Changelog

Every change on GameStrategists: new ARG games, guide revisions, version adaptations and bug fixes.

Changelog

ARG game updates and guide adjustments. Everything we change gets logged here.

Changelog

November 7, 2026

This site · Refract is live: an 8x6 grid, 30 levels, additive light — A new first-party light-path puzzle, Refract. An 8x6 grid holds emitters and receivers, and only one to seven cells are yours to change: turn each mirror to the right slope and the light bends into place. Colour is a three-bit mask, so red, green and blue add into mixes, and a receiver demands an exact match — for yellow, red and green must meet on that cell. Five components, and all 30 levels are built from a solved layout that is then partly hidden, so an answer always exists. 09:20

This site · Gravity Courier is live: 24 levels of slingshots, three shots each — A new first-party physics puzzle, Gravity Courier. Get a parcel into the delivery ring with moving planets, moons, black holes and an asteroid belt in the way — no fuel, no thruster, three shots a level, and gravity takes over once you set an angle and a power. Acceleration is G·M/r² on a fixed 1/120 s step, which is why the dashed line while aiming is a real one-second forecast. Four chapters of six, and stars follow the shot count: one shot is three, three shots is one, 72 in all. 09:05

This site · Rain Beats is live: four lanes, three tracks, 224 notes — A new first-party rhythm game, Rain Beats. Three tracks: Eaves at 96 BPM with 48 notes, Tide at 120 with 72, Downpour at 144 with 104, each chart generated from a fixed seed. Four lanes on D F J K, with four touch pads on a phone. Judgement is ±45 ms for Perfect and ±100 ms for Good, read off the AudioContext clock, so a dropped frame cannot shift the chart. All audio is synthesised live. 08:50

This site · Iron Wing is live: five stages, five multi-phase bosses, auto-fire — A new first-party vertical bullet-hell shooter, Iron Wing. Five stages, one multi-phase boss each, and firing is automatic — your job is to walk the tiny hitbox at the centre of the ship through the gaps. Three primary weapons switch on the fly, power climbs to six levels and adds a wingman at four and again at six. Three lives: a hit costs a power level and clears the screen; three bombs, one refilled per stage. Chain kills inside two seconds reach ×8 and reset when broken. Arrows or WASD to move, drag on a phone. 08:35

November 6, 2026

This site · Night Haul is live: three 30 km night roads, starting on 36 seconds — A new first-party arcade racer, Night Haul. City, Coast and Ridge are 30 km each, with checkpoints at 16%, 36%, 58% and 80% of the route: you start on 36 seconds and each one adds 20, and only a full run counts as arriving. Corners walk you toward the shoulder — running wide drops you to 95 km/h, a crash to 45% and cancels the charge in hand. The 18 cars never yield and queue in the same places every run, and three nitro charges refilled only at checkpoints lift you from 240 to 320 km/h. Each road draws its own horizon: city blocks, a flat sea line, angular peaks. Keyboard and touch both work; fastest times stay on your device. 23:50

This site · Every game page now shows when it launched, its current version and when it last changed — Under the facts table on every game page there is now a line saying when the game launched, which version it is on, and when it last changed. It opens a version-by-version record: one line per release, saying what a player gained that time. All 22 titles are filled in, with dates taken from each game's own development history rather than from memory. 23:22

This site · The No Such Number page now talks about No Such Number — No Such Number and One Clear Day are different games, but the two pages we write about them on shared a couple of dozen identical paragraphs — in English, half of the page was word-for-word the same. That page has been rewritten around this game itself: the seven documents Act One opens with, the plate that only has a KEEP face and a CUT face, the seven levels the site dims through, and the three places the 4,018 turns up. No figure changed: 42 records, 10 cases, four acts, 6 pulls, 4 endings, 19 images, each counted back out of the game. Renew for One Day also gained links on its not-found page, joining the other two new sites. 21:31

This site · No Such Number is live: a switchboard closed eleven years ago — A new first-party keyword-search ARG, No Such Number. The switchboard at Yuguan County Post & Telegraph closed in 2015, yet one line has been recopied into the register for 4,018 days, stamped neither CONNECTED nor NO SUCH NUMBER. Read the records, pull the originals, and file ten cases as KEEP or CUT. The first CUT cuts the whole site, with no transition, to a switchboard after midnight; go back to Act One and the paper is dry but the names have been erased. On the back of the plate, scored in 1998: keep one line, one connection, then the number is archived. 42 records, 10 cases, 4 endings. Bilingual, with full walkthroughs. 17:40

