Secret Files: Tunguska Walkthrough by Peter Olafson

Max and Nina meet up with
Oleg at the airfield. It’s a brief reunion. Nina’s escape
is discovered, Russian soldiers appear on the scene and the party
is separated. Nina sets off in the jeep to find her father’s
old base camp.

Odds & ends:
Outside the hospital gate, Max can also examine the hospital itself.
Outside the cellar door, the contents of the trash container. Back
toward the hospital gate, the ambulance and the hospital’s front
door. In the storage room, the wheelchair and the dictation machine
on the gurney. (You can play the tape in the dictation machine with
a right-click and get a diary entry for your trouble. It refers to
patients with problems similar to those experienced by Manuel Perez.)
In the operating room, the bloody sheet, bucket of blood and bloody
swabs to the left and the x-rays to the right. In the lobby, the TV
(initially in tuned-in color and later with a rolling black-and-white
display) and the central door.

– In addition, Max can
try to talk to the downstairs guard, try to use the tote bag (sans
berries) on Oleg, try to hand up to Nina the sedative and syringe
and try to use the blowpipe on the guard — both in the lobby while
he’s watching the soccer game and through the window beside
the dish. And Nina can try to open her cell door.

Berlin

Cut to the dark tower.
Kalenkov is still missing, but it’s now revealed that Vladimir
is believed to possess some missing piece and that the plotters are
aware of “the others” (presumably the Black Robes). The
man in the penthouse suggests the caller focus on Vladimir’s
past. We’ll see the result of that focus when Max gets to Ireland.

Tunguska

The
Shepherd

Nina stops at a little
tent for directions. The gentleman on the bed within is an Evenk shepherd
and he’s in a bad way. He needs his medicine and the medicine
recipe seems to have fallen into the fire. It hasn’t been destroyed,
but the charred pieces are so brittle that they’d fall apart
on contact. Your first job here is to restore it.

It’s a pretty involved
operation and you won’t get any clues en route. But a little
real-world experience in such things will stand you in good stead.
You want to create a lacquer that will hold the pieces together and
in place and a brush to apply it.

We’ll start with
the brush — just because it’s easier. You’ll need bristles,
a handle and something to hold it all together.

The bristles might well
come from the sweet reindeer grazing to the left of the tent, but
it’s keeping its distance. (Hell, I would, too. Right-click
on the creature to learn Nina wants to turn it into a rug.)

You’ll need to give
it a good reason to move within clipping range: Add water to the trough.
To do so, you’ll need to find a way to channel water from the
barrel to its right.

There’s nothing lying
around that begs to be used for this purpose. But the old tree at
the far right seems to be losing a section of bark along its left
side. With the shovel attached to the back of the jeep (here called
a “spade”) , you can knock off a long piece. Use the bark
on the barrel, pull the plug and the thirsty reindeer’s your
pal.

Now you need a way to give
it a haircut. A pair of scissors is hanging on the left of the two
pillars in the tent — concealed in plain sight as in a hidden-object
game — but a right-click in inventory or an attempt to use them on
the reindeer suggests they’re none too sharp. So you’re
off to look for a whetstone.

Just to the right of the
tree, the scene changes: Here you’ll find a steam vent, a pair
of plants and, to the left, a sharp stone. Use this on the scissors
and they’ll be replaced by “sharp scissors.” Use
these on the reindeer to be rewarded with a tuft of soft, stinky hair.

The brush handle and connecting
thread are both in the tent. The spoon on the cabinet at the left
functions as the first and a left-click on the lowest of the rightmost
set of hanging tassels liberates a single thread. Use the thread on
the reindeer hair to bind it together and the spoon on the threaded
hair and you have a makeshift brush!

Now for the lacquer. The
cup on the stump beside the old man’s bed will do for a container.
And you’ve already unearthed the raw material. It’s behind
the bark you knocked off the tree. Simply use the cup on one of the
yellowish patches to collect a sample of resin.

