Video Game / Welcome to the Game II

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The sequel to 2016's Welcome to the Game, developed by Reflect Studios and released in April 3. 2018.

Clint Edwards is an investigative reporter searching for a missing woman named Amelea, who was targeted by a sinister cult known as the Noir. His one and only lead is the Shadow Web, the deepest and darkest depths of The Deep Web, so he pursues it relentlessly. All the while, he's being hunted down by several threats: hackers, a hitman, a Serial Killer, the police, and the Noir cultistis, who are the ones responsible for her disappearance.

The spin-off, Dead Signal, was released in 2023, featuring several returning characters. The sequel, Welcome to the Game III was released in 2026.

WARNING: All spoilers for Welcome to the Game are unmarked.

The game provides examples of:

• All for Nothing: Clint's heroic crusade to expose the Noir and save Amalea's life turns out to be just a sick Deadly Game, engineered by Adam for his eager viewers. He endured so much to track down the Noir, combing through the Deep Web and avoiding killers gunning for him, only to be given a choice: let Amelea die and walk free, or sacrifice himself by taking her place. The subsequent installments confirm that canonically, Clint chose the former.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Apparently, in the Welcome to the Game universe, everyone on the Deep Web is either a psychopath or an irredeemable monster.
• Artistic Licence – Law: The NYPD or any US law enforcement agency for that matter cannot arrest you for using a proxy network; since doing so is perfectly legal within the US.
• Author Avatar: Adam returns from Welcome to the Game, now giving Clint tips on the Deep Web and how to save Amalea. However, he turns out to be the Big Bad, who put Clint through the wringer for the sake of entertainment.
• The Bad Guy Wins: All Adam wants is entertainment in the form of streaming someone die violently. Whether you choose yourself or Amalea, he gets exactly what he wants in the end.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Clint is a capable hacker, just like the other denizens of the Deep Web, except he uses it for a noble goal of saving a woman from death.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The Noir Couple use a rather dark version of this. The Male Noir shows up someplace to get your attention, and if you approach him, his female partner will come up behind you and pummel you to death.
  • Some of the website names or summaries on the Deep Wiki make you think they're one thing, but they're actually even worse.
    • "I Love Cats" just sounds like a website by someone who likes to own cats as a pet, and the wiki description is just "Meow!" so it looks seemingly innocent... then you find out it's about a furry who has sex with his cats.
    • "My Gut" is described on the wiki as "shit pills". They're not pills that make you shit, they're pills made from shit. ^note Which ''is'' a real-life method of delivering healthy gut flora to folks who don't produce enough of their own, not that that makes it any more pleasant to think about.
    • "Share Your Genitals" sounds like a forum for sharing pictures of your genitals, which is squicky enough. But nah, it's actually about a man who gains sexual pleasure from cannibalizing other people's genitals.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: The "I Love Cats" site. And yes, not in a platonic way.
• Big Bad: The Noir. A sinister cult operating on the Shadow Web, beneath the usual Deep Web, and using The Prey, a misogynistic Hunting the Most Dangerous Game-fueled community, as a front. They're the ones behind Amalea's abduction and two of their operatives serve as obstacles for Clint. The ending reveals that Adam, the tutorial guy, is actually the leader of the entire Noir operation who set up the whole Deadly Game in the first place all for the sake of his entertainment.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Aside from the Noir, Lucas Kumiega, the Breather, and the Police are all on Clint's trail. And, if Clint visits a certain website on the Deep Web during his quest, the Doll Maker will also join in.
• Bilingual Bonus: Lucas Kumiega speaks Polish and will give one of two lines upon finding Clint.
  "Będę się za ciebie modlił." (I will pray for you.)
  "Ty głupcze." (You fool.)
• The Cameo: Lydia, the Villain Protagonist of the first game (and one of the planned antagonists from Rides With Strangers) can be seen in Adam's office in the ending. If you beat the 1337 Mode, you can even see her dance with the Noir and the Breather.
• Carnival of Killers: A duo of homicidal cultists, a serial killer, a hitman, and a depraved surgeon are all after you at once, and that's not even counting the police!
