User:Leveloneknob/Sandbox

Huntinality 2022, subtitled Huntinality 2.0, was the second iteration of Huntinality, run by Cardinality in June of 2022.

The hunt was themed around a beta test of a new web platform, which ultimately resulted in the internet rolling back to the era of GeoCities and other build-it-yourself websites of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Plot
When the hunt started, teams received a message from an intern (introduced as "Friemd") with Huntinality 2.0 welcoming to the beta test and telling them that the "features" they would be testing looked a lot like puzzles (of course, this was normal). However as solvers progressed through the beta test, they managed to force the new system to break things enough that the entire internet reverted back to the late 1990s.

When the breakdown occurred, teams received more messages from Intern Friemd, now telling them both that they messed up and that there was a possible way to fix things if they could find the Pigeon Messenger usernames of the three non-CEO members of Huntinality's board (Scarlet Tang, Brick Zander, and Ruby Loach). In order to do this, solvers had to explore their homepages and solve more puzzles.

Once solvers had each of the board members' usernames, they were able to contact them and convince them to help bring the internet back to modern standards. When all three were gathered, Friemd was revealed (partially by Brick) to be Fred (as Friemd is an anagram of I'M FRED). It was also revealed that Fred's webpage contains a device that can accomplish exactly what is needed. Fred warned solvers that it was locked behind an extremely difficult puzzle, and sent them off to wrap things up.

When solvers tried to input the answer to the final puzzle, however, they discovered that the site was so badly coded that the answer checker disappeared before they could submit. To get around this, the board members explain that they each have some of the components needed to build another version of the device. The problem was that these components were located on their personal Huntinality accounts, and none of them remembered their passwords.

If solvers managed to help them remember their passwords, they could then use them to log in as each of the board members, revealing a final set of mini-puzzles to solve, each resulting in a component that could be used to rebuild the device. When teams did accomplish this task, they were whisked back to the present-day internet, with absolutely nothing to show for it but a virus named Huntinality 2.0 on their computer (which was quickly removed by a more tech-savvy friend).