According to Wikipedia,
most plant resins take the form of “a viscous liquid.”
However, this one appears at least semi-solid. Hence, you’ll
need to melt it down into a brush-ready state.

No, you can’t start
a fire in the tent just now — the as-yet-untakeable recipe is still
in the campfire site — but you’ve already found an alternate
heat source: that steam vent. Nina votes against holding the cup over
the steam, but the old gentleman won’t object if you borrow
the rusty grill in the tent. Take it and place it over the vent.

One more step: The resin
is not akin to unsweetened chocolate. You can’t just melt it
in the cup. You’ll want to mix it with water from the trough.

Then put the cup on the
grill and pick it right up again to find the two have blended to a
rather coffee-like brew. (Take the grill with you as well, as you’ll
be needing it again.) Dip the brush into the resin and use it on the
parchment pieces. Nina reads off the recipe and the reassembled parchment
appears in your inventory.

The recipe:

5 parts of the Source of
Life
2 parts of Root of Tears
1 part Blood of the Night
3 parts Drops of Intoxication

And it’s to be taken
“shortly before it unites with the wind.”

Don’t fret over the
number of parts. That’s just for color.

But how to mix them? And
how to decode the components?

The mixing’s easy
enough: Show the complete recipe to the Evenk and he’ll provide
you with a special vial for this purpose.

And the ingredients aren’t
that difficult. If you’ve gone around grabbing everything loose,
it’s quite possible you already have two of them and the source
of the third.

The Source of Life:
This one you don’t have, but it’s easy enough: water.
Simply dip the vial in the trough to collect it.

Root of Tears:
Trickier. Trek back to the steam vent screen and you’ll see
a flowering plant called Siberian gentian leek off to the right. Leeks
are members of the onion family. (Hence the tears.) Use the shovel
to uproot the plant.

This isn’t exactly
what the doctor ordered. (You can’t just force the plant into
the vial. ) You’ll need to extract its essence and there’s
just one way to do it: Return to the Evenk’s tent, use the vial
on the nutcracker atop the cabinet to the left and then the gentian
on the nutcracker to squeeze out the juice in the bulb.

Blood of the Night:
This one may have you venting a little steam.

On the steam-vent screen,
you’ll see a tomato plant in the background. A right-click reveals
it’s a member of the Nightshade family, so tomato juice could
be construed as “Blood of the Night.”

But you can’t uproot
the plant manually or use the shovel or vial on it. (Nor, frankly,
do you see any evidence of actual tomatoes. If you left-click on the
plant, you’ll learn it’s a “drought victim.”)

That’s a hint that
this is just a hint. What else comes from tomatoes? Ketchup. Did you
bother to look in the jeep’s front seat? If so, you found a
remainder of an order of fast-food French fries and a packet of ketchup.
That’ll do.

And the Drops of
Intoxication? If you found the ketchup in the jeep’s
front seat, you very likely found the adjacent green first-aid kit
that contains a bottle of vodka.

That’s it for the
ingredients.

And yet if you try to give
the medicine to the patient, Nina says it’s not ready. You still
have to sort out that “unites with the wind thing.” What
could that mean but evaporate? The vent is no longer steaming but,
with the recipe in hand, you can now build a fire in the Evenk’s
tent. Replace the grill over the ring of stones, place the vial on
the grill and …

… and you’ll discover
you’re missing a critical ingredient for a fire: wood.

It’s not far. Beside
the tent, you’ll find a crate. It doesn’t contain anything
of use, but here you just want the crate itself. Smash it up with
your shovel, take the debris, use it on the campfire site and then
the matches on the wood. When Nina finally stops chattering, take
the brew off the fire and hand it to your host. A couple of minutes
later, he’s all better.

Apparently he had a run-in
with the guards from the research station. He quickly identifies Nina
as Vladimir’s daughter, tells about his son’s disappearance
after finding a strange piece of metal in the woods and how Vladimir
sought him out and then “entered the cursed realm of the Agdy
— the evil thunderbirds that have been sent to cause endless sickness
since the year of the great catastrophe. Your father ignored my warning
and his companion [presumably Perez] must have paid dearly for it.”