This site · The Renew for One Day page said both 18 and 52 images; it now reads 52 — On 5 November the game held 18 pieces of evidence imagery; on 6 November, to 52. The section listing how to check this page’s numbers moved to 52, while the section on images and fiction still said eighteen — once in Chinese, once in English — so the page gave two answers about itself, and the game’s own notice page had said 52 throughout. The three now agree: 52 images in the game plus the header visual, all AI-generated fictional pictures, not photographs, each labelled in its caption and alt text. The count comes from the art register shipped with the game, matched one by one against the images on the site. 16:56

November 5, 2026

This site · The About page now says 16 ARG puzzle games instead of 15 — One Clear Day joined this morning and Renew for One Day this afternoon, taking our hand-made puzzle / ARG titles from 15 to 16 (plus 5 casual web games, 21 in total). Six places were updated with the new count; the About page was missed, so it and the site index gave two different answers. Both language halves now read 16. 17:09

This site · The ad sentence retracted this morning was still on the other half of ten notice pages — The sentence retracted this morning survived in two other spellings: ten game sub-sites’ disclaimers still said in Chinese that the site shows Google AdSense ads, and five went on saying in English that the site’s main income is the ads shown on the page — one page, two halves, disagreeing. Both now read the same way: the script loads with the page, Google decides whether a creative comes back, and when nothing comes back no ad appears. Re-read on 12 sub-site home pages plus the home page and the guides index, in both consent states: 28 readings, still zero visible ad boxes. 17:09

Renew for One Day · Renew for One Day: a library's last day open, and a book thirteen years overdue — The Luwan District Library closes on 30 June 2026. You are Xu Zhou, back to return a picture book borrowed on 14 June 2013, due 14 July, still marked not returned; the librarian who dropped the flood gate and pushed six children out is missing from the staff register, yet one card in the access log goes in at 23:41 every night and never comes out. Search, request, stamp, renew: every request darkens the site for good. 5 acts, 51 records, 11 requestable damaged items, 11 searches, 3 endings, bilingual, progress stays on this device. 15:05

One Clear Day · One Clear Day: a weather board that has not said RAIN for 4,748 days — A wooden board in the gatehouse of Bailu Primary is turned to the day's weather each morning. You come back to find out why it has not rained here in thirteen years: read the records, pull the water-damaged originals, and turn ten squares to the face the evidence supports. The first two acts are warm; the first original you pull in Act Three cuts the site to a rain-lit night room with no transition, and each pull after that darkens another part for good. With all ten turned, one square on the roster is still blank. Whoever signs it serves that one day. One day only. 42 records, 4 acts, 4 endings, bilingual. 10:20

This site · “This site displays Google AdSense ads” is gone from 29 policy and notice pages — On 19 October this line in the privacy policy became a statement of mechanism, but the rule never left that page. Reading every page this time: 29 of them - privacy, terms and disclaimer pages on the game sub-sites, plus the main site’s terms, FAQ and a second section of its privacy policy - still said ads were showing right then, in 55 sentences across both language halves. They now all say the same thing: the ad script loads with the page, Google decides whether a creative comes back and which one, and when nothing comes back no ad appears. Measured today on 24 pages in both consent states, twice each: zero visible ad boxes. 09:43

November 4, 2026

Room 404 · The Room 404 disclaimer now describes this game, not “any company” — That page was a generic template that could have belonged to any company, and three lines had no basis here: it called advertising an income we do not have, quoted a recommended age nobody set, and spoke of links leading out of the game. It now says what was measured: the content notice sits on the screen before the game (the fuller section stays collapsed until you open it), no rating board has marked this web copy, and the page itself has zero links leaving the site. In the privacy policy, “this site displays Google AdSense ads” became a statement of mechanism: the script loads, and whether a creative comes back is Google’s call. 20:33

