Ah, Kotorinosu. What fiendish escape have you prepared for us this time around? We've played Shadow tag, we've gotten in Shape, we've peered into the Mirror... perhaps now we've got a Device to fiddle with?
A typical Kotoriscape consists of a handful of well-designed puzzles that follow a specific theme revealed by its title, and Device does not disappoint. There are all kinds of devices to fiddle with in the vaguely Oriental room: a smartphone with a dead battery, a mysteriously fast-running clock, a service robot with three cranks on its head, and many more. As usual, click objects in the environment to examine them further, manipulate them, or pick them up. Navigate by clicking the directional bars at the edge of the screen when they appear, and examine or use items in your inventory with one click.
Logical puzzles, soft and pleasing gradient-filled graphics, and a save feature for when you need a break are also hallmarks of Kotorinosu that stay with us for Device. There's no changing cursor, but there really isn't any pixel-hunting to be done anyhow. Still, Device is slightly harder than previous games in the series; it's not exactly one that can be cruised through without a keen sense of observation and a willingness to try things that might not be fully obviously logical. But that's not a severe downer, and it's a good game nonetheless. One can only wonder what Kotorinosu's next themed escape will be. Sound? Water? Numbers? Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now...
Walkthrough Guide
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Device Walkthrough
Zoom in on the clock. Take note of what time all the hands meet.
Zoom in on the left drawer and open it. Take the cell phone.
Turn right. Zoom in on the banner on the wall and move it. Take the eggish thing.
Note the pattern of dots along the sides of the banner.
Turn around. Place the egg on the middle left shelf. Click the buttons using the sequence from the banner. The darker dot indicates which to press. Click the star when you're done, then click the egg to open it. Take the scroll and Ether medallion.
Turn right. use the key on the scroll to open the right drawer. Take the black handle and the lollipop.
Turn left. Open the bottom of the scroll and take the allen wrench. Combine it with the handle to make it ergonomically sound. Use your tool on that invisible panel to the right of the cat. Pull out the plug. Zoom in on it and note the pattern.
Zoom in on the frame at the top of the wall and use the pattern from the plug to open it. Take the key.
Turn right. Use the key to open the right cabinet. Take the power strip.
Click near the outlet in the left corner. Use the power strip on it to make the connection. Note the symbols on the strip.
Turn right. Use the lollipop as a handle for the device on the left. Input the code from the strip. Note that the symbols are inverted, and the code should match, i.e. flip it over. Take this thing.
Turn right. Open the thing and take the key. Use it on the lock on the round window. Open it and take the wire cutters.
Use your tool on the lever at the bottom and shut off this contraption. Take the white gear.
Use the wire cutters to cut the chain on the scroll. Have a look see. For now, note that the first page is a legend for the contraption and the second explains that gears cannot touch each other in a three-way configuration. Only Eiffel Tower style. Amirite fellas?
Turn around. Take the gear from the clock. Note where each hand has come to rest.
Zoom in on the device on the table. Enter the red, white and green clock hand positions on the corresponding buttons. Enter the number where all hands meet on the black button. Take the abacus.
Turn left. Remember that yellow thing? Turns out it, in conjunction with the cat, is some kind of cell battery charger. Flip your phone over, pull out the battery, place it in the holder, and stick it in the cat. The cat powers up and gives you a 6 color code.
Enter the cat color code on Simon on the lower right shelf. Note that the center button gets pressed after the first 3 buttons and not at the end. Take the doll head and the Bombos medallion.
Turn left. Place your 2 gears into the contraption in order to turn the rightmost gear. Keep in mind that no three gears can touch each other, like the scroll diagrammed. (Hint: put them in the 2 bottom right pegs.) Turn it on.
Turn left. Give the doll back its head. A fan pops up. Note the pattern on the doll: both the shape and which half of it is showing.
Zoom in on the robot butler to the right. Turn the keys on his head according to the pattern from the fan. Watch him take a walk.
