I'd be surprised if you haven't heard of Roblox before. A seemingly endless library of multiplayer games that has been expanding for years, mainly targeted towards kids. But have you ever wondered what it was like in development? That's the question I tried to answer, but now that it's over, I feel like it's good that it's so hard to access.
But why am I acting so vengeful towards a blocky children's game's prototype? Well, I hope you understand, because I don't want you to make the same fateful mistake I did.
Last week or so, I was watching a youtube video, when one of my friends sent me a message over Discord.
"HEY! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT I'VE JUST FOUND!"
I was confused, so I simply replied with "what???"
"I FOUND A WORKING VERSION OF DYNABLOCKS! YOU KNOW, THE ROBLOX PROTOTYPE!!!"
Needless to say, after I read that message, I got a bit skeptical. I knew there was a chance he'd actually found a build of Dynablocks, but there was a bigger chance that this was a prank, or he'd just found a fan-made version and mistaken it for being official. I asked him for the download link, and it sent me to some github page where you could download the game. So, I did, and after a short download it was ready to open.
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The profile page.
Once it was open, I was automatically logged into an account, and had 50 "currency" although I couldn't spend it on anything as if I clicked the catalog it simply said "Sorry, the catalog will be available once Dynablocks is available to the public!". I went on to my profile page, and I could see that my username was "Tst_Alp_016", I guess signifying I was logged into the 16th beta tester's account. It did actually seem like this was official! I noted how different the profile page looked compared to the newer, modernised version.
My discord friend told me to play this game called "Swords in the sky!", which didn't take me too long to find. He was called "Tst_Alp_023". The premise of Swords in the sky was that you spawned on a cloud, and like the name suggested, you fought other players with a sword. After a few minutes of us repeatedly killing each other, we decided the game had gotten boring and we wanted to play something else, as well as explore more of the prototype.
We saw that the friends list was nowhere on the profile page, and instead it was only on the home page but, weirdly, it was really far down. I had all of the other test accounts friended already, but unsurprisingly none were active apart from my friend. However, I noticed something really weird about some of the profiles. Some of their bios only read a single letter, and it looked like it was spelling something.
"Y"
"O"
"U"
"A"
"R"
"E"
"N"
"T"
"M"
"E"
"A"
"N"
"T"
"T"
"O"
"B"
"E"
"H"
"E"
"R"
"E"
"YOU ARENT MEANT TO BE HERE"? Now I was kind of creeped out. I told my friend about it, and he said he'd sworn he'd gone on to the profiles before and it wasn't like that. It's like the accounts had gone online for a few seconds just to spell out a creepy message, and then go back to being stagnant. I still wanted to take a look around the build, but I felt really uneasy about that message. Not to mention, the avatars kind of looked creepy to me. They had no face, which I get they didn't have the resources to make faces for characters all the way back in 2004, but it still just looked eerie. Like they wanted to say something, but because of them not having a face they couldn't.
I told my friend I was gonna play a game whilst he looked around, and he seemed alright with it. I went into this small obby game, but what happened next practically made me jump out of my seat. Out of nowhere, the cheerful music stopped, the only sounds being my character's footsteps. For a few seconds, I was kind of uneasy. Then, a screamer popped up and it played this really loud screaming that made my ears ring for a few seconds. I thought it might've just been a small prank the creator added in, but it just didn't feel right.
I mean, first some Roblox avatars spell out a creepy message, and then only a few minutes later I get jumpscared in what seemed to be a simplistic obby game. I told my friend that I didn't wanna continue exploring, and he seemed a little upset. I didn't want to tell him about what happened with the screamer, because I thought he'd think I was just making stuff up.
The next day, I felt like I was calm enough to go into the dynablocks build. I tried talking to my friend, but he was offline, and I seriously didn't want to go into it alone. What was even weirder was that he was usually online on discord in the morning and evening, I thought he'd be online! I got worried, but I thought he might've just overslept, making me feel a little less anxious. I opened the build, and looked at the friends list to make sure everything was normal.
It was not.
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Gone...
I saw my friend's profile, and what was there sent a shock down my spine. The vibrant background with the player characters was gone, just replaced with black. His avatar had vanished from it's box, and the bio and badges section only read "Gone." What the hell did it mean "Gone."?! I knew something bad was going on. Something happened to my friend. Something horrible.