gamestrategists · The disclaimer now says which warnings you must open first — The disclaimer’s content-warning paragraph is accurate now. The previous entry said six titles write a warning before you enter; what had been checked was whether the words appear, not whether you must open something first. Read without clicking, then clicked: Eye of the Abyss, Room 404, Rust River, Tide Sound Archives and Midnight Frequency show a short line at the top, while the full section — the photosensitive-epilepsy one — is folded inside a control reading Read the full notice, collapsed by default. The Sunken City has no short line; its section sits under 游戏提示 · 免责声明. Both languages now follow that shape; no game changed. 17:31

gamestrategists · Two game pages now say what you can check, not what we ran — Some sentences here described what happens on our side: the 720 boards "verified by our internal checks", scroll scaling "a formula our checks can assert", the numbers on screen "sharing one copy with the checker". None of it is false, but you cannot check any of it — you only see this page. They now give the same facts in your terms: every one of the 720 starting boards was computed one at a time and is solvable, the par is calculated fresh rather than looked up, scroll depth comes from a single formula (min(3, scroll − 1)) and caps at scroll 4, and the figures here are the ones the game itself uses. No game changed. 13:30

gamestrategists · The disclaimer’s content-warning paragraph now follows what each title screen actually shows — The last correction named six titles as showing a content warning before you enter; that list came from looking, not pressing. Pressing the buttons: The Sunken City keeps the same warning behind a collapsed “Before you start · Disclaimer” button, visible only once opened, and its Chinese text is word-for-word the one four other titles show. ERRATA, Last Online, Changming Inn · Night Shift Rules and Unclaimed show a Horror row there instead — none, or no jump scares — which says the game is not horror, not that it warns you. That list is now derived from each title screen itself, so a missing or extra name stops the release. 09:41

November 3, 2026

gamestrategists · Article header captions now say what those images actually are — Every article’s header image said the artwork was signed by the editor, which never happened — these headers are generated for each article by an AI image model. Only ERRATA, Lingdian and Buried Summer use captures from the running game; each kind now says what it is. Three promises on that page were re-checked against the site: a dated correction section exists only in guides actually changed (20 of 29), the two header kinds are named separately, and the warning claim now lists which titles show a note before you enter and which show only their title and how to play. 20:45

Sunken City · The Sunken City’s terms now read as this game’s own rules — It was the generic “1. The service … 9. Contact us” template — the last sub-site still sharing it. It now covers only The Sunken City: eight acts, 15 puzzles (14 ship 46 accepted spellings between them, one is a four-way choice, one is computed from your clue count), 20 simulated sites with 45 pages, 36 clues, 22 emails, four endings plus an epilogue — recounted from this game’s own files. Clicked on 3 November, two behaviours run opposite to a sibling title: nothing asks you to tick before entering, while Start over does confirm, and it deletes only the progress entry. 17:08

Midnight Frequency · Midnight Frequency’s terms now read as this game’s own rules — It was the generic nine-section template a sibling site still shares. It now covers only this game: nine chapters in three acts, 30 clues, 9 puzzles (six text fields, two searches, one choice) with 25 accepted strings, four endings and eight night intercepts — all counted back into its own data files. Measured on 3 November: the intro tick-box does exist here, and the Reset button raises no confirmation and deletes the progress entry outright rather than replacing it; echoes and the night log stay. Also fixed: the English title of The Light We Kept said 45 files while both bodies and the cards say 47, and its data file holds 47. 09:30

November 2, 2026

Eye of the Abyss · Eye of the Abyss’s terms now read as this game’s own rules — It was the generic nine-section template two sibling sites still share. It now describes only Eye of the Abyss: nine acts, 24 sites, 120 archive pages, 42 clues, 15 puzzles, 17 e-mails, 8 session tapes — counted back from this game’s own files. The confirmation you tick before entering, and the fact that “Restart” replaces progress rather than erases the record, come from four measured rounds on 2 November. The game page and the explainer pages send requests to different places; that is stated separately. We also fixed something keyboard users feel: the “Skip to main content” link did nothing on 84 pages. 20:49

