A new puzzle game with a distinct ARG smell recently popped on the scene without much known about what it is or who is behind it. Ethan Haas Was Right is a mysterious Flash-based website that presents a series of 5 unique puzzles, some original and some rehashed versions of classic puzzle games. Interspersed between the puzzles are video segments containing clues as to the origin and meaning of it all.
Even if you don't care for alternate reality games in general, there's enough here for a few sessions of casual gameplay. The game even remembers your progress for when you come back to it.
Spoiler alert!: After launching the game you may notice a slightly blue star in the upper left portion of the sky. Clicking it will launch your default mail client with an email address and a subject already filled in. Sending an email to that address sends an auto-reply with the following hints about each of the puzzles. I am including it here to help the more casual players along. If you want to figure everything out for yourself, you probably should have already stopped reading.
If you're receiving this auto-response message it means that I've gone into hiding. You should be careful now, too. They're likely to start coming after all of us in an attempt to keep the balance of power in their favor. But remember, as our numbers increase as a group, the weaker they'll become.
As you recruit new people to our cause, you might need to share this message as guidance for how to navigate the 5 locks to the key code...
- The first lock will test your memory. Follow the trail of light and sound, but be careful -- one wrong move will send you back to the beginning.
- For the second lock, you may need to look to the stars. They will help you find HAAS who will lead your way.
- The third lock will require you to extinguish all lights but one. Only with one light remaining will you be able to proceed.
- The fourth lock will let you move all 4 pieces through the control of one. However, unless the three key pieces are simultaneously placed into position, you will not be granted access.
- The fifth lock will be the toughest. Seek help again from the stars to reveal your key and the message that you must decode. The two working together will open the way.
Good luck.
Van
Cheers to Stephen and Jesman1 for sending this one in. =)
Walkthrough Guide
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Complete Walkthrough:
Puzzle 1
As the hint email says, this is a memory game.
When you click on any button, the game pops out each button in a sequence.
The sequence is invariant.
There's a reason for that.
Ever play the game "Simon"?
This is similar. You have to push all the same buttons in the same order. If you press some other button, or get one out of sequence, it shows you the correct sequence again.
Puzzle 2
Incidentally, you can right-click to zoom in and out, which is really handy for being able to make out the letters in this puzzle.
You need to enter some text.
The game has its own alphabet; roll over one of the stars to make an alphabet key appear. (Or use my easier-to-use version.)
You need to enter a specific word.
The word you need to enter is four letters long.
Get your mind out of the gutter. This is a kid-safe game!
See any four-letter words in plain sight?
The word you need to enter is "HAAS".
Obvious problem: That's four letters, and you seem to only have two characters to work with.
What's two plus two?
Rotate the two inner rings such that they spell "HA", then find "AS" on the outer ring.
Puzzle 3
This one's a classic game.
It's a simple capture game.
See those two lights at the bottom that aren't lit?
Specifically, this is the game of Pegged.
You need to capture all of the pegs except one.
You capture a peg (= light) by dragging another peg over it to an empty space. This removes the captured peg from the board (extinguishes the light). You can't move a peg without capturing another peg. If you have more than one peg still on the board and no possible moves (e.g., two pegs separated by an empty space), the puzzle resets.
Puzzle 4
First, I'll point out that this game is controlled with the arrow keys. You may not need any more hints to figure this puzzle out, now that you know how to operate it.
This is a programming game. (Don't worry, you don't need to learn a programming language.)
How many gear-shaped things are there (counting the one that the blue circle is sitting on top of)?
How many green circles are there?
You need to program in a course that results in all three green circles (which I think of as vacuum-cleaner robots) ending up on the three gear-shaped platforms.
Ah, but the robots don't seem to go the same direction you tell them to. They go every which way.
More precisely, the blue one goes in the direction you tell it to, but the green ones go in different directions. Also, if the blue robot is blocked, your move is rejected out-of-hand, but if it isn't, the move is allowed, even if one or more of the green robots is blocked. And as you may imagine, robots can block other robots.
Also, the squares above the top two platforms are blocks; the robots can't pass through them.
WARNING: The next hint gives one solution. Thanks, Labyrinth.
↑ ← ↓ ↓ ← → ↑ → ↑ ← ←
Clue in the video before Puzzle 5
This flashes for just a fraction of a second during the cutscene video. Just in case you missed it (maybe you weren't looking at the screen during the movie), here it is:
54312
Puzzle 5
Zooming helps with this one, too.
This is not a crypto puzzle.
At least, not in the sense of having to decrypt something that's encrypted. You do have to work out a password, though.
Have you figured out the significance of that one screen with no letters on it?
It's a separator.
It's a separator in the telegraphic sense. You know, like the word "stop": "Hello stop we are doing well stop the weather here is good stop unfortunately there is no punctuation stop …"
You need to figure out the message.
Start by counting letters everywhere they appear.
This means the rotating messages as well as the letter-board underneath.
There are 20 spaces on the letter-board (hopefully, you didn't need me to tell you that part). The number of letters in each message varies on the first line but is always four on the second line.
The messages are not random.
Have you written them all down yet? (Not that you need to; they're in the next hint.)
FIVE (new line) BNSN
FOUR (new line) EITD
THREE (new line) ENIE
ONE (new line) HIGE
TWO (new line) TGNH
Note that the order is important.
No, it's not 12345. That would be too easy.
Remember the clue from the most recent cutscene?
No? That's OK, it was only on the screen for a brief flash. It said 54312.
The messages appear in that order: "FIVE BNSN", then "FOUR EITD", then "THREE ENIE", then "ONE HIGE", then "TWO TGNH".
The significance of this is that the numbers aren't part of the message. They're just sequence information.
It's also important that every message's second line is four letters.
What do you get when you multiply 4, the length of every clue, by various numbers?
Like, say, the number of clues?
You have five clues, and they're four letters each; 4 �- 5 = 20, which is the length of the letter-board.
Except that the letter-board isn't a single line; it's a rectangle, 10 �- 2.
What if it were a 4 �- 5 rectangle instead?
It'd look something like this:
BNSNEITDENIEHIGETGNHUnfortunately, that arrangement doesn't help you much.
Try playing with the order. (Next hint shows the correct order.)
TGNHHIGEENIEBNSNEITDColumns are rows and rows are columns.
THEBEGINNINGISTHEENDStill haven't figured it out? The next hint gives it away.
"THE BEGINNING IS THE END".
Thanks to Labyrinth (10:40) and Kevin (6:46) for their hints, with which I was able to finish the game and this walkthrough.
Posted by: Peter Hosey | July 5, 2007 2:06 PM