Hint Request: Some Space

I’m on one of the first puzzles.

In the invitation letter from the Eoghan Group, the italicized letters tell me to DRESS FORMALLY. How do I input this so the game understands that I’ve solved it? I keep going in circles.

As I recall, there’s some small text warning that the input is case sensitive and maybe saying something about spacing? My notes aren’t super-detailed, unfortunately – I remember struggling with it, but when I slowed down and looked at that text I was able to get it to work. The other thing I remember, though, is that first time through I hit a bug where I entered something incorrect and it sent me to a blank text box, requiring a restart. So not sure if you’re running into a programming issue – if you go back and the warning doesn’t let you get the answer put in so it’s recognized, it might be worth trying to start it in a new window and see if that fixes things (as I recall that’s close enough to the start that replaying should just take a couple minutes). Sorry I can’t be more helpful!

It says to match case and ignore spaces: are you sure you ignored all of them? Because I just started playing and DRESSFORMALLY worked for me…

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Exactly what I entered the first time. It’s only after that didn’t work I started trying variations.

Ah,… Come to think of it… I’m replaying entering that answer from muscle memory now…

It probably didn’t help that I automatically pressed the RETURN-key after typing the answer?..

I just took the bad points (are there points?) and let my Koilan guide spell it out for me after the sixth or so try.

Ah, yeah, I just tried again and that causes it to fail. Picky picky. :slight_smile:

I’m not sure? Some of the puzzles I thought I got them right but the response text seemed condescending, like I got it wrong. I’m not big on hand-doing simple cryptograms, that’s the kind of tedious manual labor that computers are for, and the answers I got made sense, so… And one I got wrong just to see what would happen and it didn’t seem to matter?

But I got to an ending and…I’m not sure what happened. I listened to my mom’s messages and started to call her and…then the game cut off there and went back to the main menu. Dunno. I guess this is sort of fun if you like doing simple code-deciphering puzzles?

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Yeah, what a cut-off right?! I just finished and it’s still zinging in my head. Maybe a cliffhanger for a next installment?

Or maybe really a way to leave the player hanging, wondering about the small fragments of backstory that just happened.

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Also, what was with your friend telling you to take the west exit from the train station but there isn’t one? I just called for help but now I’m curious if you could walk around the block or something and figure it out yourself? Didn’t quite seem worth trying.

Huh, I was able to find the correct exit – though couldn’t tell you how since by that point I was just feeding the puzzles into online solvers since I’m lazy! It occurs to me that there might be multiple solutions possible.

As for the ending, that felt like the ultimate stopping point to me, though a little unsatisfyingly so: the story I guess is actually supposed to be about the main character fleeing to another planet and ignoring their family’s messages due to their brother’s domestic violence. When the protagonist starts engaging them again, prompted by the similar incident with their friend, that arc is done. I just found it unsatisfying since the DV stuff comes out of nowhere, and up to then the story seems like it’s more about immigration, culture alienation, etc.

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I tried all three exits. No punishment whatsoever. You just arrive in a wrong location and turn around.

About the sudden ending: In the first message from Amar, he links to a forum which lists the different kinds of puzzlespeak. The last on the list is about hidden messages or obscure meanings in plain speech.

Are we missing something in those final paragraphs?

(cue conspiracy theorists in 3…2…)

Yes, I came to the same conclusion. It was very sudden though, and there seemed to be no real arc of tension leading up to it, apart from ignoring the messages from your mom.

The hidden messages or obscure meanings in plain speech: yeah, but nothing particularly important: there’s a link that’s invisible until you mouse over it, in the grocery store, down at the bottom below all the other text.

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