Q: Aquila pressure pad puzzle

[Thendarion]

I can't make heads or tails of the pressure pad puzzle. Did I miss a hint or something?

[marcusbmr]

You might be right that the clues are too subtle in that puzzle. Every pad plays a different tone as long as it's active. It also activates one of the lights of the mural. But both is very unflashy. The puzlze is mostly about listening and making sense of the oath and putting it in right order. Wrong combinations of the 8 lines make less sense. The pause between lines needed to be long to give the player freedom to move in between and activate the nexr pads. Maybe we should consider putting in more prominent clues for the timing in an update. Thanks for your feedback.

Regarding the phone puzzle: the puzzle here was to find out Helliwell was female, which you could by reading the newspaper, finding their hidden number and calling them. Once you've done that you can mention the article to all FEMALE characters. When you talk to the correct woman about the article, you solved the puzzle.. It can be straight-forward, but it needs a bit of trying out of course.

[gRRRz]

the problem with this puzzle nobody seems to mention is there are bits of phrases that are told between the pads bits. You have not only to press the pads in the right order but also wait for the bits that are told between the pads for the whole thing to make sense (from the second pad press I think). then it works. I got it in the end but it's NOT straightforward. If you put the third too fast it doesn't work.
edit:
missed the explanation by one the devs; so I didn't really understood which pads triggered the second line after a blank, and got it by accident. this game has a few hard puzzles (this one and the truths one specially). I got stuck in quite a few places.
I also solved the computer library puzzle pretty randomly; so I was quite lost after that because I didn't understand what I had accomplished.

[arclight]

It's not that the clues are subtle; even ignoring the (second) response sentence, it's easy enough to grammatically arrange the 4 fragments. Even brute-forcing the arrangement is tractable using combinatorics & the Pigeonhole Principle: 4 ways to choose the first entry, 3 ways to choose the second, 2 ways to choose the third, leaving 1 for the fourth & final fragment -- 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 24 combinations, easily reducible by eliminating fragments that make no sense initially. But even if you get the ordering right, there's no indication that there is a time limit on solving the puzzle. Nothing in the story indicates this is timed, there are no visual, audio, or other cues to indicate that time is critical (I know, I've beaten this point to death...)

By the time I got to the Truths at the end, I had completely given up on legitimately solving the puzzles. As a player or as a character, I wasn't interested joining the cult so there was zero motivation to memorize the Five Truths or their order. I understood the hinting from Cardero but was so fed up with the brainwashing puzzle as an irrelevant hoop to jump through that I cheated past it and I regret nothing. Again, it didn't add to the story, it was irritating, I couldn't back out of it, and it was neither interesting nor fun.

One of the major problems with pixel-hunt games in general is often there is a "but we have to put a puzzle here because this is a puzzle game" pressure that works against the story, the play experience, and overall enjoyability. Mechanics and puzzles for their own sake, regardless of whether they fit or make any sense (Note that there's a time limit on the Aquila puzzle but no sense of urgency trying to escape from the collapsing base). "But if we don't have puzzles, it's just a Walking Simulator" So what - if the story, art, & experience are good, who cares? :/

Overall I enjoyed the game but there were too many progress-blocking puzzles that didn't serve the story which could have been dropped without hurting the game at all.

[leisureX]

Originally posted by mrcsbmr:

Maybe we should consider putting in more prominent clues for the timing in an update. Thanks for your feedback.

Please don't do that! If you do, you'll be preventing newcomers to this game from enjoying this (IMO) magnificently clever puzzle (unless they somehow get an older version)! And the realization this is a *timed* puzzle is the best part!

This is one of the best puzzles in the game, it took me a looooong time to figure it out, but the satisfaction once I did was worth it :) it was a few months ago, but I still remember the moment that I realized that this is a timed puzzle! :)
(I think my experience with escape rooms also helped figuring it out, because this is definitely an escape-room-type puzzle.)

I too have been playing these games since the early 90s, and I don't see any problem with this puzzle. If anything, modern PnC adventures have become TOO easy.



I want to compliment the devs on this clever and uncompromising puzzle design, which is unfortunately a rare sight in modern PnC adventure games, which, it seems, are designed with a fear of players getting stuck on puzzles for too long, as if that's a bad thing (well, depending on whether the puzzles are "fair", which in this case it definitely was), and the result can often be a challenge-less click-fest.
Please don't be discouraged from including such puzzles in your future adventure games! You can always incorporate a hint system to keep everyone happy :) which brings me to my final request - if you do decide to patch this puzzle, don't change it, just add an optional hint suggestion that would pop if the player fails a few times. :)

[CipherΞHawk]

Originally posted by leisureX:

Originally posted by mrcsbmr:

Maybe we should consider putting in more prominent clues for the timing in an update. Thanks for your feedback.

Please don't do that! If you do, you'll be preventing newcomers to this game from enjoying this (IMO) magnificently clever puzzle (unless they somehow get an older version)! And the realization this is a *timed* puzzle is the best part!

....