For whatever reason, that seemed to charge your battery, so turn right and take it from the cat. Power up your phone and look at the photo. Note the positions of the suits. Look at the cards on the top right shelf and match the suits with the numbers. Remember the order.
Turn around. Click the spinny wheel in the order you just determined and take the matches. Open them and take out the memory card.
Turn to the last page of the scroll and use the matches on it. Note the darkened dots. They correspond to part of the date and time from your cell phone. Dial this number.
You've got mail! Open it and note the codeword.
Put the codeword in the device on the wall and pull the lever. Remember that it's upside down. Take the Quake medallion.
Turn right. Place all three medallions on the box and open it. Take the crystal ball.
Put the memory card into the back of the phone. For whatever reason, that triggers the robot butler to come out with a key on his platter. Take it.
Turn around. Use the new key on the left cabinet. The buttons will pop out. The memory card on your phone contained a video of pacman eating dots, so follow his pattern to open the cabinet. Take the 3rd gear.
Turn around. Power down the contraption and remove the gears. Replace all the gears to power the leftmost gear. Turn it back on and watch the cutscene.
Turn left. Note the pattern on the door under the doll. Match your abacus to line up the empty spaces with the knobs on the door and place it on there. Open it and take the 4th gear.
Turn right. Shut down the contraption. Now you must place the gears to turn both the left and rightmost gears. You can figure it out. Turn it back on. Watch the cutscene. Shut it back down and take all your gears.
Turn left. Use your crystal ball on the top the the box to unlock it. Start placing gears on the left side and it will drop, revealing another white gear and a golden gear. Read the note on the left chain. The gold gear is heavier than a silver, but lighter than 2 silvers.
Get all the white gears out. To do this:
Take both gears from the right side. Place a silver on the top and the gold in the middle. Remove the visible silver on the left. Take all 5 silver gears, starting with the left side.
Turn right. Place all 5 gears in the contraption in order to turn the topmost gear. Keep in mind that in order to open the exit, it must turn clockwise, as the scroll showed. Pull the lever.
Exit. Well done!
Posted by: DAM | September 28, 2011 2:27 AM
Device Walkthrough
You'll start out facing a clock. Zoom in on it and watch the hands spin. The hands will all meet pointing at a specific number; watch until you've figured out what that that number is. (It changes every game.)
Back away, then zoom in on the box on the table. It has three colored circles like the clock hands, as well as a black square. Click the black square until it shows the number the clock hands met at.
You can't actually solve this box without further information, but the numbers you enter on it won't reset when you back away, so it's good to have the one clue out of the way. Back away.
Open the left drawer under the box to get a smartphone. The right drawer is unlocked. Examine the smartphone and try to turn it on, and you'll find the battery is dead. Turn it over, open the back, and remove the battery.
Now back away all the way and turn right. There's a lot to look at, but what you want to pay attention to is the scroll. The black and white dots look fairly interesting, no?
What you want to pay attention to are the black dots. Read them from top to bottom, and they'll spell out a sequence of lefts and rights. (This, too, changes every game.) Oh, and pick up the red egg behind the scroll.
Turn right twice. (You can't do anything at the view with the round door yet.) Zoom in on the brown thing on the middle-left shelf. There's a slot for something, so stick the red egg there.
Note that the egg blinks its eyes when you click the buttons. Use the sequence of black circles from the scroll and then press the star on the egg; if you did it right, both buttons should click down.
Open the egg and get the red scroll and bronze piece. Turn left to face the round door; beneath it is a locked box with three depressions. Stick the bronze piece where it fits, in the depression on the right.
Examine the red scroll. There's a key chained to it. You can't open the scroll, but you can remove the bottom and take the pentagonal rod from it. That'll come in handy later.
That key can be used as-is, I bet. It opens the right drawer under the clock, inside of which is a lever handle and a brown thing. The pentagonal rod fits into the brown thing. Now… where are we going to use it?