He issues directions to
Vladimir’s old camp and warns Nina to be careful. “Things
happen here that no one can begin to imagine.”

Odds & ends:
Nina can examine the fast-food paper in the jeep’s front seat
and try to use the jeep. She can also try to offer the vodka to the
Evenk and try to use the bark on the campfire, the scissors on the
reindeer (without first letting water into the trough), the cup on
the steam vent (without first filling the cup with water), the gentian
on the nutcracker (without first using the vial), the crate debris
on the campfire (before the parchment is reassembled) and the brush
with the parchment (before dipping the brush in the resin).

Why’s the Evenk having
words with research-station guards?

The
Cabin

At the end
of this trail, Nina finds a run-down cabin. Let yourself in and look
around.

You’ll notice an
oddity: There’s a compass to the right of the fireplace. What
use is a compass at a static location where the directions are always
the same? Of course, it could be just an ornament … but this particular
compass is installed atop a gray concrete pillar and as such is a
major feature of the room. And the metal pins in the four cardinal
directions are interactive.

You can’t do anything
with this just yet. So take your cue instead from the movie projector
to the right — try to use it and you’ll learn the power is
out — and start by restoring the electricity.

Step outside and walk around
to the left side of the cabin to find a generator. Out of gas. You
can find more nearby. Take the hose at the near end of the drinking-water
tank to the right — you’ll need it as a siphon — and then
follow the misty path in the background. You’ll find a log bridge
across a stream and a giant wrecked truck. It’s been cannibalized
for parts but some diesel fuel remains in the tank on the its near
side and a pair of nuts on the hub of the missing left rear wheel.

Take the nuts with a right-click
on the wheel, drop the hose and then the vodka bottle on the tank
and then return to the generator and load it up with fuel. It starts
automatically.

Note that the generator
has two components: the generator itself to the left and the coil
to the right. Right-click on the coil to learn it is … well, not
expressly magnetic (which in fact it is) but involved with magnetism.

And that should direct
your thoughts back to the compass. A compass needle responds to the
presence of magnetic objects, and such objects placed on the four
pins must influence the needle’s direction. Use one of the nuts
on the coil to magnetize both.

Return to the cabin and
experiment a bit. You’ll find you can now control the compass
needle by placing the nuts on different pins and then pushing the
central button. With a single magnetic nut on a pin, the needle will
point at that pin. With the two nuts at adjacent or opposing locations,
the needle will point to a spot in-between.

And why is this important?
Because some combination of needle-pointing presumably will do what
every other stand-alone puzzle in the game has done: open up a secret
compartment filled with new Tunguska trivia.

So where is that combination?
Close by, and yet possibly hard to find if you’re relying on
the hints the game offers. Right-click on the fireplace to zoom in
on it and again to examine the rear wall. Nina observes that it’s
“pitch black in there.”

Clearly, you need to shed
some light on the matter. There are actually a couple of ways you
can brighten the room, but only one will work here: the oil lamp hanging
from a post between the generator and the water tank.

And yet when you use the
lamp on the close-up view of the fireplace, the hearth still seems
pretty nondescript. “I can’t see, or find anything special,”
says Nina. (Not entirely true: A piece of aluminum foil, hard to see
at the lower left, is identifiable and take-able even without the
lamp.)

It’s stated only
when you actually try to clean it up, but the fireplace’s rear
wall is plainly black with soot. The rag on the planter to the right
isn’t adequate for the cleanup in its native state , but douse
it in the vodka (until you use the vodka bottle to carry diesel fuel)
or the kerosene in the lamp and then use it on the rear wall exposes
four numbers: 7 1/2, 3, 10 1/2 and 6.

You may not immediately
connect these numbers with the compass. But if you’ve experimented
a bit with placing the magnetized nuts, you’ll see these numbers,
transposed with clock times (3 = east, 6 = south, 9 = west and 12
= north), can be duplicated on the compass.