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In Welcome to the Game, you only get a brief glimpse at the Shadow Web and The Prey. Now they're the main focus, like how the Red Room was.
  • Oh, and remember The Doll Maker — visit his website, and you will encounter him as he forces you to find him another victim.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: Lydia was a simple Deep Web lurker, looking for more ways to get off by watching people die, and her identity is not revealed until the secret ending. This time, you play as Clint, whose entire motivation and identity revealed up front, and his Deep Web quest is a noble one.
• Controllable Helplessness: The intro sequence shows a "Dead or Not" stream of Amalea describing her predicament, and a vote tally on the bottom of the page asking the viewer whether or not she should either die or live. Regardless of whether the player chooses "Dead or Not", the votes for the former will always dwarf that of the latter. Downplayed, as the outcome of the vote hasn't yet been carried out, and the goal of the game is to rescue Amalea.
• The Cracker: This time around, it's the player who hacks people, either as contracts for DOS Coin, or to get their Wi-Fi password. That doesn't stop rival hackers from targeting him, though.
• Dark Action Girl: The Female Noir is just as deadly as her male counterpart. Perhaps, even more so, since she's the one killing Clint, while the Male Noir mostly just assist her and doesn't harm Clint directly.
• Death Cult: The Noir, a cult operating on the Deep Web and dealing in murders, kidnappings, and hunting people for sport. They're acting as the Big Bad, being responsible for Amalea's kidnapping, with two of their operatives targeting Clint. In the ending, Adam is revealed to the leader of the Noir, who put Clint through all the nightmares he had to face for the sake of entertaining himself and his clientele.
• Determinator: Clint will save Amalea, even if it means ruining a few lives, defending himself from home invaders and hackers, and becoming an official target on the police's most wanted list.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Deflecting hacks in this game is much more annoying than in the previous one; but if you figure out each one, you can use cheap Backdoor Hacks and use tricks to intentionally get yourself hacked more frequently to rack up a lot of DOS Coin in the early game.
• Dissonant Serenity: Even with the stream of Amalea playing, Adam is pretty calm about providing the Justified Tutorial, which can come off as Black Comedy at first. Turns out that's not coincidence, as he's pretty comfortable with what's going on, being the one orchestrating all of it.
• Downer Ending: At the end of the game, Clint finds out that his desperate quest to save Lydia and expose the Noir was just a sick joke, conjured by Adam to entertain himself and his clientele. And then, he's faced with two choice: either live and let Amalea die, or exchange his life for hers.
• Dueling Hackers: There's still plenty of jackasses trying to invade your computer like last time, but this time, you're also one of those jackasses. You can not only deflect the hacks, but also use Backdoor Hacks to steal DOS Coin from those trying to do that to you.
• Epic Fail: This universe's equivalent to the Tor Browser doesn't seem to work very well; seeing as literally everyone is capable of tracking you down using your IP address (which is something an onion router is built specifically to prevent).
• Evil Laugh: The skull emblem every time you get hacked.
  • The Female Noir also seems rather giddy when she gets to murder Clint with her hammer.
• Featureless Protagonist: Clint is a First-Person Ghost with no confirmed appearance (until Dead Signal showed his face).
• Fictional Currency: You can buy helpful tools with DOS Coin, which you earn by mining with Remote VPNs or repelling hacking attacks (if you have any Backdoor Hacks on you).
• Fission Mailed: Once Clint finally gets an access to the Noir Tunnel, he gets a message from Adam to exit his apartment complex and get to the specified location. However, once he makes it downstairs, the Male Noir is behind the door and he knocks Clint unconscious. However, no Game Over message pops up and it's revealed that the Noir simply kidnapped Clint and delivered him to their leader, Adam himself.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: When you're hiding, the enemies' AI is microphone-sensitive.
• Hacked by a Pirate: Just like last time, hostile hackers are targeting Clint, but now Clint has an ability to not only block their attempts but to hack them back.
• Harassing Phone Call: Clint appears to have received calls from the Breather, albeit off-screen.
• Hero Antagonist: The player isn't just being hunted by criminals, he they are criminal themselves, so the police is on their ass too. They must combat this by constantly changing their Wi-Fi so the police can't track them.
