10 bands ARG tracks paranormal VHS cassettes all over Sweden
Earlier this spring, TikTok user hamcitynr2 moved into a new ground floor apartment in Stockholm. A few weeks after settling in, he found a strange flyer with GPS coordinates taped to a road sign outside his apartment, just out of reach of the street. Curious, he did what too many of us would have done in that situation: he balanced uncertainly on his windowsill, grabbed the leaflet, and set off to examine the coordinates with the words “beautiful day not to be murdered.”
During that trip, hamcitynr2 (usually referring to his channel’s followers as an “H”) discovered that the first thing he learned was a series of ten VHS tapes, hidden by an unknown figure for equally unknown reasons. When he realized what was going on, the channel changed 10_band, and a community was formed to help track them down. For the past five months, H has collaborated with his followers to recreate seven of these bands, and acted as an impromptu Swedish travel guide through Stockholm’s more esoteric places for a deeply intimate eater. But recently, the bands have triggered strange events that border on the paranormal, and other forces are beginning to pay attention to H’s otherwise light-hearted search.
10 band: First Person Gaming, Empowered By Silence
As you may have guessed, 10 band is a TikTok-centric alternative reality game created by the actor who plays H. The vast majority of videos are recorded from a first-person perspective, with a silent H that provides comments through the videos’ subtitles. This is a very effective method for the viewer to project themselves into H, because years of video games have conditioned our senses to embody avatars in exactly this way.
While 10 band has increasingly expanded outside this framework by allowing H to talk to the camera, it is often reserved for moments where he either summarizes the story so far or describes events that took place outside TikTok. Because of these updates, it is possible to experience 10 band exclusively through updates to the main channel, although the story has spread further Youtube and Tick thanks channels, websites, and even one custom sidescrolling video game.
Because the game’s structure draws so much inspiration from puzzles and puzzles, the city of Stockholm plays a major role in the story. Alfred Nobel’s blast bunkers, Telephone plans Color by numbers installation. The Vårbergstoppen View platforms. Also neighborhood street art installations, with public space features prominent in ARG, in ways that go beyond passing references or picturesque environments.
While the game has gradually introduced a more narrative context around who is hiding the bands and what is actually going on, the bulk of the experience so far remains centered on the process of revealing each new VHS band, with player decisions and advice as the driving force. factor behind virtually every new charge. Due to this structure, 10 band has many videos. When this article is published, the story will have played out in over 100 “parts” on the main channel alone. But “necessary viewing” to be captured is limited to a series of summary videos in the game filmed by H that are positively dripping with the character’s dry wit.
The Story in Tapes: A new challenge with every VHS
Although there is an ongoing story, the bulk of the experience so far is focused on the actual hunt for each of the 10 eponymous bands, with the hunts as stand-alone experiences. After restoring a new band, H will usually hold a live TikTok stream to watch VHS with his followers, and record a summary video that positively drips from the character’s dry wit about what it took to get the new band. If available, these summaries are linked below.
- Volume 1: Introduction to Geocaching (Summary): The first tape was a relatively simple thing: trace the GPS coordinates through the forest.
- Volume 2: Pattern recognition (Summary): The second band involved analyzing the first band and discovering that they were missing images from a spot in the middle of Alfred Nobel’s blast bunkers. When he grabbed the tape, he heard … something. Memory is a fun thing.
- Band 3: Phone Plan Tower Lights (part 1) (Part 2): The third band introduced the players more directly to the character who sent H on the hunt via the website PeelNoElephant.icu – Solving a series of puzzles made the players play with a building’s multicolored light display to unlock the location of the last band.
- Band 4: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil (part 1) (Part 2) (part 3): H got the fourth band while still trying to find the third. The only challenge? It was locked in a combination locker and he needed to put together the 8-digit password. Three wooden monkeys offered challenges to both H and the 10 band community, culminating in a purge hunt conducted by two local players.
- Band 5: Surprise Livestream (the whole video): During the streaming of the fourth band, H was surprised with a message on VHS tapes to go out and look for the next band, without warning.
- Volume 6: Ten novels (Summary): H is put in contact with “J”, whose father went on a similar hunt for ten novels, before he disappeared. J sent over a series of scans from his father’s records, but an important part of one of the pages was torn out. After completing an intense puzzle track, the players identified the location … but something went wrong. After recording the video, H disappeared for weeks before reappearing in his apartment without remembering what happened.