7 1/2: Place nuts on the
south and west pins and push the button at the center of the compass
to redirect the needle to a point halfway between 6 and 9.

3: Remove both nuts and
place a single nut on the east pin. Push the button again. The needle
moves to 3.

10 1/2: Remove the nut,
place nuts on the west and north pins and push the button again. The
needle now moves to a point halfway between 9 and 12.

6: Remove the nuts, place
a single nut on the south pin and push the button one last time. The
needle moves to 6.

The compass close-up fades
away and a secret compartment opens above the fireplace. Right-click
on the interior to pull out a reel of film and a sheaf of Tunguska
notes.

The notes from 1958 amount
to a series of I-don’t-knows. Vladimir couldn’t explain
the changes in plant growth in Tunguska. He didn’t find evidence
of a meteorite and thus his and Ken Morangie’s conclusions were
ambiguous. (Oleg seems to have played only a small role.)

The file also refers to
Vladimir’s later examination of a strange piece of metal found
in the region. (This sounds very like the one that the shepherd’s
son found in the woods.) It reports that Vladimir established its
“non-terrestrial origins” and the meteorite theory thus
gained credence.

But further analysis by
Vladimir and Manuel Perez showed the metal had been “worked.”
(In other words, we aren’t alone in the universe!) When they
sought to publish this conclusion in the Kalenkov report, it was rejected
and Vladimir and his team were denied further opportunities to examine
the metal.

Things went downhill from
here. When Vladimir sought to continue his Tunguska research, he was
booted out of the Academy of Science. His 1977 trip was an independent
one with a view to turning up additional fragments.

The film comes from this
trip. Slap it on the projector and activate the projector to learn
the bulb has burned out. You need an alternate light source.

This gets a little confusing.

No, the oil lamp isn’t
an adequate replacement. But the projector is backed up against the
window to the left of the door and examination reveals that the window
is filthy. Clean it inside and out with the rag, with or without the
vodka/kerosene, and you’ll find (after a resentful Nina holds
forth on housework) that there’s pronounced beam coming in one
of the central panes. That can only be a good thing and though the
game doesn’t tell you so, this is in fact the light source required
to complete this puzzle.

However, you still can’t
run the projector. The game doesn’t say why. (It feels as though
there are a few explanatory lines missing in this part of the game.)

But note that the the beam
hits the back of the projector at a shallow angle. Presumably this
prevents the light from reaching the lens on the near side. You must
find a way to reflect the light through the length of the camera.

Individually, neither the
glass shard on the floor — the back of the charred chair in the foreground
is pointing straight at it — nor the foil from the fireplace is up
to the task. The glass would just refract the light and the tin foil
is usable only when folded about a solid shape. But combined in inventory,
they’ll do handily. Simply use the foil-wrapped shard on the
projector, then activate the projector and the film plays.

Manuel Perez and then Vladimir
can be seen working over a triangular hump of earth. Manuel excuses
himself and exits to the left. There’s a flash. A tree falls,
knocking the camera on its side, and there’s a distant cry.
Vladimir goes off to see what’s happened. There’s some
shadowy movement to the left and then a body (Perez, it appears) falls
right into the foreground. One of the most effective scenes in the
game … but what does it mean?

Back to the present day.
Nina’s wondering if the flash was lightning or “sheet
lightning”when she hears a loud explosion and runs to a promontory
for a view of a badly-damaged research center. There’s been
another attack like the ones Nina read about in Sidorkin’s office.

And then there’s
a kind of assault upon Nina herself. A pair of Black Robes appear
behind her and sift through her mind with whispery voices. They back
off when soldiers arrive. Just ahead of them, Nina vaults into the
soldiers’ jeep, has a rather Indiana Jones-like encounter with
a troop truck and finally is pulled to safety at cliff’s edge
by Max. We find her on-board Oleg’s plane. She’s not sure
the Black Robes were human — they anticipates a revelation at the
games end — and says they seemed to be searching for an answer. (The
question is never made clear.)

