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[Eschar]

There is a game called 2:22 AM, involving an eerie TV show accessed late at night. On each playthrough, different pictures, interactive scenes, videos, and messages will appear. It's not clear if there is an underlying story behind the imagery; some images suggest yes, some no, but it's still unknown, and hard to investigate since you never know if a given playthrough has exhausted all the images and messages. That's what this thread is for: the more of us there are playing it, the more information we will gather, and we can discuss our findings and theories here.

Anyone?

Spoiler: Some images found in it (may be large) (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Soon-to-be index of images, messages, and our theories (click to show/hide)

[Enemy post]

Your link is broken by some quotation marks.

[Eschar]

Thank you. I've fixed it now.

[Enemy post]

Hm. So, I tried this game out. I had two false starts, one because I accidentally turned it off while trying to pause, and one because I got interrupted and couldn't finish it at the time. However, I learned from the first two playthroughs that the game always provides enough time for me to minimize it and take screenshots.

On the one hand, I was already pretty sure this game is just pointlessly messing with us and there's no greater story beyond maybe some "remember to drink your Ovaltine!" reveal. The Ovaltine is probably depression, in this analogy. I also need to update my RTD today.

On the other hand, I love this sort of thing. Let's do this.

Spoiler: My third playthrough-lots of giant images (click to show/hide)

The game opens up with these color bars, followed by a blurry CBS logo.



The first thing you see is a little chamber with the Moon in it.



You can freely look away from the TV at this point. You can't do that again for the rest of the game.



I like the little wobbles on the screen. I also can't see any of the details in the dark room we're in. I forgot to get a good shot of the Moon when I played, so I went back to get that picture.

The main game then begins. It's a semi-random collection of little scenes with titles. I missed the first few titles, but I started writing them down after a bit. The titles don't always seem to be consistent, as well. Maybe there's little differences in the levels when the title shifts, but I didn't see any. Each time I played, this was the first scene.



It's a looping nighttime shot of some buildings that goes on for a while.

After that, I had to dig a grave.




You're working in the snow, and if you turn around you can see that house with a light coming from the door. Did you know gravediggers make an average annual salary of $47,990 in Pennsylvania? Anyway, I then started noting the titles of the scenes. There's no pause button, but the game never advances on the transition screens. The titles are always all lowercase.

-10 feet out 6 feet down


This was the first that I'm fairly sure had a different name before. It's just a live action shot of a beach. I was never able to do anything during the live footage.

-close my eyes




This is the first appearance of what I want to call the Dark City. You can wander freely around here for a couple minutes. The most noticeable structure is that large tower in the center of the city. They're rare, but there's a few lighted windows hidden away here. I posted the ones I found above. If you're fast enough, you can find exits from the city and wander around outside. There's some hills, and you can fall off the world if you go far enough.

-here are the hollow places



You just flip this egg over a bunch of times, with shaky physics. I always got the shot of a boiling pot after the egg.

-there





This one starts out with cutting up this sausage thing. The hand doesn't look like it's going to stop as you advance down the meat, but it switched before I could chop up my hand both times I tried. After the knife is footage of a showerhead, followed by wandering through a dark and foggy wood. If I advanced quickly enough, I could see places where the trees weren't attached to the ground properly. At the edge of the level, the trees just floated off into the void.

-a bad habit of mine



This one starts with an animation of some sort of flower-thing gradually rotating and unfolding. I hate it. After that is footage of a snowy branch. That's nice I guess.

-a cloak of petals





This one started with the only scene I've noticed of the Dark City in the day. It's the same map, I'm pretty sure. The clouds are black on the inside for some reason. It then showed me footage of some parked cars. The only movement was a moth flitting around that silver car on the bottom left. Then it switched to something like a tomb, with a tree in the largest room. On one of the other playthroughs, the tree wasn't here and there was an inaccessible hole in the ceiling. It then switched one more time, to a first-person perspective of a flaming meteor in space with little spheres and triangles going by.

-i'll swallow my own ashes



Beach footage and the Moon is in my fridge. Moving on.

-fridge friend




I got interrupted here, I had to go get some blood off the floor. When I returned to the game, I started the level and was sealed into a tomb. You can jump around here, but it doesn't get you out. After a few seconds, I went to an upper hallway in a house. There's no way out of the hallway, but there is a window looking down on what looks like the spot where you dig the grave, but I don't see a matching window from the gravedigger's perspective.

-we're stronger than we believed

stronger than we ever wanted to be

The game pulls a new trick here. The title shifts after you click to start the first time, revealing the second half. The titles aren't entirely random, because I'm sure this was the same title it had the first time. In this bit, you frolic around a large field, with magic dust trailing behind you. You can also jump very high there. After that, you watch some helicopter footage. I think this is as far as I got in previous runs. Notable scenes I missed this time include one where you climb either up or down an infinite ladder, and one where you open your fridge, but it's normal instead of having the Moon inside.

-nothing ends

-but everything must rest
This one started in the normal Dark City, but then I was suddenly teleported to a large enclosed room. After that, the entire city slowly floated away into the sky with a rumbling sound. This also removed my "cage". Once most of the buildings were gone, the color bars came up again. The skip button didn't work after a while, so I think that's the end.