Yesterday Cabel Sasser, the co-founder of Panic, revealed a little-known secret only found in the Switch port of Firewatch, a game his company published back in 2016. Turns out, there’s a fun platformer hidden in it. And (almost) nobody found it!
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of Firewatch, Sasser shared a fun and surprisingly elaborate secret. It involved first finding an odd and easy-to-miss note stuck to a random sign in the game. Once players find this, a new location on the map appears and through a series of steps shared in a Twitter thread, players can unlock “Forrest 64" a hidden N64-inspired platformer.
The mini-game has its own music, which was composed by Sasser himself as well as multiple stages and collectibles. However, it went mostly unnoticed by players. Though some players did find it. For example, YouTuber Super Nintendad found the secret in 2018, shortly after the game was ported to Nintendo’s hybrid console.
His video is where Sasser grabbed the clips seen in the Twitter thread.
The full Easter egg involves a few different stages and secrets. It’s wild to think that this was all crammed into the already impressive Switch port of Firewatch. Now to see if there is an action-platformer buried deep within Gone Home.
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