Sorry but I disagree, after spending several hours trying to get the sequence in the correct order and without any form of guidance it just becomes an annoying contrivance. Certainly don't mind if a puzzle is difficult, if it follows some sort of logical flow, but this puzzle does not do that, it simply works as a mechanism to artificially extend "gameplay".

[leisureX]

Originally posted by Cíphęr廾awK:

Sorry but I disagree

I assume you don't disagree with my opinion, but rather with my asking the devs not to change the puzzle in an update. Well, in general, I think that adventure game updates should only fix bugs and never change actual gameplay, unless it's an optional change so latecomers can have the same experience as early players, otherwise the update might rob them of a challenge they would've really enjoyed, as would have been my case if this hypothetical patch would've been released before I played the game (almost happened in another game).

Originally posted by Cíphęr廾awK:

Certainly don't mind if a puzzle is difficult, if it follows some sort of logical flow, but this puzzle does not do that, it simply works as a mechanism to artificially extend "gameplay".

This was just your experience, it's not an objective truth. I did find this puzzle's logical flow, so it proves that it has one, and in addition I thought it was very smart and I had a lot of fun figuring it out.
I suppose that we can at least agree that simplifying a puzzle in a mandatory way in a patch is the wrong approach (because it can rob people of a challenge they would've enjoyed) - the right approach being adding optional hints or a skip button instead.

[Debaser]

this was a bummer of a puzzle, very bizarre sentence with other phrases being repeated at you to interrupt them. the tones of the pads were a red herring and i didn't understand what the loudspeaker was saying and/or if the puzzle activated them that way. some kind of hint would have been helpful. the ways that made sense to me were not correct.

98% of the puzzles in the game are very clever but this and a couple others missed the mark (the five truths that are then repeated to you with a hint in the incorrect order? come on, thats less than helpful)

[jenj]

It's 2021.... this puzzle is still buggy. I've carefully tried many times, followed a variety of solution directions, etc.. Once Harper is in place he stands there and listens to some additional dialogue about humanity, art and peace, but nothing happens. Ready to request a refund vs. a bug fix because it seems like this is something that should have been worked out back in 2018 when the initial issue arose. : /

[Chucklehead]

I too am having trouble with this puzzle. I know I am doing the 4 pads in the correct sequence but nothing happens when I stand on the 4th. Maybe I'm missing a timing element? This is really confusing.

[reiner.stuss]

I also have problems with the aquila pressure pads. Is there any chance for the problem in german language?

[KarmaPaymentPlan]

I did the pads, it says extra things after the second one, so I wait, then the third, wait, stand on the forth, then it talks all the way to inner peace, then nothing. No door, no comment about bull crap from the main character. What the heck.

[marcusbmr]

As this keeps popping up, I'll post the complete solution to this puzzle, which, in the end, helped everyone who contacted us about it:

Each pad plays two lines with a pause in between. Listen to the sounds that are played along the lines carefully. Each pad also plays one tone. This is a TIMING puzzle (!!!). Be careful to not wait so long that one pad plays its second line. You need to place the items on the pads in the correct order while not running over the pads (that would trigger a wrong line). You got the sequence right: left, right, top, bottom. First place three items, then stand on the last pad with Harper. It sounds like you don't got the timing right.

From our internal Game Design Document:
On the island, Harper finds a strange looking, abandoned building. The door is locked. Harper takes a rock from the beach and throws it through the glass door. Once inside, Harper discovers that the place has been cleared out ­more thoroughly than the abandoned cult base in the woods. There was an old slide projector on a trolley, but it's
been smashed by the rock he threw. How annoying. It's also very dark inside, so Harper has to find the building's master power switch. When the power comes on, a recorded voice welcomes new members to the group.
There is a mural of an eagle (constellation?) on the wall, and a mosaic on the floor beneath it. The mosaic includes a number of pressure pads. Assuming the power is on, when Harper steps onto one of them, a light comes on and a recording plays. If he steps off it, the recording stops. If he steps back on, the recording begins again from the start.
The recordings take words from an Aquilarian oath or declaration.
TRACK 1: I bide with the firmament ......... Was born for
TRACK 2: Below of man and ......... In brotherhood to find
TRACK 3: Beast, ......... My inner peace
TRACK 4: A star, a ziggurat ......... life, enlightenment and art

So, if the pressure pads are stepped on at the right time. They play like this:
“I bide within the firmament a star,
A ziggurat below of man and beast,
Was born for life, enlightenment and art,
In brotherhood to find my inner peace.”

In German:
"So erwart' ich den Stern am Himmelszelt.
Das Starke soll siegen voller Kraft.
Gebor'n für Erleuchtung, von Kunst erhellt.
Um Frieden zu finden in Bruderschaft."

Once Harper works out the order the lines should play, he still has a problem. This is an exercise designed for 4 people. Harper has to move heavy objects from the room (a fire extinguisher, the slide projector trolley, the rock) onto the panels at the right moment.

If this solution doesn't help you, please don't hesitate to reach out via mail: [e-mail] or on Discord.