An attempt to summarize “Catastrophe Crow!”.

By BMB

What has been found?

We’ve found several ciphers that have been used throughout the investigation to decipher
several kinds of puzzles and to find hidden messages, so far, the ones we have found is
Crow, Vigenère cipher, keyboard cipher and the Ocean Quest Cipher which you can read
more about in the document, we’ve also found an email address that has given us several
clues, a total of 5 different YouTube channels involved in this, a twitter account for one of
the channels, another of a supposedly ex-Opus Interactive Employee, 14 videos, etc.

Where should I begin?

For starters you should start by the video playlist to get a grasp of the story, I personally
recommend to first watch “WHAT HAPPENED TO CROW 64?” since is the video that gives
out the most information and the base of the whole series in case of the others there is no
real order except to the two “_” videos which you won’t understand without reading the
emails, and that also applies to “Catastrophe Crow!” Development Documents which you
would need to check Ulrich Aderman´s Twitter since it contains context to that video.

Interpretation of the story.

DISCLAIMER: As the tittle says, this is more of an interpretation based on the events we
see on the videos, the emails, other related content, and some of the theories me and
other people of the community have come up with, it is highly advised that you have
already watched every video in the series so far, at the moment of writing, the latest
video in the series is the second “_” video, so bare that in mind, also I will have to go on
several tangents to make sense out of some things, without any further ado, let’s begin.

The year is 1995, Opus Interactive a German game company, directed by Manfred Lorenz
known perfectionist and avid sailor (husband of Marta Lorenz and father to Nils Lorenz
and Thea Lorenz), released Ocean Quest late on the life of the SNES being a great success,
which he would win a AIAS Hall of Fame Award in 1996, In January of that a year he would
start the development of Crow 64 (later named Catastrophe Crow!) for the Nintendo 64
inspired by a drawing made by his daughter Thea, later in 1997 Opus Interactive would
publicly reveal the game in the Spaceworld videogame conference of the same year, at
the same time Opus Interactive sent review copies of Crow 64 to various game journalists
and would do interviews about the development and features of the game, one of this
features is what is known as “The Eternal Revival System”, this system for what we know,
would ever so slightly modify the level every time the player died, the reviews by the
journalists were positive but they also mentioned “anomalies and unusual content”
appearing in the game which is most likely related to something Manfred said in one of his
interviews, were he mentioned “The Eternal Revival System” being buggy and still
unfinished. Between 1998 and 1999 the game was renamed to “Catastrophe Crow!” so
well be referring to it as CC from now on, the game was planned to release on the
Christmas of 1999, but something would happen that would change Manfred and would
sent the game into development hell, programmers were completely left on the dark and
texture artists were told to make strange and out of place assets that had no place in the
game, several disgruntled employees of Opus Interactive would come out and say things
such as “Lorenz hasn’t gone home over many months” or that “there was something in
the game, something that was not his intention” which would make the game be delayed
to February of the year 2000, around that time Marta Lorenz would leave Germany and
another Opus developer would plead to Manfred to let them release the game saying
“think of the player, to what he replied “the player is gone”.

By March of 2001 Manfred laid off all of the company´s staff due to crippling debt, he
would then spent the rest of 2001 alone in Opus´s offices working on the game until at the
end of that year, when the Nintendo GameCube was announced, sometime after that
debt collectors arrived at Opus just to find it completely abandoned and with no
development hardware whatsoever, he is reported missing, and later his boat was found
floating in the North Sea with what appeared to be a suicide note, where he expressed the
following:

“Marta,

You were always in the right — and remain it till the last day.

It is impossible to look into people's heads to decode their behavior; to find out why we
are so cruel to one another. We both did what we thought was right — and yet, we could
accuse one another of insanity. You have only taken from me — and I from you.

So, the world can remain open, my path is set in place. I have — finally — gone home.
-M”

