Gameplay

This page covers various methods used by the Players to participate in Johnisdead.

Exploring Websites

Most of the time playing Johnisdead is spent exploring Websites. Some websites such as Lunarchildren.com contain pages of text detailing in-game lore that must be parsed through. Other sites such as Johnisdead.com consist of cryptic images and sounds that contain hints that lead to hidden pages. These hidden pages often lead to even more secret pages that reveal details important to understanding the story of Johnisdead. These long sequences of hidden pages are often referred to as Holes.

When exploring websites, it's important to check the following:

Page Source

The source code of a page on Johnisdead.com referencing the page's title, image and audio files, and a hidden comment.

Most browsers have the option view the source of any web-page on the internet. This will reveal the page's HTML as loaded by your browser. Viewing a page's HTML will not only allow you to easily view secret links and filenames, but it will also reveal comments - text hidden within a page's source code. Viewing a page's source is also the easiest way to uncover the names and details of any scripts referenced on the page.

Page Title

The page title is the text that appears within your browser's tabs, favorites, and history. These titles often contain hints or ciphers that should be documented.

Files

Most pages will contain image and audio files. Accessing these files through the page source is beneficial not only for documentation purposes, but also because said files may not be fully implemented into a page. For example, a page may be scripted to only play the first five seconds of a ten second audio file. Accessing the page's files directly will reveal any hidden details. Analyzing files further will be covered in more detail further down.

Solving Ciphers

Nearly every aspect of Johnisdead's gameplay will at some point involve ciphers. Ciphers are coded messages that must be translated in a specific way to solve. There are a multitude of different ciphers, each requiring their own methods to solve:

Binary Ciphers

Binary ciphers are series of ones and zeros in groups of eight. Every letter, number, and punctuation mark has a specific binary code that it is represented by. For example, the capitalized letter "A" is referenced by the binary code "01000001". The number one is referenced by the binary code "00110001". Sometimes entire sentences are encoded in binary, resulting in long blocks of binary code.

Binary Cipher Examples

01000010 01100001 01110011 01101001 01100011 00100000 01000010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001

Answer: Basic Binary
Solution: Solve cipher through any basic binary translator.

10011110 01001110 10000110 01110110 10010110 01000010 00000100 00100110 10100110 11001110 01001110 10100110 01101110 10100110 01001010

Answer: Reversed Binary
Solution: Reverse the cipher and solve.

ABABAABA ABBAABAB ABBBAAAA ABBABBAA ABBAAAAB ABBAAABB ABBAABAB ABBAABAA AABAAAAA ABAAAABA ABBABAAB ABBABBBA ABBAAAAB ABBBAABA ABBBBAAB

Answer: Replaced Binary
Solution: Replace the letters "A" and "B" with zeroes and ones respectively and solve.

• Identify: Groups of eight characters consisting of either ones or zeroes.
• Tool: Any basic binary translator - Link
• Tip: Binary representing common characters begin with the number zero. If you encounter binary that begins with the number one, it's likely that the entire cipher has been reversed. In this case, one must correct the cipher by reversing it themselves for it to be solved.
• Tip: As its name implies, binary's most defining trait is its use of only two characters. This makes it easily identifiable. You may encounter some binary ciphers where the ones and zeroes have been replaced with letters or even entire words. If you encounter a strange looking cipher consisting of patters such as "ABAAAAAB", its likely an obscured binary cipher.

Octal Ciphers

Octal ciphers are fairly similar to binary ciphers. Both ciphers consist of numbers and often appear in groups of eight. However, octal is a bit more complicated than binary. Octal is the "base-8" number system, meaning it uses combinations of the numbers zero through seven to represent characters.

Binary Cipher Examples

20460563 32261440 23661564 302660

Answer: Basic Octal
Solution: Solve cipher through any basic octal translator.

066203 46516632 04026213 36117213 66526442

Answer: Reversed Octal
Solution: Reverse the cipher and solve.

• Identify: Groups of numbers ranging from zero to seven. These groups never exceed eight characters. Unlike binary, these groups may contain less than eight characters.
• Tool: Any basic binary translator - Link
• Tip: Binary representing common characters begin with the number zero. If you encounter binary that begins with the number one, it's likely that the entire cipher has been reversed. In this case, one must correct the cipher by reversing it themselves for it to be solved.
• Tip: As its name implies, binary's most defining trait is its use of only two characters. This makes it easily identifiable. You may encounter some binary ciphers where the ones and zeroes have been replaced with letters or even entire words. If you encounter a strange looking cipher consisting of patters such as "ABAAAAAB", its likely an obscured binary cipher.

Octal ciphers are groups of eight characters consisting of random numbers.

Typical Binary Cipher

22267164 31271156 31272040 21062564 31261564 32273145 346

Internet Detectives

• Identify: Groups of eight characters consisting of random numbers.
• Solve: Basic octal translator - Link

Hexidecimal ciphers

Typical Binary Cipher

22267164 31271156 31272040 21062564 31261564 32273145 346

Internet Detectives

• Identify: Groups of eight characters consisting of random numbers.
• Solve: Basic octal translator - Link