Just catching my 3333rd post in this trap here :3 I'm once more doing an actual logic puzzle giveaway where you may already be familiar with the puzzle type: nonogram (perhaps you know it under paint-by-numbers or some other name dunno).

Basically there's some black-and-white picture on a grid and there are numbers as hints for columns or rows that tell you lengths of continuous painted blocks in that column or row (in the order specified). So you know how many continous grid cells you gotta paint over before there's at least one unpainted one that separates the block from the next one on that row or column, but you don't know the exact position. The point is of course to figure out the actual positions of all painted cells, crossreferencing the hints from columns and rows, so in the end you get the original b/w image.

The wiki article I linked should cover it well.

Anyway - the picture on my puzzle is mostly irrelevant to the giveaway.. mostly. It should become apparent once you solve it (you do need to solve it). Your final goal is to get to the giveaway using link with the format:

http://steamgifts.com/giveaway/#XXXX

where # is a digit and X signifies some capital letter. I shouldn't really be needing to provide this info but there you go. My earlier slitherlink puzzle was giving people some unintended trouble what to do with it once solved so I hope now this current one will be more apparent even to the newcomers.

Should go without saying - do not share the giveaway with anyone once you get to it!

The nonogram

The timer - 2012 Oct 15, 2100 ZULU (I think :3)

Solution

Well it's a nonogram what can I say. Should be obvious enough how to solve. The finished picture had unicorn YEST IT WAS AN UNICORN NOT A DONKEY, heart, an arrow and the giveaway code.

The arrow got some people confused it seems.. It was there merely to ascertain the social bias of left-to-right, top-bottom reading. But some thought it points to one of the Vs so it should go after 1, I guess?

Ultimately though that was one of the reasons I gave out the format. There were only 4! = 24 permutations to try out if for some reason the one you thought is right, wasn't - and many of those permutations were clearly not a good option, either. 24 is less tries than guessing one letter out of 26..

Without further ado:

The solution (courtesy and personal touch of Toff)