Play this game ↗ · About this game · By alphaBETA DEV · Published 2026-06-23 · Updated 2026-09-08 · Editorial standards · Changelog

Rust River — Complete Walkthrough

1. About the game

Rust River is an industrial-horror investigation ARG. You are the freelance journalist Ye Shen. In the early hours of 17 September 2006 your father, Ye Changlin, finished a night shift at Xinyuan Smelting and never came home; the gate logged him going in, never coming out. Twenty years later an anonymous email brings you back to the town.

• Acts: 8 (the old ninth act, “Year of Resonance”, was removed)
• Simulated websites: 20 / 48 pages
• Deliverable clues: 24, all reachable
• Emails: 44
• Puzzles: 18
• Endings: 4
• Missing-workers ledger: 8 pages / 47 people
• Time: 8–12 hours

The evidence board now holds 24 clues in all, and 24 / 24 means you have them. The older clues that pointed at other games, and the “entity / 450 million years” layer, are gone — don't go hunting for them with an out-of-date guide.

2. Controls

• Left column: the site list. A padlock means an act you have not reached, not a secret.
• Search: one keyword at a time; a whole sentence usually returns nothing.
• Evidence bar: x/24; opening a page delivers its clue.
• Missing-workers ledger: 8 pages, one per act; the fourth row on page one is Ye Changlin. After all eight pages are in, every ending gains one final page: the 47 names in number order, with the last line left blank.
• Puzzles: text input, redaction, Morse, spectrogram and a choice; puzzle 15 leads to the endings.
• Progress: saved in the browser; Chinese by default with English available.

3. The eight acts

Act 1 · Arrival at Rust River

Check into the Rust River Guesthouse; read the night log and the forum help post. Collect the anonymous email, the town’s unusual quiet and the forum post. The water is red and the air tastes sweetly metallic; you take your father’s old work tag, YJ-0417, from the lining of your case.

Act 2 · Tainted Water

Read the Rust River Daily front page, the Environmental Bureau real test data, the clinic internal records, the lab and the retired teacher’s notes. Arsenic 127x, lead 89x, mercury 203x; 47 unexplained skin ulcers and 132 chronic poisonings in 2025.

Act 3 · Echo Underground

Read the library 1999 clipping, the Xinyuan company magazine and the old miner’s forum post. In 1999 the deep drill hit abnormal resistance at 417 m; the company did not stop, and sealed the high-pressure gas pocket underground.

Act 4 · Behind Xinyuan

Read the government S.P.S. approval, the labour bureau 47 “directed training” contracts, the town government minutes and the market gossip. A.R.S. is not “Acoustic Resonance Study” but Aquifer Risk Survey; all 47 contracts let the company withhold the nature of underground work.

Act 5 · The Missing

Read the police missing files, the social media goodbye, the clinic basement, the dark-web list and Chen Yuanzhou’s notes. Forty-seven missing; 44 were last seen at the Xinyuan plant. No. 04 is Ye Changlin, night fitter, 17 September 2006, 03:11.

Act 6 · The Geological Eye

Read the Geological Survey deep data and Zhou Huaimin’s blog. At 970–1030 m there is a perfectly symmetrical ellipse about 800 m across. It is not a natural cavity: it is the 12-metre concrete and steel containment shell poured in 1999, with 47 names cut into its inner wall.

Act 7 · The Sonic Window

Read the deep sonic monitor, the historical cycle data and Zhou Huaimin’s last post. The gas pocket peaks every seven years; the seventh peak falls on 20 May 2026 and lasts about 72 hours. Chamber pressure is 3.42 MPa; the main valve can be vented by hand.

Act 8 · The Final Choice

At the Shaft #3 terminal you get four choices:

• Publish the evidence and seal the mine → A
• Go down and bring back the recording and the ledger → B
• Enter the containment chamber with 52.9 Hz → C
• Play the recording for the town and read the 47 names (needs 24 clues and all puzzles) → D

After B, puzzle 16 asks for the number that repeats across the ledger: 47.

4. The four endings

• A · Buried Secret: you publish everything; Xinyuan stops, Shaft #3 is sealed, the town is relocated; Ye Changlin is entered as No. 04 on the 47-name list, with no body and no death certificate.
• B · Voice Below: you go down and find He Yongchang’s cassette wedged in the service door. Seven men count to forty-seven; the last voice is your father: “Shenshen, don’t come down. Take the names up.”
• C · Abyssal Echo: you enter the chamber with 52.9 Hz and read the forty-seven names; the gas vents and the mine collapses; the 48th name is yours.
• D · Rust River Echoes: you play the recording for the town; miners gather at the shaft and read the forty-seven names; at the forty-seventh the vibration stops and the pressure vents to zero; Ye Changlin’s name is carved on the new memorial at the town entrance, No. 04.

5. All 18 puzzles

Puzzle 17 used to answer “WE ARE NOT ALONE”; that went with the “entity” layer. It is now the 1999 crew’s knock: “BRING US UP”.

6. The 24 deliverable clues

• Act 0: anonymous email, unusual quiet, forum help post
• Act 1: water test report, clinic secret records, missing sample bottles, retired teacher’s notes
• Act 2: 1999 newspaper clipping, Xinyuan magazine, miner’s legend
• Act 3: A.R.S. dashboard, labour bureau special file, town government minutes, market gossip
• Act 4: missing list, social media goodbye, police closure record, morgue secret, the list of 47
• Act 5: provincial deep survey data, retired geologist’s blog
• Act 6: seven-year cycle data, Zhou Huaimin’s last post
• Act 7: Ye Shen’s notes

The evidence bar always reads N/24 — there is no 25th. Opening the page is enough; there is no second button to find.

7. Where people get stuck

1. The access code is ARS07, not SPS07.
2. The underground count is 47 missing workers + 7 unregistered bodies in the morgue = 54; not 477 or 547.
3. The Morse answer is BRING US UP, not the old “WE ARE NOT ALONE”.
4. The true ending needs 24 clues and all puzzles; the last few are on the dark-web list, Zhou Huaimin’s blog and Ye Shen’s notes.
5. 52.9 Hz is the vent-valve resonance, not “the note it waits for”. Vent first, then open the shell.

Changelog

• 31 October 2026: the older ninth-act correction and the September endings page are now part of this guide, and the ledger's blank final line is written up here.
• 26 October 2026: rebuilt for the new story. The “entity / 450 million years / cross-site resonance” layer is gone; puzzle 16 is 47 and puzzle 17 is BRING US UP; all 24 clues can be collected; all four endings were rewritten.
• 2026-09-08: ending triggers and clue thresholds corrected.
• 2026-06-23: first version.