I was just about to close out of Dynablocks, call the police, contact Roblox themselves, but then I realised. There could still be time to save him. It was a stupid idea, but I thought I could take matters into my own hands. Now I just wished I'd done the smart thing. I looked at the people in my friends list, and this time their bios spelt out :
"H"
"E"
"I"
"S"
"G"
"O"
"N"
"E"
"F"
"O"
"R"
"E"
"V"
"E"
"R"
"HE IS GONE FOREVER". That didn't really put me in a better mood, it just made me feel worse about what happened. We were best friends, and now he was just... Gone... Forever... I knew I shouldn't have left him alone. This was my fault, wasn't it? But what did I do to deserve this? I didn't get any of this, and I didn't know what anything in this cursed game wanted. As I didn't know what to do, I heard a discord ping, making me jump for a moment. I checked back on Discord, and some random user sent me a DM.
"Do you want to know what happened to (my friend's name here)?"
...The hell? How did this person know my friend's name? How did he know that my friend was gone? I knew that if he actually knew anything and told it to me, it would probably make me feel worse, but I felt like I had to get to the bottom of this. I wasn't just going to let some weird haunted game kill my friend. There had to be time to save him... Right..?
I asked the user if he knew anything, and then he just sent me a link to a video. It was on some shady website that had about 5 virus ads pop up before I could even get to the video, but at this point I was just desperate for an answer to anything going on at all. The video showed a recording of my friend playing the Dynablocks build. In fact, it wasn't even a recording of Dynablocks only, it was recording his ENTIRE computer screen, even his voice could be heard. I was worried if it had recorded me too.
It showed him scrolling through the home page, before he got a message from me telling him I'd go off of the game, like I'd done in real life. He replied, seeming upset, and you could hear him slightly groaning. He went back on to Dynablocks, and he saw a game on the home page, that hadn't been there before. It was titled "the ritual" and it's icon seemed to be some sort of religious symbol crudely drawn in red over a black background. It seemed to catch his attention, and he began to play it.
He spawned inside of a creepy cabin, with the text "worship" on the wall. From his voice, you'd be able to tell he was starting to get creeped out. A text box appeared, saying "Find the 6 candles, to light your way in life." He left the cabin, and went to find the candles. He looked through a forest, and not long after he found all of them, and it automatically placed them in a circle inside of the cabin.
Another text box appeared, telling him to "find the crayon, to draw out the truth." He, again, ventured out into the forest, and found several crayons scattered around. He tried picking up some of them, but for whatever reason it didn't let him pick up any crayons that weren't red. Once he'd found a red crayon, it automatically drew the same religious symbol as seen in the game's icon, inbetween the candles.
A final text box appeared, reading : "Walk into the ritual, and find the truth." He walked in, only to met with several flashing pieces of text that roughly said "SACRIFICE", "IT'S TIME", and "YOU'VE SET US FREE". Whilst this was going on, static sounds played, and suddenly he started screaming at the top of his voice. Then, the video abruptly ended.
Needless to say, I was seriously freaked out. I closed the video and went back to Discord to ask the person how the absolute hell he had the recording or how he knew anything. However, he sent me yet another video. This video was of someone playing the Dynablocks build, and they were playing Swords in the sky with another person. After a few minutes of killing each-other, they opened discord, and... wait....
It was a recording of me.
I screamed, and called the police and explained everything that had happened. I told them that my friend had been killed, and that someone has been secretly recording me. They arrived about half an hour later, and I showed them everything. They told me it wasn't safe for me to stay at my house, and they told me I should go to a hotel as that was probably the safest option. They also said justice would be served to the people that were behind the game, and then they left.
I followed their advice and went to a hotel for a few days. On the final night, I saw a news broadcast on the TV.
"BREAKING NEWS! The police had recieved a call, the caller saying their friend had been killed after playing a video game, as well as them both being recorded via some sort of hidden camera. The police rushed to find any traces of the person. Their house was trashed, with a broken computer, one of the doors being ripped off of it's hinges, and dirt everywhere. They searched all over the surrounding area, and eventually stumbled across a group of people in robes running from an abandoned mental institution. Some of them were arrested, and it was believed that they were cult members.
Inside the mental institution, there were several red scribblings over the walls, as well as candles around a religious symbol. The corpse of a young adult, which was identified to be (my friend's name here) was found in the centre of the symbol. More information will release to the public in a few days."
Holy hell.
I thought it was safe enough to go back to my house, so that's what I did. I entered to find the kitchen door completely destroyed, and there was a knife in the living room table, alongside a piece of paper.
"You were lucky..."