Oleg speaks up. Sergej
has learned Vladimir wasn’t in Moscow. But Nina thinks the trip
wasn’t all a waste. She is now sure her father was kidnapped
for some reason related to the Tunguska blast and thinks he was onto
something big. Perhaps the companions from his expeditions can identify
it. They drop off Max in Dublin to find Morangie while Nina continues
on to Havana and then an asylum in the small town of San Christobal
in search of Perez.

Odds & ends:
In front of the cabin, Nina can also examine the swamp to the right.
To the left, the drinking-water tank. On the truck-wreck screen, the
truck itself and the river.

– If you follow the path
straight into the screen from here, you’ll come upon an oddity:
an exposition screen without usable items or puzzle elements. In the
distance, you can see the research station and its private airport.
Nina rambles on about this for a while and, afterward, can examine
the station itself and the river below. She returns here, noninteractively,
at the end of this segment.

Cuba and Ireland

The Nina-in-Cuba and Max-in-Ireland
segments can be completed side by side. (You can switch between the
characters at will, but they don’t interact until an automatic
sequence at the end of the Cuba segment.) However, they overlap in
one spot and you’ll need to complete Cuba first to bring the
Ireland segment to an end.

Cuba

Needless to say, Nina can’t
simply march in and see Perez. While the dancing nurse at the front
desk confirms his presence at the institution, she says a visit would
require a special permit and that’s not happening. And you can’t
find your way in unassisted. A gate on the left side of the lobby
blocks access to his room.

But knowing what we know
about the favor system, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to explore
what sorts of things the nurse values highly. Try her “music”
and “politics” topics to learn she’s been poling
the electorate (joke stolen from The Simpsons episode “Separate
Vocations”) and is now running for mayor.

Maybe you could make her
some campaign posters? Once you’ve talked to Sabrina — the
nurse is identified by the gate keeper’s “Nurse Sabrina”
topic only after you’ve talked to her — you can drop back to
the artist watching the entrance to the asylum grounds and suggest
a portrait for this purpose. He’s fine with the project — with
two stipulations.

1) Sabrina’s dancing
awfully fast to serve as his model.

2) He needs some black
pigment.

The first is easy enough
to remedy. The record player can’t be turned off entirely —
Nina doesn’t want to alienate the nurse — but it can be slowed
down. Head right through the courtyard and enter the kitchen. Take
the small weights on the corner of the table in the room’s near
right corner.

Then find our way back
to the lobby and head right and down to a room where an inmate is
building a house of cards. The turntable’s here. Drop the weights
on the record. The pace drops off and when you get back to the lobby,
you’ll find Sabrina has followed suit.

You won’t find any
black paint lying around. But it’s not the only option. Charcoal
will work as well. You’ll have to make it yourself. Think fire.
Grab the eyeglasses (always a reliable fire-starter) from the table
in the record-player room, a magazine from the stand in the lobby
and some logs from the pile in the far left corner of the courtyard.

Then head back to the kitchen
and pop the wood and then the magazine into the stove. Nina’s
matches have flown south with the move to Cuba, but note the strong
light coming in the rear window. Simply use the glasses on the stove
to light up the contents.

No waiting required. Use
the sausage tongs hanging from the left end of the shelf at the right
side of the rear wall to pull a charred log from the fire. Drop it
on the painter and ask after the portrait. If you’ve already
weighted the record, it’s as good as done. Bring the picture
to Sabrina and she’ll ask for more copies (and separate out
the original from the plastic bag supplied by the artist).

You probably noticed the
copying machine in the upper left corner of the record-player room.
Perfect for this purpose. But there’s no way of getting to it,
as the patient’s under-construction house of cards is in the
way. Can you help the process along?

Naturally. Talk to the
patient about “House of cards” to learn that, every afternoon
at the same time, he loses all his work to an “earthquake.”