Now, this leaves us with a couple of questions, but first we must answer, what made
Manfred do the things he did, as I’ve already mentioned he was perfectionist and took his
work extremely seriously with is apparent with his comments were he refers to CC “as
beyond a game” or “it would push the boundaries of player experience”, from that and
the events of the videos, it is considered Manfred worked in the game to a point of
obsession and to the point of neglecting his own family in favor of working in the game,
which would give more sense to the phrase said at the begging of Adam´s playthrough of
the game, which we believe is Marta telling her daughter Thea to try to contact Manfred
since all of Marta´s efforts to contact him failed, so Thea walked down the stairs of her
home in attempt to reach the phone downstairs but tripped and was badly wounded from
that (we think this is what happens because of the scene in WHAT HAPPENED TO CROW
64?, where Mr. Crow falls down the stairs and a brain diagram shows up) after releasing
what had just happened Marta calls for help and then attempt to contact Manfred about
what just happened (which explains the phone found in the house and also the constant
ringing phone through the video and the other videos of the series, representing the guilt
Manfred feels for ignoring Marta), but as always he didn’t pick up and would later get the
bad news, and by the moment he received the news, it was already too late, Thea had
already died of her injuries, Manfred both angry and sad of the events, puts the blame on
her wife and son (explaining why in “Catastrophe Crow N64” the picture changes from
what looks to be a picture of Manfred and his family to a picture of Father Crow, Mr. Crow
and the big and small monster, and confirms what the monsters represent, being the big
monster “scarecrow” a representation of Marta and the small monster “iguana” a
representation of Nils which explains why Mr. Crow is approached by both when he falls,
representing both Nils and Martha running up to Thea when she fell, it also gives potential
information to why Nils´s monster crawls possibly meaning he was young enough at the
time that he could only crawl, the ending where the room is filled with water and both
monsters appear could mean two things, one Thea´s life support was cut representing the
water and the way the monsters take Thea´s corpse a.k.a. Unnamed Crow, we also know
this is Thea since the scream is of a female voice, could possibly represent how Manfred
saw the situation, as them taking away Thea from him, which is further proven by the
“You have only taken from me — and I from you.” line in Manfred´s “suicide” note, he
took away his family bonds and very probably their livelihoods, and in his perspective she
took Thea from him), and goes back into CC´s development and that’s the point where the
development of CC became development hell, and everything else is history, it’s also
important to mention the idea of Manfred taking his own life is also backed by the scene
where Father Crow (other evidence that Father Crow represents Manfred are the fact he
also uses glasses, the family photo, the ending of the video that represents Manfred
watching Thea at her death bed, the fact he’s almost always seen at the “Work” building
that could represent the fact his obsession with his own work, and also the scene where
his typing into a computer with what looks like a life support, which also represents the
state of the game and is further proven when the text he says once translated, translates
to “I AM IN HELL”) jumps from a boat with what looks to be the development hardware
that was missing (which obviously represents his suicide).

Throughout all of the series there are codes that when translated give the following
message (This further proves the idea of Thea being dead and Manfred not being able to
be with her in her final moments):

Dearest Thea
I am sorry I could not be with you in the end
I was too afraid
I ran and now
I am in hell
One I made myself
I dreamed of you playing this one day
But you never will
Please forgive me my little crow
Please forgive me both of you
Dad
This is only for your little brother now

It is also important to mention what happens in the latter videos which could also be
related to the last part of the message, in both “Forest Level” and “Let’s play Catastrophe
Crow! 64 – Ep1” we are shown part of the Forest level, and in both videos Mr. Crow
stumbles upon a mirror that shows for a couple of seconds Nils´s monster coming out of
it. In both videos Mr. Crow´s bandage will disappear after this, but in “Let’s play
Catastrophe Crow! 64 – Ep1” Mr. Crow then approaches Father crow who is “swimming in
the water”, and will say a series of dialogues:

…?
You always looked alike…
Of course I remember you
(Game freezes)
You loved to count
And sing your name
Round and round
Of course I remember you

I believe this is a message directed straight to Nils, the reason Nils´s monster pops out of
the mirror and Mr. Crow´s bandage is removed is because Mr. Crow no longer represents
Thea at that point, Mr. Crow now represents Nils, it makes sense since Nils wasn’t injured,
the way the message is structured and the possibility the mirror could be a way to
represent Mr. Crow is Nils after that, it makes sense because of how mirrors work, mirrors
show our reflection, Mr. Crow.

That is for both of the “_” videos, now, for “Catastrophe Crow!” Development Documents
we believe that the documents shown in the video contain some sort of code we are yet
to understand, and there’s also the doubt in everyone’s mind of if Ulrich should be
trusted, sometimes in ARG´s there’s a phenomena called game jacking where a person
not-associated with the creators create fake clues to deceive the players, because of the
quality put into Ulrich´s document we think he is legit, but please keep that in mind, for °
we were able to find an image of what is believed to be a “key” using the audio in the
video, it also important to note that its not the first time this happens, since in the
previous videos there were also cases of images hidden in audio, and there may still be
several that we are yet to find.

Now this is already quite complex, but it gets even weirder, when we found all of the
videos we checked the info tab of the channels we found, and we got several emails that
when combined gave us an email address that we believe belongs to Manfred Lorenz
since if you combine the name of all of the channels you get his name. The weird part is
that he never replies when referred as Manfred Lorenz, but will reply if referred as M L, he
explains that he published this videos, and made all of the puzzles in an attempt to contact
his son Nils and to meet him on the date of his birthday on a place he and his family used
to go to during holidays, which at the moment of writing we have not find neither of
them, and probably related to the 2 “_” videos, since these videos have “Father Crow”
standing still almost like if he’s waiting for someone, this could also mean that we missed
the date or not, this gets really confusing considering one of the videos outright makes a
representation of Manfred´s suicide which makes several of us wonder if M L is really
Manfred or if M L is Manfred but not in the way you would normally think, which relates
to the theories of Manfred being stuck in the game in some capacity.