The Viral Game

This is my first attempt at writing a creepypasta, so please bare with me here. All screen names and characters are fictional as I am sort of a lone wolf, (not by choice, more by the fact that I'm a nobody lol) Anyway, I am looking for constructive criticism as I eventually wish to publish this on the main creepypasta wiki. if you have any comments/questions, you can find me at infernodemon2005@gmail.com.

Background
Hi. My name isn’t very important in this case, but most people know me around the net as infernodemon2005, or just demon for short. Anyway, I am writing this to inform you all about a new virus circulating the net. I know, this may seem like those spam e-mail messages telling you to “watch out,” or “don’t open this message,” but I assure you this is not the case.

Maybe we should start with how I discovered this new virus… One day, a friend of mine who goes by the screen name Lady_Axis sent me an e-mail asking me to check out this new game she found. The message contained a link pointing me to a very strange web page with screenshots of a game that kind of resembled Unreal Tournament or Quake III Arena.

The page showed the game was called "V-ARENA" and was advertised to be very similar in spirit to old school arcade arena shooters from the mid to late 90's. I enitially thought the V stood for virtual, but I was later prooven very wrong. It was written very clearly, not like these suspicious websites people always get creepypasta files from. I paid very close attention to these details as I have recently become a very avid reader of many scary stories. The site had links with typical subsections describing the opponents, weapons, and the single stage available in the current build of the game. The only things I saw on this site that may have given me any remote reason for alarm were some of the character names, “CHAINfire, DELETa, and BLUSkREEN were the ones listed on the site. I didn’t think too much of it since I know both Unreal Tournament and Quake III had some unusual codenames for the rivals, but I did think the strange capitalization errors in the names were a bit off.



Despite this, I decided to check out the game anyway. I love games like this even though I’m not always the greatest at them. I usually end up getting myself slaughtered unless it’s a 1v1 match. I clicked the download link and was surprised to find the game was about 2 GB in size. This was a little strange to me since there was only one map listed on the website, and I’ve downloaded enough games to be able to roughly estimate the size of a game based on the information given to me. Either way, I completed the long download and prepared to start up the game.



The Game
After I finished the download, I opened the downloaded archive to find several game files including a ReadMe, and all the usual linked files and folders containing art assets, music, sounds, and other things needed for the game to run. There was no standard install instructions found except to extract the game to a folder on the C Drive, so I created a new folder and copied the files from the archive into the folder. After doing this, I scanned the entire folder with both Avast anti-virus as well as CLAM-AV. Nothing at all came up, so I knew it had to be safe.

I sat back in my chair, double clicked VARENA.exe, and prepared to get into some old school arena shooter action. The title screen was black with blue letters. The font was one of those cool slanting fonts that are wider at the bottom than at the top. The only difference here is that instead of saying V-Arena, or Virtual Arena (as I initially thought,) the title read “VIRAL ARENA.”

This was a little strange to me, but for some reason, I didn’t stop. Common sense was screaming into my ear telling me to shut this thing off and delete it right now, but since my two prior virus scans came back empty, I didn’t think anything could go wrong.

The game began playing an action demo behind the title as games of this type usually do. I looked at the demo for a few seconds and saw the video quality was amazing and figured I didn’t need to take a trip to the nicely presented button labeled “OPTIONS.” I instead just clicked play. The next screen was a difficulty setting list. The settings ranged from level 1 being titled “You’re safe,” to level 9 with the sub-title “all hope is lost.” Each difficulty setting was accompanied by a tooltip showing how each one affected the game. The first few settings would give you more lives, increased health and armor maximums, and strangely enough, reduce the maximum enemies you had to deal with at once. The higher levels would reduce player stats, and increase the number of enemies in each wave with level 9 essentially leaving the player vulnerable to what appeared to be 2-3 shot kills, 1 life, and all opponents gunning for you at once.

The goal of the game seemed to be to defeat all other arena opponents without loosing all your lives. As I mentioned earlier, I am not the greatest at games like this so I chose difficulty level 3, “duel.” This setting gave me 10 lives to deal with the game’s rivals in a 1v1 fashion. This suited me just fine. The 150 starting health and 100 starting armor was a nice bonus, but this was the highest level that stuck to 1v1 fights.

