Assassins and Feudal Japan is a thematic match made in heaven, and has been something Assassin’s Creed fans have been dying to see in a game. Well, Ubisoft seems to be gearing up to deliver with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which has been marketed with a rather interesting puzzle that involves a giant hourglass.
This curious puzzle was shown off in a tweet which was a part of Ubisoft’s press release for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. In the tweet, fans were shown an image of a giant hourglass in the Osaka region of Japan. The most interesting detail about said hourglass was a code written at the bottom of it, which reads “S89N-029S”
Fans were quick to figure out this code, which spells out “Shinobis”, if you swap out the number with its corresponding letter in the English alphabet. While the hourglass tweet code was fairly easy to decipher, it’s not the only code that has appeared in the game’s marketing across various social media, websites and even emails.
Assassin's Creed Codename Red becomes Assassin's Creed Shadows.
Tune-in for the Official Cinematic World Premiere Trailer on May 15, 9 AM PT.#AssassinsCreedShadows pic.twitter.com/xc1Q10N4Vh— Assassin's Creed (@assassinscreed) May 13, 2024
One of these hidden codes was first discovered by Reddit user ‘Busy-Jicama-3474’, who pointed out that across the Assassin’s Creed Shadows page on Ubisoft’s website, there were over 24 hidden numbers, all two-digit pairs. Also included in an email advertisement for the game, fans noticed numerous times the numbers 11, 21 and 33 were all repeated across the email, being 16 numbers long.
This is just some of the hidden codes people have discovered and the original Reddit thread goes into much more detail about the codes and the hourglass puzzle itself. Assassin’s Creed Shadows seems to be turning into one of the most highly discussed entries in the Assassin’s Creed franchise in quite some time. Aside from the puzzle, the game has received such notoriety due to it being hailed as the next flagship Assassin’s Creed title which will see players once again playing in an open world environment.
