Over the summer, “Dress to Impress” (DTI) gained rapid popularity, drawing many back to the popular video game, “Roblox.” The premise is simple: a competitive dress-up game where players must put together an outfit under a given theme in under five minutes. The competitive nature of the game and the creative freedom to cultivate different outfits has many hooked on it.

Huntington Beach High School (HBHS) senior Katie Tran said, “I enjoy the dress-up aspect of the games and the ability to layer different clothes on top of one another to create a fresh look. This method fosters creativity and self-expression by pushing the players to be innovative with their clothing choices and adds their own touch of originality to it.”

While DTI is widely played and loved, a more obscure aspect is the lore: a winding and captivating story revolving around Lana, the lady who works in the DTI salon. For a game meant for children, especially on a platform like “Roblox,” there is a surprisingly deep amount of detail and effort put into the plot, making a deep dive into it quite extensive. 

Marian Hsieh, a HBHS senior said, “I have spent hours upon hours researching and watching videos on Lana’s nail salon. I find it so fascinating that the developers not only created a dress up game but a whole well-written plot behind the regular game mechanics.”

Lana’s Story

Lana is the salon lady who can do the player’s nails and the only non-player character (NPC) in the actual game of DTI. Her story began during the April Fool’s update, where she was shown to have tears running down her face and her diary was found on the shelf next to her desk. This diary was opened to a page where Lana expresses how much she hates her job as she is overworked and dehumanized. 

As a result, she states that she wants to burn the salon down. In a later diary entry she lists people that have wronged her, saying that she wants to take revenge on them. This list includes Gigi, the creator of DTI, and various other developers, three of which she has already taken hostage. Lana hates these people for holding her at this job, especially Gigi who took advantage of Lana’s huge amount of medical debt to overwork and financially blackmail her.

Eventually, the diary is updated to have a new entry, revealing that the Lana found in the salon is actually a doppelgänger and the real reason why the three developers went missing. She pleads for help, saying that Gigi is keeping her hostage and that she doesn’t know where she is. 

The Awakening and Saudade

The diary also contains the player ID “5759585595” which leads to Lana’s “Roblox” account and more clues about what is happening to her. A couple important details from this account is that Lana has a group named “…Saudade” which are her supporters for a group against The Awakening, and her closest supporters in this group are known as the Coterie. 

To explain more about what The Awakening is, players can look at  Lana’s “YouTube” account, where in the first video on the account show that it is a group made with the purpose of serving an unknown entity. However, the entity seems to be angry at Lana for exposing the truth about The Awakening by revealing her doppelgänger. While Lana most likely fell into this cult-like group due to her medical debt, she seems to be fighting back to create a rebellion using Saudade.

Questionnaire

Also on Lana’s “Roblox” account are various games she created: “Forest,” “Questionnaire,” and “Sanningens Galleri.” The most significant events to the lore occurred within “Questionnaire,” which were only active when Lana announced them. During these livestreams, Lana would answer questions by any players present in the game. 

During one of the first questionnaires, Lana claimed that the missing developers were kidnapped by her doppelgänger and that she had no idea what was going on. She also explained how The Awakening lured her in by promising to pay off her medical debt. However, during the questionnaire many of her answers contradicted as she began to say that she actually loved the salon and that The Awakening was evil. At the end of it, all the players participating in the game were kicked out with the message saying that the Lana they were talking to was not real.

Eventually, the server was updated to have a house containing a new version of Lana’s diary. In her diary, Lana revealed that she had a hand in the deaths of Coterie members Jayla, Jisoo, Nicholas, and Sadie; describing how different parts of their bodies were taken apart. She then wrote about how it was so easy to make everyone believe that she was a victim and that now she would make everyone pay for how they treated her. Because of this diary entry, we now realize that Lana was actually working with The Awakening the whole time and using doppelgänger as scapegoats. Her group, Saudade, was also just a ruse to gain people’s trust, and she now plans to use the Coterie as sacrifices for The Awakening.

Lana then escalated her actions, beginning to kill more people in the Coterie. In a later questionnaire, Lana announced that she would be executing the player’s Raphael because he betrayed her by exposing that she stole a player’s eye. She then kills Sunny as well as another player named Michael because she states that they also betrayed her. All of these deaths caused Nelly, another player part of her Coterie, to kill Lana in an act of defiance. While at the time they thought this was the end of her evil, it is later revealed that the Lana Nelly killed was a doppelganger and the horrors were not yet over.

Agamemnon

With all this talk of doppelgangers and sacrifices, it is probably unclear why Lana is really doing all of this. Well, Lana’s other game “Fortress” reveals more about what The Awakening really is. Here, players discover that Lana has been serving through The Awakening is called Agamemnon, who is using Lana to get back to his true form and release him from a prison-like dimension. In the game, notes are scattered around which reveal that Agamemnon was the one taking over Lana to commit murders and spread lies as well as the one creating all of the doppelgängers. He talks about trying to create the perfect Lana, and once he achieves his true form he will kill her.

Essentially, Agamemnon has brainwashed Lana into thinking that her actions are for good and killed people who wronged her in an act to gain her trust. However, her role in Agamemnon’s plan is slowly running dry as it slowly comes to fruition. The bodies of Jayla, Jisoo, Nicholas, and Sadie were taken apart to use for his body. The bodies of Sunny, Raphael, Michael, and the doppelgänger of Lana’s body (who was killed by Nelly) were used as sacrifices to open the portal for Agamemnon to escape his prison. While the portal is now open and most likely leads to the in-game world of “DTI,” Agamemnon’s goals for once he enters the portal are still unclear.

The Present

In a recent update, there was a secret room you can find by walking through the wall between the hair salon chairs and the makeup chairs in the salon room. This drops you into a room where the real Lana is locked up in a cage and there are various writings on the wall. In addition, Lana has been replaced by Lina who now sits in Lana’s original seat. The secret room along with Lana’s replacement seem to signal that Agamemnon’s plan is truly in its final stages as it looks like he is trying to get rid of Lana for good. 

While this may seem like a lot of information, this article only touches the tip of the iceberg in terms of the lore. If you want to know more, callmehhaley has very extensive summary videos along with videos of her participating in every questionnaire. Lana’s story is also not yet over, as more updates to the game also hold updates to the lore.

Hsieh said, “I’m looking forward to the Halloween update! There have been many lore updates recently, with the new secret basement where Lana is locked, Lana’s replacement, Lina, taking over the nail salon, and Lana doppelgängers glitching in the forest game. I think all of this is a build up for the Halloween update, when something serious is going to go down.”

Many hope that Lana will be set free from Agamemnon, but her future is still uncertain. Hopefully, in this next update many questions will be answered. Regardless, this amount of story and detail is highly impressive and adds an exciting layer to an already beloved game.