The single arena level loaded, looking quite a bit smaller than it did in the screenshots. I figured the level was randomly generated based on your difficulty selection. I thought this concept was sort of cool. Anyway, my first opponent was an older looking guy with the codename “POPs”. I found this somewhat ironic and amusing. The old guy seemed to have a trick up his sleeve though as he seemed to teleport around the arena at times. Still, he was a bit slow and easy to defeat.

Defeating POPs immediately summoned the next opponent, a blonde haired female codenamed “SCREECH.” This character seemed to have an innate sonic attack. She would run in close and scream. The scream would leave me paralyzed and unable to move for a few seconds. She took every opportunity to riddle me full of bullets after screaming at me. I lost a life to her, but soon figured out that if I backed away while she was screaming, I could reduce the effects. I took the strategy of keeping distance between us at all times.

With nine lives left, I continued on to opponent 3. At this point, I saw the arena evolve a little. Some of the weapons changed locations and a new shock rifle weapon was added in the center. I was treated to a deep announcer’s voice stating “Tier 1 champion: CHAINfire.” This guy had some crazy firing rates. He could even rapid fire the rocket launcher. He also managed to strip me of one of my remaining lives. I forgot to mention one thing about this game, when losing a life, the enemy does not immediately get full health or stamina, but they do have a few seconds to run and grab some armor or med kits from the arena. They have about as much time as you have between fights. Anyway, I eventually dropped him to zero hp.

After this fight, the announcer asked me to stand on the glowing portal in the center of the room. Upon positioning my character over the glowing tile, the camera pulled back to a 3rd person view showing my character being teleported away. The next screen allowed me to choose one of 3 perks: teleporting, stun scream, or rapid fire. I thought it was cool that I could choose a perk from my previous string of opponents. Since I had the biggest trouble dealing with rapid fire, I figured that one would help me the most in the next round. I was also awarded an extra attempt for defeating POPs without dying.

The next map looked completely different. Now I understood why the game was 2GB. There was more than one arena. My next opponent was a male figure clothed in black. The game announced him to be named “HAX” HAX was a difficult opponent if only because his character seemed to have one of those annoying aiming assist programs enabled. It was very hard to dodge his shots as they all were perfectly aimed at me. After loosing yet another life, I was able to bring him down.

“BOT” was my next opponent, a robotic figure as the name implies. BOT had what seemed to me to be an auto fire hack in his programing. This type of program automatically fires your weapon when your reticule passes over an enemy target. These shots were easier to dodge than the previous hack I had to deal with, but his aggression still stripped me of another precious extra life.

<p class="MsoNormal">If this was anything like the last arena, I knew I was in for a bigger challenge at the champion fight. Again, the arena evolved becoming more boxy and giving me several cover points. The tier 2 champ was announced to be “DELETa.” This was another female character. This one had sort of an oriental appearance, as well as a small gun constantly in her left hand. I found out very quickly what that other gun was used for. It fired a laser like projectile which removed any arena structure it came into contact with. This includes the floor and outer walls. I lost a life as the beam struck the floor beneath me causing me to fall into oblivion. The second life DELETa drained away from me happened when I was caught in a boxy structure as it re-spawned back into the arena. She almost took a third life through simply draining my health from standard weapons fire, but I finished her off with only 5 of my own hp remaining.

<p class="MsoNormal">Her death prompted another glowing portal for me to stand in. After this, I was given the choice of having the aim assistance, auto-fire, or deletion ray perks. Because of the insane skill required to properly use the deletion ray, and the fact that I would probably use it to accidentally suicide, I chose the aim assistance. I didn’t get any extra lives this time around leaving me to tackle tier 3 with only 5 lives.

<p class="MsoNormal">The third arena had a much darker tone than the previous two. This arena also had death traps in the form of bottomless pits that either individual could fall into. The first opponent of this tier was “CRASH” CRASH was a large muscular character. He had a preference to explosive weapons and each weapon had a larger blast radius as well as causing shrapnel and debris to fall in the area surrounding the impact. One life was lost to carelessly being blown to bits by a string of mines. I made short work of him after that little incident.

<p class="MsoNormal">The second opponent of tier 3 was “BURN” This fiery female character had a flame cannon that seemed to have infinite ammo. It had a short range flame thrower attack as well as a long range fireball that left behind burning patches on impact. I screwed up and fell to my death trying to avoid a stream of fire, but other than that, the fight was simple. Stay at range because the fireballs were easier to dodge.