Rust River · Rust River’s terms of service now read as this game’s own rules — It was the generic nine-section template three sibling sites still share. It now describes only Rust River — twenty in-game sites, 48 pages, 24 clues, 18 puzzles, 44 e-mails, eight acts, four endings — from click-throughs taken on 2 November. Two privacy-page sentences were corrected the same way: the restart button resets progress rather than deleting the key, and the only request the page sends back to this site is the platform’s metrics call. Four other terms pages dropped the bulk-scrape ban that excepted only search engines for the crawl permission each site already publishes. 16:50

Abyss Messenger · Abyss Messenger’s terms of service now read as this game’s own rules — It was the same nine-section boilerplate five other sites still share. Now it describes only Abyss Messenger: five landmarks, five letters, four puzzles, twelve echoes, four endings — and what really happens before the first delivery, measured on 2 November: nothing to tick on the title screen, both answer boxes keeping your text on this device, one in-game route that clears a run. This pass withdrew “the changelog has N entries, the most recent are…” from Room 404’s and Tide Sound Archives’ terms; that number moves with every new entry, so those pages say where the record lives instead. Licence wording unchanged; no game changed. 13:40

November 1, 2026

Tide Sound · Tide Sound Archives’ terms of service now read as this game’s own rules — It used to be the same nine-section boilerplate five other sites share. Now it describes only this game: six chapters, twelve clues, six emails, ten tapes, five endings, six fictional sites; it names the horror and flicker notice you pass through before the game and the tick that gates entering — what it covers and what it does not. The login and search boxes inside are props of fictional institutions that receive nothing you type. The same pass withdrew “no accept button here” from Room 404’s terms, contradicted by its own entry screen. Licence wording unchanged; no game changed. 20:29

Room 404 · Room 404’s terms of service now read as this game’s own rules — It used to be the same nine-section boilerplate six other sites share. It now describes only this game: six acts, ten puzzles, eighteen clues, four endings, ten fictional sites; the Windows build on the Microsoft Store follows the store’s own process, so these terms do not reach it; there is no account, so nothing here can be banned or refunded. Bulk-republishing the text still needs written permission, while quoting a passage just needs you to say what it is for. The photosensitivity and sudden-sound notice before the game is named here too. The permissions did not change, and neither did the game. 16:21

Abyss Messenger · Twelve game homepages now describe the version they actually ship — Card copy on the main site was corrected through the October rewrites, but each game homepage kept its older self-description. Abyss Messenger still described a journalist uncovering an ancient leviathan, a premise retired on 25 October; Tide Sound Archives still said four endings, while it now starts from a mother missing at the lighthouse in 2003 and has five. That block is now generated word-for-word from the registry and checked before release. The Abyss Messenger privacy policy also stopped being a generic template and describes what this game does, measured in a real browser on 1 November 2026. No game logic changed. 10:28

October 31, 2026

Tide Sound · Tide Sound Archives privacy policy now describes this game — That page was the generic nine-section legal template, and it listed browser storage under "Cookies". It now describes this game: four keys land on the device, progress takes nineteen fields, language owns none of its own, and the badge key appears only on an ending screen — checked by a differential over one save. A corrupt save means the title screen offers no "continue" (three saves, each tested). Search reads a 68-entry local index and answers are matched on your machine. This is the only game here that really loads Google Fonts: 20 font requests per round on game pages, none on the five notice pages. 20:51

Eye of the Abyss · Eye of the Abyss privacy policy now describes this game — That page had grown nearly indistinguishable from two others on this network (the generic "1. Overview … 9. Contact" text); it now describes this game. A run lives in nine fields of one key, while the badge, mute switch, warning screen and language each keep their own. The fourth of four endings stays dark until all 42 files are read. The fifteen puzzle answers ship in the game data and are matched on your machine, and search reads a local index of 83 entries. Ambience and the Morse passage are synthesised, with no audio file shipped. The third-party section comes from five browser runs over four pages. 16:52

Rust River · Rust River's privacy policy now describes this game — That page had grown nearly indistinguishable from two other privacy pages on this network (the generic "1. Overview … 9. Contact" text); it now describes this game. A run lives in the nine fields of one key, rusted-city-save, and an unparseable save is treated as no save at all. The badge, the mute switch and the opening warning keep their own keys, so "Start over" clears only this run. The eighteen puzzle answers ship in the game data and are matched on your machine, and the search reads a local index of 130 entries. The ambience is synthesised; the third-party section comes from five browser runs over four pages. 13:40