Face the shelves again (turn left). Zoom in on the cat-robot on the ground, then carefully look at the wall to the right of it. You should see the outline of a panel; zoom in on it and you'll see two pentagonal holes.
You can unscrew those "holes" with the pentagonal rod and brown piece, which now makes a fine screwdriver. Open the panel and yank out the power cord hidden inside it. Pity it can't reach the outlet…
Hey, that's an odd pattern of stripes on the cord. Zoom in on it and you'll see narrow, medium-width, and wide white stripes. Write down the sequence, whatever it may be. (This, too, changes every game.)
Input that sequence on the square picture frame above the shelves in the same view by clicking the buttons on the sides. When you finish you should hear a click. Shove the picture aside and take the key.
The key goes to the right cabinet in the view with the clock (turn right). Inside you'll find a power strip. Go plug it into the outlet to the left to make the connection between the power cord and the wall.
A series of letters should appear on the power strip. Write them down, you'll need them shortly. Now it's time to do something with that lever. Turn right from the clock and zoom in on that funky panel to the left. It's missing a lever, so stick the one you've got into place and yank it.
A series of emote faces? How cute. Here's the place to enter that seven-letter code from the power strip. The trick is that you have to enter it upside-down on their mouths; for example, if the code was MVAWUXE, the rightmost face should have an upside-down M, the face to the left of it an upside-down V, and so on.
Once they're all set, pull the lever again; if you input it right you should get a silver medallion. Take it and examine it; it opens, letting you have a key. And hey… that hole inside the medallion has a familiar shape…
Maybe the smartphone's battery fits in there. It does! Snap it in and close it, then go put it in the belly of the cat robot below the shelves (turn around).
Now the cat won't let you take the medallion back, and its collar is blinking a strange sequence of colors. Write that sequence down, and make sure you haven't confused red with pink or blue with green. You'll use it soon.
Now back out and zoom on the cylindrical box on the low shelf near the cat. Enter the code you got from the cat's collar, and don't forget to press the bell button in the middle of the sequence (because the cat's bell was in the middle there).
It should click when you've got it. Open the lid and take the doll's head and silver piece, then stick the silver piece in the left slot of the box under the round door. Open the round door's padlock with the key while you're there.
Open the round door and take the pliers, which you can then use to remove the chain on the red scroll. Give it a read; it seems to tell which gear behind the round door controls what, (scroll left) how to set gears properly, and (scroll left)… a strange picture of a flame. Huh.
Zoom in on the lever at the bottom of the round doors. Pentagonal hole? We've seen that shape before. Snap in your little pentagonal screwdriver and shift the lever to stop the gears, then take the silver gear.
Back away and turn around. The clock has stopped! Take the silver gear from it, and note which number each color hand is pointing at. Enter those numbers in the corresponding colored circles on the box below, and it should open when you press "OPEN".
Open the box and take the abacus, it'll be useful later. Now do something with that doll head. Stick it on the doll in the center of the view with the scroll and the doll will open a fan.
Make a note of the shapes on that fan. They're left and right halves of diamonds, circles, and hexagons. Now zoom out and examine that little clockwork robot to the right of the view. It's time to solve its puzzle.
Zoom in on the three cranks on the robot's head. Input the code from the fan from left to right on the cranks, reading the left and right shape halves as left and right turns of the corresponding cranks. For example, if the fan shows the left half of a diamond, turn the crank with the diamond holes to the left.
The robot should whiz away when you make the last crank, if you got it right. Go look at the cat again; by now it's finished doing whatever it was doing, so take the medallion back, remove the battery from it, and stick it back in the smartphone.
It charged the battery, just as I thought! Now let's see what this smartphone can do. Aw, no Angry Birds… let's see what photos are on it. Click the "PHOTO" icon to see a picture of five cards. Weird.
