Ancient Tikal puzzle guide.

The comprehensive 4 step guide to solving that one puzzle that some of you struggle with in Tikal

Spoiler warning

Don't read this!
This is a guide on how to beat a puzzle in a puzzle game.
Obviously, there are spoilers.

If you don't want to be spoiled. Why are you looking at a walkthrough guide? Go play the game! ;)

If however you are stuck and actually looking for an easy way to solve the puzzle, then read on.

Puzzle Basics

This puzzle is a ring position puzzle, like the one you will have encountered earlier.
The trick to this one, is that the relationship between the controls and the dials, is not linear. and the dials are not bound to each other sequentially, as in the earlier puzzle.

Instead, each control is paired with two rings.

This pairing is as follows. Rings numbered from the inside out, controls from left to right:

Control 1: - Disks 2 and 4
Control 2: - Disks 3 and 5
Control 3: - Disks 1 and 4
Control 4: - Disks 2 and 5


Each time you play, the puzzle is randomised. The exact configuration will be different each time, but the method to reach the solution is the same.

The one step. Four times.

#1:
Pick a dial that belongs to only one control. This control needs to be rotated until that dial is in the correct place. There is only one valid position for this dial, and we can find it directly.

For this guide, I decided to start with the central dial (#1) and rotated control #3.
Note how #1 (the face in the centre is now upright.


#2:
This time, I pick dial #3, and rotate control #2 to align it with the solution.

#3
Oh no, we're out of unique control to dial mappings!
Except we're not. Controls 2 and 3 are now "locked" into the solution.
Control 1 and Control 4 share one dial in common, and each have a dial linked with a "locked" control. We can treat that as a dial that only has one control.
So we pick one. I chose control #1 to rotate dial 4 into position.

#4
And now, we are left with one control and two dials, which line up with each other.
We just have to line these up with the image, and the puzzle is solved.

And you're done.

Complete. Finito.

Bear in mind the approach of isolating one part of the problem, setting that in place, and then using that (in this case, the control being "locked" into a known, correct state) to reduce the problem space of the rest of the puzzle.

That approach will take you far, in this game, and other puzzles, game or otherwise.

Video guide.

I include here, with no commentary, a short video of completing the puzzle:

[Baldrickk]

You should enter a cutscene at this point.
I have had it fail on me at this point once before, and had to restart from the beginning of the chapter to fix it.

[J40NYR]

I've solved the puzzle and hear a click yet nothing happens? This game is becoming so frustrating

[Wulden]

I enjoy Sudoku, but once you get into samurai sudoku, my brain just shuts down... lol I am generally fine on the standard versions of these most puzzles, but once you get to the medium/hard difficulty, it stops being fun generally for me. Again though, I really appreciate you taking the time here.

[Baldrickk]

If you've ever done a Sudoku, it's much like that. There are squares that you can solve given the starting information, and ones you can't. But by solving the squares that you can solve, you progress to a state where you can then solve the previously unsolvable squares, because solving the earlier squares presents you with more informatiion.
The difference in format, grid of numbers, spinning dials, fields of light, heck, just MS Minesweeper... Finding the solution is all about uncovering more information on the problem.

[Baldrickk]

[quote]So what I am seeing in this guide, you effectively removed the need for 2 of the controls?[/quote]
Not quite - each control is used once, to put it directly into its solved position.
The focus is on which controls can be solved at any one time.
There are two solvable controls at the start of this puzzle.
For each of these, finding the solution narrows the scope of the problem, bringing another dial into the state where it can be solved.
To simplify the guide, I suggest solving both, then moving to the second pair, which are now solvable, rather than keeping track of which ones are solvable in the intermediate state.

This is a generic idea though. Even if the puzzle is configured differently, most puzzles will have one solvable aspect, the solution of which providing information on how to solve another part of the puzzle.

[Wulden]

what is really sad... Is that I logged in just now. Turned the center to correct facing (Controller 3) and realized that all I had to do was turn controller 1 twice and then the puzzle was solved. So at present, I guess you can just relog over and over and over again, until the puzzle solves itself. Dude, I appreciate this though. I have 3 other games I can go and take this idea to, to try and solve those puzzles.

[Wulden]

Also appreciate the response being to set up a guide man. Very cool of you to do that.

[Wulden]

So what I am seeing in this guide, you effectively removed the need for 2 of the controls? Or am I miss reading that, given that you lock in control 3 (for the center), and lock in ring 3? Either way, I will get in and have a look and play around a bit with this strategy starting with locking down at least the first control.