<p class="MsoNormal">Now it was time for the champion, and with only 3 lives left, I was sweating a little. I wanted to beat this game. I saw the name of the champion flash on screen and heard it as well, “BLUSkREEN.” This was the last of the characters shown on the web site, so I knew I would have a fighting chance at winning. Just like all the others, he had his own unique ability. His off-hand held a pulse device which he would occasionally activate sending a wave of a familiar looking blue light to cover my field of view for approximately 5 seconds. He would only use this technique once every 45 seconds or so if I was in range. The sound during these blue-outs was unchanged and surprisingly helpful. I never used to pay attention to sound in games like this, but this experience has changed that for me. I was forced to rely mostly on ambient sounds for this fight. Listening for his footsteps and gunfire. Thankfully, barricades were raised around the holes and pits during the arena evolution part of this fight. He still managed to drain 2 lives out of me before I got the hang of things.

<p class="MsoNormal">After his defeat, another glowing circle appeared. I figured the game would end once I stepped on it, but I was sadly mistaken. Instead, I was given the choice of super explosives, flame cannon, or blue wave device as one final perk before what I would later find was the hardest and final challenge of the game. I chose the flame cannon simply because I thought it looked awesome. Thinking back on it though, I should have taken the blue wave machine for reasons I will detail in a moment.

<p class="MsoNormal">The area of this final challenge was a bright heavenly looking arena with more holes in the ground. There were several cover objects as well as many health and armor pickups. There was also one power-up that hadn’t appeared anywhere else in the game. It was a pair of wings allowing for about a minute of free flight around the arena. The wings would re-spawn 30 seconds after the time limit expired. I had to learn this in order to survive this insane final battle.

<p class="MsoNormal">The fight was against a female opponent known only as “GODDESS” She seemed to take every trait I didn’t have. Yes, this is why I should have taken the blue wave machine. On top of this, I was down to my last life. If I lost here, it was game over. I quickly ran around the arena trying my hardest to avoid GODDESS’ shots and stay out of the holes. She grabbed the wings first which seemed to last forever on her. I don’t know how I was able to stay on the field with the blue waves blinding me frequently and the fact that these pits weren’t blocked off. I eventually learned the timings of the wings and stayed on top of them for the rest of the fight. GODDESS started with 500 health and shields. It took forever to whittle that down to a more manageable number. I had to race around the arena grabbing every health and armor pickup just to stay alive. The flame cannon weapon was very useful in this fight. If I could pin her in a corner, I could wipe away 200 armor in a matter of seconds.

<p class="MsoNormal">The fight dragged on for  about 30 minutes. I frantically ran around the arena constantly near death while trying to keep her from getting any power-ups at all. I needed every advantage I could get. Once I got her down under 100 hp, the arena lost it’s heavenly feel, instead becoming a rapidly changing hellish landscape. This time though, both of us received permanent wings to finish the fight with. This was helpful as I don’t think I could have done it from the ground, as new holes were opening and closing constantly. On top of this, flame jets would occasionally fly from the holes damaging whoever got too close. Her speed in the last half of this fight made things very difficult, but the auto-aim perk worked wonders. I quickly finished her off, but not before being drained to having exactly 1hp myself. After she hit zero, she tried flying directly for me for what seemed like a suicide attack. I narrowly dodged the resulting explosion just barely coming out on top.

<p class="MsoNormal">After this, a glowing spherical portal appeared in the center of the quickly dilapidating arena. I rushed for it avoiding all the hazards that were quickly appearing between where I was and there. Upon reaching the portal, I was greeted with a congratulatory message stating that I have completed the game at level 3 and my records would be sent to the development team to help them emproove the game even further.

Aftermath

 * I had such a rush after completing that game. I saw now why my friend sent me the link. I was still in a state of high adrenaline from completing it that I didn’t realize the window had closed and I was returned to my desktop. My wallpaper was replaced by a picture of the GODDESS in her heavenly winged form in the heavenly arena. I kind of thought this was a cool treat for completing the game so I didn’t mind. It was cool, unique, and now I had it to show my friends what I had accomplished. There was an image on my desktop labeled VICtTORY.jpg which was just a copy of the same picture. All other traces of this game were gone though. I searched my entire computer but couldn’t even find the folder I created to hold the game’s files. The archive I had downloaded had disappeared as well. I tried visiting the web page again, but was met with a message.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">“Congratulations:

<p class="MsoNormal">You have completed VIRAL ARENA and are safe from all ill effects. Your name has been placed on our hall of fame page for all to see. Keep the picture as a sign of your victory over our little game. If you wish to play again, you must do so at a higher difficulty. You must also personally request a direct download of a customized version of our game from our dev team. To do so, send an email to [mailto:dev@*.* dev@*.*]”

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">I have purposely omitted the name of this web site to protect innocent people from getting curious and screwing things up for themselves. I then went to facebook to find my friend was online. I messaged her asking about the link she sent me. Here’s a transcript of the conversation.

<p class="MsoNormal">Me: I enjoyed the game Axis: Which game? Me: the one you e-mailed me about, V-ARENA. Axis: I don’t remember sending out any emails about it. Me: hmmm that’s strange… have you ever seen it before? Axis: Yeah, it was amazing. Wish I could play it again but it’s gone and the site tells me that they won’t let me download it anymore. Me: So, how far did you get? Axis: I tried playing on level 5. It was dead in the middle so I figured it was normal difficulty. I got owned by CHAINfire. After that, the game closed and my background was replaced by “GAME OVER” in the same font as the title screen. Me: interesting. Was there anything else about the web page when you went back? Axis: Yeah, they thanked me for sharing the game with my friends, but as I said, I don’t remember emailing anyone about the game.

Research and Findings

 * The reason I have not told you where to find it is not the easiest thing to explain. Shortly after my chat with Lady_Axis, many of our mutual friends started messaging me on Facebook telling me the weird things that happened to them after playing the game. Most of these were simply cases of popups, loud sounds coming randomly from the speakers, and sometimes nothing at all. I started to see a trend here so I did some research into the game. I eventually found a forum site that talked about each character and what effect it would have if that character took the last life the player had. Below I have listed the characters and what they do.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">POPs: an insane number of popups and error messages continue to spam the user. SCREECH: loud static and popping sounds would be emitted from the computer speakers at random intervals regardless of what the windows volume settings were at. Physically turning off your speakers does stop the sound however. CHAINfire: an email is automatically sent from every email account you have to everyone in the address book for each individual account informing them about the game.

<p class="MsoNormal">HAX: people who lost to HAX report strange occurances on their machines. It seems that if HAX wins, an unknown hacker has complete access to your machine and can do whatever they want with it except for turn it on. You can remove this machine from the internet and be fine however. BOT: This installs a bot program on the users machine. This program has a similar effect to CHAINfire as well as HAX, without the mysterious file occurrences that happen with HAX DELETa: random files are deleted from the machine. In some rare cases, the windows or System32 directories could be removed, but mostly this occurrence is limited to user or program files. It seems that the higher difficulties have a greater chance for system files to be affected by this. CRASH: no one is certain as to the nature of this issue, but it seems the driver data for the primary hard disk drive is altered in such a way as to cause a head crash. This is a phenomena  in which the read/write head of a hard drive contacts the magnetic drive itself causing data corruption. This usually results in having to completely restore windows from scratch on a blank drive, and in some cases, buy a new hard drive all together. BURN: This causes the internal fans to be shut down. Running your computer for extended periods after BURN wins can damage all internal components. Restarting windows seems to have no effect, thus a full restore is required to fix the problem. Windows monitors the internal temperatures of certain components, kicking the fans on and off to conserve power and keep the devices cool. It seems the readings are falsified so the drivers never turn the fans up to high gear. BLUSkREEN: the computer is placed in a non-opperational state. Everyone knows about windows and it’s famous blue screen of death, well, this is all people who have lost to this character have seen. It does have an unusual error code, usually something mocking the player for losing. GODDESS: no one knows what happins to those who lose to GODDESS, as the only people who talk about her are those who have won the fight. I did manage to dig up a few reports of disappearances that have been linked to V-ARENA and all reports say that when the homes of the victims were searched, there was an image of the GODDESS in what I will call her hell state laughing on the victim’s computer.

<p class="MsoNormal">Now you know why this game is such a problem and why I can’t tell you how to find it. I don’t want to see any more scrapped computers, or worse yet, missing persons cases due to this game.

<p class="MsoNormal">Please, if you ever receive an e-mail about it, delete the message and do not click the link. Ignore this game at all costs.