- Band 7: Track steps: For the latest VHS tape, H was sent on a tour of previous tape sites, before returning to revisit the artifacts from previous missions. Touching the old tapes sent him… elsewhere. When he returned, he did so with the seventh band in hand.
These summaries do a very effective job of getting new players to speed up some of the most important narrative beats, and they are the best place to start to get a feel for the experience. The game also has one very active Discord community which provides a more detailed overview of the expanded crowd of characters such as the suspected cult-like one The Sulfur Sea Committee.
And that should be enough to dive into the experience. But some of 10 bandThe strongest moments of experience design are in the smaller moments in the series, which makes a marathon roll through the TikTok channel worth the extra effort. Some personal favorite anecdotes are reproduced below. Since 10 band can be a puzzle-filled experience, but it often undermines the expectations of anyone who expects a more uncomplicated puzzle hunt.
Road to the Third Tape: Cool Scooters
When the players tried to puzzle through the third band’s puzzle track, the players got stuck a sound puzzle on the PeelNoElephant.icu website for a couple of days, and the community became frustrated. So, H uploaded a video get the wider TikTok audience to speed up the puzzle’s progress, to send new eyes to the puzzle.
He ended the video with an entertaining anecdote: in an earlier video, he stated that he is really proud of his “cool scooter”. Well, that morning a string of three cool scooters stood just as they parked outside his apartment and he thought he would share the fun fact with his followers. Nothing new to report, just a fun thing.
However, a spectator with eagle eyes noticed that when H panned to show the third scooter, it was also revealed a new note mounted on the road sign in front of his window, in the same place as the flyer that started the whole adventure. This led H back to the original location of the first band, where he found a scary photograph and a USB device, which unlocked a new series of challenges to tackle.
The Sixth Tape Snafu: When it’s not enough to solve the puzzle
Over the course of 10 band, players noticed that the PeelNoElephant channel seemed to be controlled by two separate characters: the main character who sent H in search of the 10 VHS tapes, “X”, wrote messages in a rough, handwritten style. Every now and then, X’s flows would be cut by another character using block letters to communicate: H gave him the nickname “io”.
Towards the end of the hunt for the sixth band, ios block letters begin to take over, posting messages urging H to hurry up, and reaching the tower would help H “destroy us”. With the help of the page that is alleged to have been torn from the notebook that J’s father kept, the players found the pictured tower. After providing H with the solution, the PeelNoElephant channel updated with a video from io, and says “I have not spoken in several days”.
After receiving that message, the flow is immediately taken over by X’s handwriting, which mocks players by asking two questions. First, “what a year it was [the tower] consecrated?” After a player answered correctly in May 2021, a follow-up question was asked: “what year was the diary written?” After answering in 1991, X asks the third and final question: “since you know when the tower was built and the diary was written, why did you lead him here?” After a player accused X of using them, X replied, “you might value being maintained above his safety,” for a particular meta-jab. Thereafter, XH took over the primary 10 band lined and showed how the events at the tower took place.
10 band designed a trap in stock for players: by addressing the stylistic differences between the two halves of the PeelNoElephant channel, they could develop a story of rival factions and “choose side” by trying to help io stop X. But by trusting that stylistic differences too much, they were tricked by ios second half to provide a technically correct solution that missed the broader context of the story. And that gave X the opportunity to rejoice. During the days of H’s disappearance, the players posted a series of videos asks X for H’s safe return.
Interestingly, one of the more convincing theories put forward by players is that the game’s iconic band logo “Φ _o” is not only a dramatic representation of a VHS band, but also represents the mysterious figure who runs PeelNoElephant’s two halves: “X” ed ut “Φ” symbol and “_o” – or io, when spelled.
Seven bands down, three left
Since the newest band was only found yesterday, now is the perfect time to jump in on the hunt 10 band for the next step. The 10_Tapes TikTok account is at the center of the plot, and game’s Link Tree provides additional resources inside and outside the game to keep up, including ARG’s dedicated Discord server, Jeffs Twitter account outside the game, and a link to the game Co-fi account to show support for the project.