• Hollywood Hacking: Like the first game, the player has to ward off hackers through minigames. In a twist, the player does just as much hacking of their own to break into their neighbors' Wi-Fi.
• I Love the Dead: The Deep Journal site tells the story, in the format of an imageboard, of a Stalker with a Crush who falls in love with his neighbor a little too much. Well, a LOT too much, seeing how he eventually killed her to use her corpse as a sex doll.
• Intrepid Reporter: Very few investigative reporters are willing to fend off other hackers, dangerous criminals, and law enforcement just to save one random woman.
• Joke Ending: The ending of 1337 mode depicts Adam applauding you, while the Noir, the Breather, and Lydia are dancing. The words like "GOD GAMER" and "YOU DID IT!!" flash on the screen, and the goofy music from the Thanks for Visiting website is blaring at the background.
• Justified Tutorial: Adam is just an anonymous tip helping Clint's investigation out by showing him ins and outs of the Deep Web and giving him a heads up on the threats going after him.
• Karma Houdini: As with the first game, all of this game's villains get away with their horrid acts unhindered, carrying on in subsequent games. As well, assuming the player triggered the Doll Maker quest, you've successfully assisted him in kidnapping more girls, whom he will use for "transformation".
• Last-Second Ending Choice: The game ends with Clint having to choose whether Amalea or himself dies.
• Live-Action Cutscene: The footage of Amelea on Dead or Not stream, in which she is played by Leah Glendenning.
• The Lopsided Arm of the Law: Neglecting to change your network every now and then will cause the police to track you down and send the SWAT team your way. Strangely enough, calling the very same police to fend off the various lunatics that are out to get you is not an option.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Noir/The Prey, a twisted homicidal cult and the Big Bad. A couple of their followers, the game's mascots, is one of the player's many threats.
• Monster Misogyny: Essentially all of the Deep Web content is men horrendously victimizing women in some way. Clint, the one man attempting to combat this misogyny — specifically in his rescue of Amalea — gets hunted by both the males and females of the Deep Web.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Of a sort, with the Noir couple. While the man will certainly get your attention and is incredibly creepy, it's the female who'll do the actual killing in jumpscares and such.
• Multiple Endings: After you somehow managed to find all the codes and meet the true mastermind in person, you're given two choices: forget everything that happened and let Amalea die, or take Amalea's place and get killed on the spot. As you can probably tell, neither of the options are good.
• murder.com: "Dead or Not" is this game's equivalent of the Red Room, a voting platform used by The Noir to let the Deep Web lurkers decide whether their hunting target gets to survive or get killed. Amalea is their latest prey and she's profoundly doomed, so it falls on Clint to save her from the cult's clutches.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Lydia, the Villain Protagonist of the previous game, makes a cameo in the ending as Adam's associate.
• Real After All: Remember the Doll Maker? Were you hoping he was just some sick, twisted troll trying to get a laugh out of people? He's real. Oh, is he ever.
• The Reveal: The ending is one big Wham Shot, kicked off when Clint gets jumped out of NOWHERE by the Male Noir. He wakes up in Adam's office, where he reveals he's the leader of Noir and the one behind Amalea's kidnapping. Not only that, however. He reveals Amalea isn't the victim being watched by thousands, Clint is. All of those security cameras around Clint's apartment were broadcasting him as he was hunted by the Big Bad Ensemble in his hopeless mission to save Amalea. Also, just for added bonus, The Breather and The Nympho are there too.
• Scare Chord: Whenever you're caught by an enemy. Notably, each enemy (except the NYPD, who don't have one) has a unique sound: Noir has a discordant guitar riff, Lucas has an orchestral note, the Breather has a rising synth screech, and the Doll Maker has an echoing synth note. Also, the hacker sound.
• Sex Is Evil: 90% of the depravity you see on the Deep Web is fueled by creepy horny men.
• String Theory: Clint has a cliche conspiracy theorist bulletin board on his wall.
• Ten-Second Flashlight: Pro-tip: make EVERY SECOND of flashlight usage count.
• Unholy Matrimony: The Noir couple, two lovers who work for a cult as murderous home invaders.
• Walking Spoiler: All enemies (the Noir, Lucas, the Police, and the Breather) are all teased at the very start of the game... except one... The Doll Maker. And since The Dog Was the Mastermind, Adam counts too.