About

Sad Satan is a horror game allegedly created by a developer named "ZK" in which the player navigates a maze made out of various shadowy hallways as distorted music and audio play in the background. In 2015, the game was popularized after it was purportedly discovered on the deep web by YouTuber Obscure Horror Corner.^[1]

Gameplay

After launching the game, a title screen is shown with the words "Game Title" written at the top, while a reversed version of the Chinese children's song "I Love Bejing Tiananmenn"^[5] plays in the background. The game begins with the player walking down a long hallway as footsteps and other noises can be heard in the background. As the player traverses the environment, the lighting and audio changes, and images depicting various topics are displayed onscreen.

History

On June 25th, 2015, the Obscure Horror Corner YouTube channel uploaded five "Let's Play" videos featuring a horror game titled Sad Satan. Within six weeks, the first video in the series gained over 850,000 views and 2,700 comments. The exact origin of the game is unknown, although it's speculated that the person behind Obscure Horror Corner channel made the game himself.

The game was rumored to have graphic content, including gore and child pornography, which Obscure Horror Corner denied. A user on 4chan claiming to be the real ZK posted a version of the game that did contain such graphic content, though it was reported by players that this version caused computers to crash.

Gary Graves Theory

In 2017, a YouTuber named Scarebere, real name Gary Graves, was arrested on charges of child pornography. He also had a Reddit account named ScarebereZK, which was created days before the "graphic content" version of Sad Satan was posted on 4chan. This led users to suspect Graves was the original ZK. YouTuber MaxMama covered the Gray Graves theory in his video on "Sad Satan" posted on October 18th, 2019.

News Media Coverage

On July 1st, 2015, the Gawker Media video game news blog Kotaku^[7] published an interview with Obscure Horror Corner, who claimed an anonymous viewer discovered the game on the deep web. On July 7th, the United Kingdom-based news site Metro^[9] published an article titled "Is Sad Satan the scariest video game ever?" On July 14th, the pop culture blog Thought Catalog^[8] published an article about the game.

Online Presence

On July 2nd, 2015, Redditor aids_muffin36 launched the /r/SadSatan^[6] subreddit for discussions about the game. On July 4th, YouTuber DrossRotzank^[3] posted a Spanish-language video about the video game, which gathered upwards of 2.2 million views and 6,000 comments in the first month (shown below, left). On July 7th, the AssombradO.com.br posted a Portuguese-language video about Sad Satan (shown below, right).

On July 9th, the SourceFed YouTube channel posted a video explaining the history of the video game (shown below, left). On July 30th, the Top 15s YouTube channel ranked Sad Satan as #15 in a list of "disturbing real deep web sites" (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References