A daily earthquake seems
unlikely. The only earth-shaking event that goes on at the asylum
is in the courtyard: A worker (currently taking a siesta) is using
a jackhammer to break up the concrete surface in preparation for repaving
as per the direction of new asylum owner Massimo Gartuso. (Ask Bernard
about “work” to get as much of the story as he knows.
It’s a rush job — supposed to be complete in three days —
and a rather strange priority for an American billionaire.)

Ask Bernard about the first
of his two “break” topics for a palpable hint about how
to bring on this afternoon’s quake: His break lasts only until
black smoke replaces the white cooking smoke currently coming from
the kitchen chimney at the upper left.

You already have the perfect
black smoke-producing item on-hand: the plastic sleeve for Sabrina’s
portrait. Pop it into the stove. Black smoke pours from the stack.
Bernard starts his jackhammer and you’ll hear a distant “Noooo!”
as the house of cards collapses. (If Nina refuses to shorten Bernard’s
break, you haven’t talked to the patient in the record-player
room. If she objects to the potential smell and fumes of a burning
plastic bag, you either haven’t talked to Bernard or to both
Bernard and the patient.)

Retrace your steps to the
record-player room to find the patient gone and the cards scattered
about. Use the portrait on the copier. Drop the copies on Sabrina
and she’ll open the gate to Perez’s room.

Enter the hall and use
the near door on the right. Empty. You’re inclination is probably
to run back to Sabrina, and it’s a good instinct — but you’ll
have to look at everything you can look at here in order to leave.
Examine the bed to find a newspaper article about the appointment
of Nicole Charlesroi as the new asylum director. (Nina’s diary
adds that it’s rumored the change was made at the request of
a foreign investor — presumably new owner Gartuso.)

Also check out the surveillance
camera in the upper right corner (a key element in the next sequence),
the missing tiles in the left wall (which seem to have a certain arrangement
and thus suggest Perez is not as inarticulate as he may later seem)
the blood stains on the floor, and the desperate scratch marks higher
on that same wall.

Now check in with Sabrina
on “Perez’s cell” to report him missing. This is
news to the nurse, who takes alarm and raises the issue with off-screen
caretaker Ramon. He sounds blase about the whole thing and indicates
he’s already brought it to the attention of the doctor … and
that now he’s going to change the patients’ bedding.

That should connect with
you: There’s a laundry cart out in the courtyard. And sure enough,
it turns out this exchange has kicked Ramon into action. Each time
you return to the courtyard, you’ll now find him depositing
bed linens in the cart and then returning inside. No, Nina can’t
slip through the door in his wake — whenever Ramon’s on-screen,
the interface is disabled — and the closed door can’t be opened
from this side. Shame you don’t have the wedge from the Russian
hospital.

Now, why do you want to
go in there? Yeah, yeah, because the game’s made the door difficult
to open. But there’s also a practical reason: This is the control
room. Ask Sabrina about the new topic “surveillance camera”
after you leave Perez’s room to learn recordings from the camera
in the missing patient’s room could be viewed there … and
that she can’t get you in. Only Ramon and Charlesroi have keys.

You can’t steal a
key, but now that the door is opening and closing on a regular basis
(once every time you visit the courtyard), you can stop it from closing
all the way.

Pay special attention to
the scoring of the wood to the right of the door. This may seem to
speak to the darker passions of the inmates, but it is essentially
a bullseye for the player. The only thing that interacts with this
spot is Sabrina’s portrait and the only thing that’ll
make it stick there is the meat fork found beside the dirty dishes
in the kitchen. kitchen. Spear the portrait with the fork and then
use the combo on the doorframe. It protrudes slightly into the path
of the opening door, but slides out of the way when the door opened
and then drops back into a position to stop the door from closing.
Following Ramon’s next appearance — which occurs the instant
the painting is in place — you’ll be able to enter the control
room. (You can set up this mechanism as soon as Sabrina removes the
portrait from the plastic sleeve, but the door doesn’t open
until Sabrina talks to Ramon about the missing Perez.)

