Donnie Darko — Illustrated Playthrough

The site opens on a Win98 pop-up cycling through distorted portraits, with a red bullseye target. Click the bullseye repeatedly to advance the intro montage.

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The montage settles on “The Tangent Universe collapsed 8981 days … ago.” Click the red “.proceed.” link.

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A pop-up offers “if you have been here before, enter the Level 1 password” with a text field, or “otherwise proceed here”. As a first-time visitor, click “otherwise proceed here”. The screen then forwards automatically, assembling an animated text collage that resolves into a scanned detention-centre report on DARKO, DONALD J.

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Click the detention report to open the terminal affidavit: “AFFIDAVIT FOR WARRANT OF ARREST AND DETENTION … OFFENSE OF: ATTEMPTED ESCAPE - CLASS A”, ending with the prompt “C:>MORE ? (Y/N)”.

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Type Y at the “C:>MORE ? (Y/N)” prompt to read the arresting officer's statement (Donnie found asleep in a field, sleepwalking), which ends with another “C:>MORE ? (Y/N)”.

press “y”

Type Y again. The report dissolves into the Level 1 main menu — a cloudscape with a lone figure and several red crosshair hotspots labelled “something”, “close”, “I”, “want”…

press “y”

On the cloudscape menu, the drifting words are decoration; the three fixed red crosshairs are the level selectors. Hover the lower-centre crosshair (Level 1) and click — the screen tears apart into “THINGS AREN'T THAT SIMPLE!”, beginning Level 1.

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A thin red line leads up to the top-left. Click the first circle there — a Middlesex Times Dispatch obituary for Roberta Sparrow opens in a new browser tab. Note the surname (“a bird”), then close the tab to continue.

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A second circle further down the red line opens a second obituary (Dr Kenneth Monnitoff) in a new tab. Read it and close it; a third circle then appears.

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After both obituaries, a third red circle appears at upper-centre over the skeletal figure (“a guide in a time of great danger”). Click it: a banner unfurls reading “her name was that of a bird *******” — a seven-letter password prompt. The obituary named her Roberta Sparrow, so the answer is the bird: sparrow.

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In the small password field below the hint, type the answer — sparrow — and press Enter. The banner reshapes into a letter: Karen P. Monnitoff (Library of Congress) forwarding “The Philosophy of Time Travel” by Roberta Sparrow to Elizabeth, with instructions to hide it where it can never be found.

type “sparrow” and press Enter

Click anywhere on the letter to continue. The page clears to white and a single red line of text fades in at lower-right: “DO YOU BELIEVE IN TIME TRAVEL ?”.

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Click the red “DO YOU BELIEVE IN TIME TRAVEL ?” question. The site navigates into the Tangent area: a dark room where the shadowy figure of Frank looms behind three Win98 pop-up windows spelling out a phrase — “remember”, “one”, “word”.

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Three Win98 pop-up windows are open, spelling the phrase “remember / one / word”. Close the first window (“remember”) using the X in its title bar. All three windows close together and a new pop-up appears, lower-right: the shadowy figure of Frank with a single word — “smurf”. Remember it.

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Close the Frank pop-up (“smurf”) using the X in its title bar. The screen tears into a red fracture and the site navigates into the Tangent Universe — a destabilised mirror world (philosophy.swf), with the figure suspended at the top of the frame.

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The Tangent Universe loads (philosophy.swf): the figure hangs at the top of the frame over a red fracture, and a tiny red crosshair sits at the far-left edge of the stage. Click it — the first Win98 pop-up window slides into the lower-left.

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Click the middle of the first window. A second Win98 window opens to the lower-right.

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Click the middle of the second window. A third window opens.

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Click the middle of the third window. The windows resolve into a 2×2 grid of four, with the grandmother/Donnie figure (gran-donnie) filling in behind them.

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Click the bottom-right of the grid. The four windows take on “Microsoft Internet” title bars, then the scene dissolves and the Philosophy of Time Travel book builds itself from scattered words — finally a pop-up appears: the shadow of Frank asking “you found me… remember the word?”, with a password field.

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Type the word from Frank — smurf — into the field. It commits live: the screen fills with four Win98 windows each showing a Smurf, and red chapter crosshairs scatter down the left edge.

type “smurf”

Donnie’s letter to Roberta Sparrow lies underneath the Smurf grid — clicking a Smurf window flashes the grid hidden for under half a second, exposing the text. One word is red: “breathe” (“…I can breathe a sigh of relief…”). Click it to reveal the prize: “the word you just saw is your password to level 2.” Level 1 is complete; breathe is the Level 2 password.

reveal-and-click (8 taps)

Level 1 hides more than a password gate — Roberta Sparrow's lost book, “The Philosophy of Time Travel,” lives here too. Small red chapter crosshairs scatter down the dark left edge of the stage (their positions shift each visit); click one and the book opens on the page to the right — here its title page, by “Roberta Ann Sparrow,” 1944. (The scene renders almost black in-game; brightened here so it reads.)

