are probably the best videos I have ever watched, they have given me a ton of information and entertainment, and I love them. This one, “Searching for a world that doesn’t exist,” takes the cake.
Even with all the clues and puzzles that went into this, we will never truly know if DerLord really saw the King in Yellow or not. What really waits beyond that yellow door? Maybe we’ll never know, but that uncertainty is exactly what makes this ARG unforgettable.