R3dakt3d
- Brand
- Warner Bros.
- Year
- 2020
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Current Studios
- With
- Sid Lee USA
Objective
Warner Bros. needed to build heat toward the official reveal of Gotham Knights at DC FanDome on August 22, 2020, keeping DC fans and the gaming press guessing without showing a single frame of the game. Rather than a trailer, the studio wanted a detective mystery — Court of Owls, the Belfry, Batgirl, Two-Face — for Reddit and Twitter to piece together themselves.
Solution
At r3dakt3d.com, the player holds down a central button to unlock what looks like a secret terminal from the Belfry, Batman's hidden headquarters. Four numbered slots appear, each counting down to its own release day; only one unlocks per day, so there's no skipping ahead. The code itself isn't on the site — it's hidden in glitch-distorted videos posted to the campaign's Twitter account, forcing players to crowdsource the decryption online before typing it in. A correct entry unlocks a piece of classified intel: first a corrupted map of Gotham marking a beacon, later more Belfry footage, and on the final day, a file simply labeled "Trailer 1." Players who cracked all four codes in sequence found they formed a barcode matching Detective Comics #359 — Batgirl's first appearance.
- 1
The player lands on r3dakt3d.com, a single-page terminal disguised as Code Black, the internal system of Belfry, the secret Gotham hideout — no Warner Bros. branding or game title appears anywhere on the page.
- 2
The player presses and holds a central button; the hold gesture unlocks the terminal and reveals a code-entry screen.
- 3
The entry screen shows four separate code slots, each running its own countdown; a slot only activates on its designated day, so the player must return once daily across four consecutive days rather than clearing all four at once.
- 4
The three-digit code for each slot is never posted on the site itself — it is hidden inside a glitch video on the campaign's Twitter account, which tells players outright that the input code is missing and directs them to the attached footage; players extract it by scrubbing the video frame by frame or by relying on the answer being cracked and shared across Twitter and Reddit.
- 5
Entering the correct code each day unlocks that day's exclusive reveal: a distorted Gotham map with a marked waypoint, a cryptic screenshot, a glitchy interior tour of Belfry with flashing frames spelling out "TWO FACE," and finally a file labeled "Trailer 1" — each unlock can be downloaded or shared.
- 6
Players who string all four codes together in order get a secondary payoff outside the terminal: the twelve digits form the EAN barcode of Detective Comics #359, the debut of Batgirl — a reward that exists only in the mind of whoever makes the connection, not on the site.
- 7
Shortly before the official reveal, code entry on the site is shut off and players are pointed to WB Games Montréal's DC FanDome presentation, where the teased title is unveiled as Gotham Knights.