The three VCRs here are
inoperable without a tape and, naturally, the tapes are secured in
the safe at the right. The combination must be incorporated in the
painting at the left — being that there’s nothing else even
vaguely cryptic here and that you can’t leave the room without
opening the safe.

This depicts pirate, cat,
parrot and spider — or, by number of legs, 1428. Use this combination
on the safe and Nina automatically retrieves the surveillance tape
for Perez’s room. Use it on the VCRs and you’ll see two
shots of a suffering Perez and then a third of Ramon helping him from
his cell.

When the tape ends, Ramon
appears. He’s prepared to do Nina violence … but calms down
when it becomes clear she means Perez no harm. After some background
— the most notable detail: Gartuso’s investment in the asylum
suggests he’s after something big — he takes her to the troubled
man, who has been hidden in a shallow seaside cave.

You can question Perez
about the asylum, Vladimir and Tunguska, but only the “Father”
topic is required. Clearly Perez wants to say something about his
former colleague, but his condition has rendered him inarticulate.
He needs access to a non-verbal medium. (Remember the missing tiles
back in his room. It looked as though Perez had been trying to draw
something.) So you just need to do for him what’s you’ve
already done for the gatekeeper/painter: Give him a brush and a canvas.

Leave the cave. You’ll
find yourself entering the left side of the starting screen. You just
need to recover the nurse’s portrait from beside the control-room
door and another sample of charcoal from the kitchen stove (again,
using the tongs).

Retrace your steps to the
beach and give both items to Perez He’ll draw a strange symbol
or diagram. Nina takes a picture of it with her cell phone and sends
it to Max. The scene now switches to Ireland. If you’ve freed
Morangie, the action picks up on the upper level of his study. If
not, wherever Max left off.

Odds & ends:
Out front, Nina can also examine the easel. In the lobby, the poster
on the pillar. In the record-player room, the canvases beside the
door and in the upper left corner, the list to the left of the shelves
at the back, the shelves themselves and the teddy bear. In the courtyard,
the two notes beside the control-room door, the scoring on the right
side of the doorframe, the loudspeaker above the far corner and, until
Bernard resumes his drilling, the jackhammer. In the kitchen, the
dirty dishes to the left, the onions hanging beside the window, the
right-hand shelves and the soup ladle hanging below them. In the hallway
outside Perez’s room, the face design on the wall at the end
of the hall. In Perez’s room, Nina can inspect the mattress
a second time. And at the seaside cave, the cave itself.

– There’s a fair
amount of stuff here that can be taken but has no actual role in the
game: the teddy bear in the record-player room (once the house of
cards has been demolished) and an onion and ladle in the kitchen.
(Given the one-to-a-customer notice on the wall beside the stuffed-animals
shelves, it’s a fair bet that at least the bear is an artifact
from some earlier stage of the design.)

– Nina can try to use the
jackhammer, the fallen playing cards, the glasses on the stove (when
it contains the wood, but not the magazine), the magazine on the stove
(without first using the wood), the stove itself (without using the
tongs) and the nearest three doors on the left side of the hall leading
to Perez’s room. In the courtyard, she can try the control-room
door (after completing her business with Ramon) and try to talk to
Bernard (after burning up the plastic bag).

– Did you notice the custom
design on the playing cards? Once you explore Perez’s room,
you’ll realize the woman on the queen is asylum administrator
Nicole Charlesroi. And who’s the guy on the king? Not Gartuso.
(At least, not the version of Gartuso who ended up in the game.)

– One of the notes beside
the control-room door refers to the Black Robes. This makes it clear
that the “sect” is separate and distinct from Gartuso’s
operation (whatever sort of operation that may be).

– The whole issue of repaving
the asylum courtyard is never firmly settled. It’s implied that
Gartuso has something to hide and is in a hurry to do it. But hide
what?

Bernard can’t help
you — he’s an outside contractor — but conversations with
the gate keeper, the nurse Sabrina, the patient building the house
of cards and, eventually, Ramon suggest that a bad fate awaits people
who don’t follow the rules or ask too many questions. The patient
alludes to someone who met that fate, Sabrina names such a person
as Pedro and Ramon reports that two patients have vanished.