Go look at the right middle shelf in the view with the shelves, and you should see those same five cards. (The picture on the smartphone has to be looked at at an angle.) Match up the suits to the numbers according to the positions of the cards, and you should find a sequence.
Unlike most of the codes so far, this one never changes: club-heart-spade-heart-diamond. But what to do with it? Go back to the round doors and place the two silver gears so they connect the two black gears. (Screenshot)
With the gears in place, throw the bottom lever and the gears should turn, turning the large gear on the right. Turn left to face the green scroll and you'll notice that the wheel-of-fortune-type thing to the left of the doll is moving.
Zoom in on it. With careful timing, click the arrow above the wheel when it's pointing to the card suits; input the sequence of card suits from two or three points up and a little door should open.
Box of matches GET! Examine it and look inside, and take the SD card. We'll use that later. Open the red scroll again and scroll left to the flame picture, then use the box of matches on it to reveal a secret message.
Does that look familiar? It looks to me like the way the smartphone displays the time and date, but six circles are blackened. We'll figure out what that means later; examine the smartphone, turn it over, and snap in the memory card.
I wonder if that little waiter robot ever came back? Turn to face the round door and you'll see him with a key on his tray. Take it and use it on the left cabinet… oops, maybe this won't be so easy.
Examine the smartphone again. Looks like we've got a new video to watch. It appears to be of a Pac-Man lookalike eating fifteen dots in a specific pattern. I bet that's the code for the cabinet door!
At the left cabinet door, press the upper right button, then the one to the left of it, then left, left, down, right, down, left, down, right, right, up, up, right, down, down-- and it should unlock. It's the same code every game.
Open the cabinet and take the gear. I like solving puzzles simultaneously, so let's figure out the six-black-circle message now. It was a hint to take the day portion of the date, and the hour and minute (24-hour time), and assemble the six-digit number.
Do exactly that from the smartphone's time display, then click "Phone" and input those six digits, finishing by clicking the center of the dial to make the call. If you did it right, you'll get an E-mail. "MAXWAVE"? Weird.
Go input "MAXWAVE" on the seven faces like you did the other seven-letter code: the right face should have an upside-down M, the face to the left of it an upside-down A, and so on. Pull the lever and you'll get a gold piece.
Go set the gold piece in the last slot beneath the round door, and the box will unlock, revealing a glass ball. Weird. Can't do anything with it yet, so let's fuss with the gear arrangement some more.
This time, connect the bottom black gear to the central gold gear, and that to the gear on the left. (Screenshot) Turn the gears on and the area below the doll in the view with the scroll will rise, revealing a compartment.
Go zoom in on that compartment. I think that abacus would do some good here. Examine the abacus and move the beads up and down until the empty spots match the protrusions on the compartment door (screenshot), then snap the abacus into place.
You'll get one more gear for your troubles. Go to the round door again, turn the gears off if you haven't already, and rearrange the gears again. This time you want to maintain the connection between the center gear and the left gear, but make the connection from bottom to middle with one more gear. (Screenshot)
With all that in place, turn the gears on again, and the doll with the fan should descend into the floor, revealing a cabinet. Turn the gears off again and take all the silver gears back; you'll need them.
Put the glass ball in the hole in the top of the cabinet to unlock it. Inside you'll find a balance puzzle. Your goal is to walk away with all the gears, but you can only access all the gears on the lighter side and the top gear on the heavier side.
Put three gears on the left side, then take the silver gear from the right side and move it to the top of the same side. Then take the silver gear visible on the left, followed by the other two gears on that side, and lastly take the last silver gear back.
Now go put the five silver gears into the round compartment so they connect the bottom gear with the top in an S shape. (Screenshot) It's important you use the extra gear because the top gear only works if turned the right way.
With that done, throw the gear power switch one more time and watch your exit manifest itself to you!
Posted by: SonicLover | September 28, 2011 4:40 PM