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Click another crosshair to turn the page. The Foreword warns: “I pray that this book is merely a work of fiction. If it is not, then I pray for you, the reader of this book.” Its chapters read like a blueprint of the film — the Tangent Universe (“highly unstable, sustaining itself for no longer than several weeks”), the Artifact that falls from the sky, the Living Receiver chosen to return it (Donnie, “tormented by terrifying dreams, visions and auditory hallucinations”), and the Manipulated Living who “will do anything to save themselves from Oblivion.”

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The complete book, page by page. There are ten chapter crosshairs in all — hover one and its name appears; click it and that page unfurls. Captured here in full (and brightened — the game renders them almost black): the title page, the Foreword, seven chapters, both appendices, and the handwritten names of the Manipulated.

(curated gallery — no live action)

Level 1's reward word — breathe — unlocks Level 2. (In live play the now-active Level 2 crosshair on /menu.html opens a Win98 password modal; typing breathe opens the “sleep golfing” door — a giant red cross — which leads here.) The screen is a golf course at night: a cart bottom-left and the date counter ticking up from 10-02-1988.

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Click the small red square on the course. A news popup (pop3) opens in a new tab and the scene advances.

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Click the next red square. The scene turns to big red “Wake Up Donnie!” text over figures lying on the green.

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Click low-left on the course. golf.swf loads the real puzzle — draw.swf — as a second layer: Jim Cunningham's Lifeline Exercise, a FEAR ⟷ LOVE blackboard with a TV.

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Click the TV on the blackboard. It starts “Lifeline Exercise #1” — a situation about Juanita and cheating on the math test.

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Mark the X on the FEAR side: click the left half of the bar. A chalk X drops onto the lifeline.

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Move the cursor off the bar. The exercise evaluates the mark — correct — and advances to “Lifeline Exercise #2” (Ling Ling and the found wallet).

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Exercise #2 — mark FEAR again: click the left half of the bar.

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Move off the bar again. Correct — and Donnie rebuts Cunningham: “life isn't that simple… you can't just lump everything into these two categories… the whole spectrum of human emotion.”

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Click the TV. Donnie's words filter in.

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Click the TV again. The screen fills with a grid of Win98 windows, each holding one big red letter: WAKE / UP DO / NNIE.

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Click inside one of the WAKE UP DONNIE windows. The screen forwards: back on the golf course at night, a figure in blue crawls across the green while the question assembles in flying letters — “do you think he was sleepgolfing?”

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Click on Donnie — the figure in blue out on the green. He drops to the grass and crawls, a thin line tracing out from him across the course.

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Click the white arrow at the right edge. Donnie wakes on the green and a Win98 window pops the next riddle: “who found the wallet?” The answer is ling ling — though the scene moves on regardless.

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Click on. The night course gives way to a suburban street as new words stretch across the screen: “i have been waiting for you.”

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On the sidewalk — “i've been waiting for you” — click the dot. A Win98 window opens the found wallet: Jim Cunningham's ID inside.

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Click inside the wallet window. The screen cuts to black and red diagonal lines streak up toward the corner — at the tip of the longest line, a dot blinks.

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Click the blinking dot at the tip of the longest line. The Cunning Visions news article opens in a new tab — Jim Cunningham's media empire, the thread that leads to the finale. Read it and close it.

click the “[data-url]” element

Click the dot once more and the way out opens: the 'Sparkle Motion' finale. The screen here is dark, the date counter ticking — the movie is waiting for you to begin.

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Click once to begin. The finale then plays itself: red “burn it down” beams streak up from Donnie, Jim Cunningham's Virginia driver's license surfaces (45a Rose Street — remember “rose”), the Sparkle Motion dancers and BURN / DOWN windows fill the screen, and it auto-forwards back to the main menu. Level 2 complete.

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Back at the menu, the Level 3 crosshair asks for a password — “the name of the street he lives in… like the flower” = rose (Jim's address, 45a Rose Street). It opens the final section, “from the sky”: a police car and men in suits, a figure lifting a chandelier — “they made me do it” — over a fallen jet engine.

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In the date/location block (center-right) click the location — “Middlesex, Virginia,” the town from Jim's address. A Win98 popup opens with an x-ray of the chandelier.

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Click the telephone icon in the chandelier popup. The “MISSING PLANE LOSES ENGINE” article (with a spoiler warning) opens in a new tab — read it, then it closes. Back on the scene, the FAA Office of Accident Investigation document now unfurls with a red “>>> LAUNCH THE DOCUMENT” button.

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Click the red “>>> LAUNCH THE DOCUMENT” button at the bottom of the scene. The FAA document springs to life and the transcript of an extraordinary phone call begins to play.

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The transcript reads out the impossible: an exact-replica jet engine — serial numbers and hand-painted spiral matching a 747 that landed safely in San Francisco on October 2, 1988 — before the line goes dead. The engine sinks into red spirals and the screen turns to its last words: “time is up, donnie.” THE END.

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