Put it all together and
it’s easy to assume Gartuso wants to dispose of the bodies of
the folks he or Charlesroi made disappear — or whose disappearance
he is contemplating. (This would also explain why Ramon freed Perez.)

– Did you notice that most
of the article on Charlesroi appears to have been censored? Her name
and the part of the headline are the only things that are readable.
What’s been hidden … and why? This is never made clear, but
it’s suggested later in the game that Charlesroi was once less
well-regarded.

Ireland

Drop down the stairs at
the right and talk to the fisherman. You’ll establish that Ken
Morangie lives on an island off the coast and that the fisherman will
lend you the boat off to the right in exchange for whiskey.

The cellar to the topside
pub — reached through the door in the cliff behind him — is a likely
source of the booze, but it has an intimidating padlock. The key’s
hanging on the pillar at the bar and the proprietor’s not letting
it out of his sight. So Max’s job here is to remove the bartender
to a position where he can’t see the key.

The key to the key is the
sleeping man at the left rear. Try to talk to him and then check with
the bartender. He reveals Klaus will wake up if you bring him something
to eat.

Not hard. You’ve
just met a fisherman and he’s happy enough to supply you with
a fish from his pail. (Just try to take one.)

But you’ll want to
cook the fish first. The fireplace at the rear of the pub will do,
but you’ll need some kind of pan for the purpose. The sign for
sightseeing tours (beside the stairs across the road from the pub)
will do. Place the fish on the pan and then the pan it in the fireplace
to flash-fry it. (It’s ready instantly.)

Only now you’ll discover
the sign’s too hot to grab barehanded.

There’s a makeshift
oven mitten just outside. Take the red flag to the right of the exterior
side of the pub’s door. If you try to use it in its initial
state, it turns out to be plastic and would just burn or melt if used
on the sign. But you can wet it down in the sea. Max can then take
the fish and present it to Klaus, who now raises his besotted head
and asks for lemon.

Of course the bartender
doesn’t have a lemon. But you have to ask in any case. Ask about
the pub also and he’ll drop a hint about his walk-in crowd —
the drivers of fruit and vegetable trucks who stop in and get tanked
up during their rounds.

No one’s going to
stroll in and just drop a lemon on you, either. This tidbit is meant
to suggest that trucks hauling lemons might be found in the neighborhood.
Put this together with the two road signs outside — the top a 30-kph
speed limit for the curve and the bottom reporting road damage —
and you may get an idea how to bounce a crate out of one of those
trucks.

Cover the top of the sign
with the flag and step back inside the bar. You’ll hear the
sounds of an approaching truck and then some kind of minor mishap.

Leave the pub again to
find a crate in the road. It contains a lemon. You think it here,
it comes out there. Back inside, give it to the bartender. He’ll
attend to the cutting and squeezing and then temporarily abandon his
own drink on the bar to join Klaus … which distance still doesn’t
allow Max the freedom to take the cellar key.

However, it does allow
Max to mess with the bartender’s drink. Take the tumbler on
Klaus’s table, fill it with sea water down at the dock and then
use the tumbler on the fireplace to boil off the water. Retrieve the
tumbler (no flag needed this time) and establish with a right-click
that a layer of salt remains — now a separate inventory item.

Use the salt on the bartender’s
tumbler back on the bar. The bartender doesn’t seem to notice,
but he does get up to retrieve the drink — which now makes him sick
to his stomach. He’ll step off-screen and Max can take the cellar
key from the pillar.

Across the road and down
the stairs, you can now deal with the padlock and, inside the cellar,
grab a whiskey bottle from the shelves at the rear. Outside, drop
it on the fisherman. The boat-for-booze deal still holds and you just
need to click on the boat for a cut-scene on Max rowing across the
channel. (But first, refill Klaus’s tumbler with water. This
may save you a trip later on.) Let the scene play out, as it gets
you the only exterior view of the castle.