Part 20: Submachine 7: The Core

Part 20
Submachine 7: The Core


So, this puzzle. We turned on all the green lights by fixing the transmitter dish. All that's left is finding the correct symbols.

Glaive17 had the right idea, we'll just need to execute it. Let's run through the hints we found.


This picture refers to the map and shows the order of the symbols. The center point is the place we started at, the Palace entrance.


Point 1 is here. Doesn't seem far from the entrance on the map, but we needed to make our way through two gateways to get there.


The symbol was hidden on a pillar to the left.


The second point is to the bottom right, we found it by going through the rightmost gate in the hub. We didn't actually find a symbol there, just a large tree blocking our path. However, one of the karma portals took us to the other side of the large tree. I put the two parts together here to show they do line up.


The second symbol should be this.


The third symbol is way north, or through the second door.


It looks like this. We've actually not found a map stand that shows the location of the fourth symbol, so let's skip that for a second and go to the last one.


It's through the third door. We visited this area first, but found the symbol last because we needed the Glowing Box.

And now we can deduce the final symbol.


Because we found one more in the completely broken up area behind the first door.


You can see there's a broken map stand lying on the ground here so it all fits together.

So, let's enter the code and see if it works.


We turn the knob... there's a sound of rattling gears and the knob stays locked in place. We got it!

There's several factors that I think make this puzzle so tricky. First of all, it's easy to think the maps are just a neat thing and aren't part of the puzzle, until you find the symbol order hint. That means you have to run back, find all the maps again, and take notes. That's a bit annoying.
Secondly, some of the symbols you can select in the control box are very similar to the correct ones. You have to make sure you copy them correctly.
And more importantly, you need to find all symbols. Some of them are well hidden and some of them are in spots where you don't have any other reason to go to. You need to explore, and not just a small newly opened area, but the entire game. Lots of ground to cover and you need to study each screen carefully.
And if you miss even one symbol you'll probably won't guess the solution because of symbol 4, which doesn't have a map. The only way to deduce the complete order is if you found all others.

Luckily, the symbols aren't random, so if you figured it out once, things go way smoother during a second playthrough, for instance for a LP recording.


With all that out of the way, let's leave the beautiful Garden behind and go to Liz's ship. If you remember, it's docked to the walkway in front of the Palace.


Everything we've done since we arrived through the large gateway was to call this Capsule.


Pulling the lever takes us up to the Ship.

♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 7 - Broken Gravity


Inside the Ship... well, this area looks different. Did you miss the old mechanical-looking areas? Anyway, we have to flip the switch on the wall here to turn something on in the next room.


Namely, the switch in this room. The little green light on the top left indicates we flipped the switch on the left, and the switch here extends the walkway to the ladder.


Let's go down real quick first. The lamp fell out of the socket here, but the energy barrier Light Bulb we brought with us all the way from the Sanctuary area fits here.


RTL
It opens the grate, but inside the wide pipe we're immediately blocked again. We'll need to come back in a bit.


RTL
Up the ladder, we find some sort of cabin area. To the left, there's a Note.

Mur was buried alive in the Lighthouse on purpose, as a punishment for all the deaths he caused with his Karma Portals destroying the structure of the Submachine? Woah...


To the right, two more Notes. The first one is quite long, so make sure to read the transcript. This sounds like quite an old exchange. It sounds to me like Elizabeth and Murtaugh were friends once, but not anymore after the shit he did. I'm just glad someone's taking care of the cat.


In the next room we find another light barrier, but this time the switch is on our side and there's already a card in there, so we just turn it off. This causes the light bulb to blow, though. So we can't use this one for opening the downstairs pipe. The only one that works for that is the one all the way back at the start.


Going up towards the next deck, we find... are those bullet holes? What happened here? Anyway, the cover on top is closed tight.


Let's take one more Karma detour then.


It teleports us only a single room up. The Portal back is in the central hole in the window, but from this side we can just open the lid and climb back if we like.


To the right, another note. To go with it, there's another Garden map sitting on the ground you can look at. Obviously, this one doesn't have a "you are here" marker. She's saying the map shows the overall structure of the Subnet? Strange. It feels like we're learning a lot in this place about Submachines, Portals, and other dimensions/layers, but it just raises more and more questions.


The final secret Token is in this room, hidden behind a table leg. I actually explored several more rooms before I remembered it was here, but I'll show it now so we don't have to come back here.


To the left of the Karma Portal, another note by Liz. Damn! So she is gone. And Murtaugh was... or is out for revenge. We do learn one interesting thing here: despite Liz's earlier note claiming this was impossible, Murtaugh did find a way back to the Core from wherever he went.


Further to the left, in a shattered part of the Ship, there's a huge green Karma Portal.

I'm afraid we'll need to take it to escape this place. But before we do so, let's see what collecting all the Tokens does for us. We need to do a few things for that.


First of all, in the room we were just in, we need to pull the big lever. There's a sound in the distance of metal sliding against metal.

Secondly, we need to put the Light Bulb into the socket downstairs to open the grate. We already did that, so let's move on.


The lever moves the second grate a bit to the left, exposing a Karma Portal. This takes us to the secret area of this game. If you didn't realize you could bring that Light Bulb with you, you could end up collecting all secret Tokens and never finding this place.



♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 7 - Rector

What happened to the happy song for the secret areas? Anyway, welcome to the Super Secret Bonus Section.


Yes, no need to repeat me, game.


This area has five machines that each take a token and then show a picture and a note by Mateusz.


It's always interesting to hear about developer stuff like that. Have you folks noticed any more references to other media?


I like that even in these images there are 'physics'. The plants move when you touch them with the mouse cursor.


Interesting, I hadn't realized that. And it's cool to see the complete map here. And here it is in the flesh.


And things will certainly be interesting in the remaining games.

Anyway, that was it for the secrets of this game. Let's finish it up.


BZZZT


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH


A final zoom and fade out...


We're apparently travelling to a part of the Subnet that's in another dimension altogether.

Next time, we will find out more about the multidimensional Plan behind the entire Subnet, Submachine 8: The Plan.