If you’re diving into some seasonal content as we head towards Halloween 2020, I imagine many of you may be playing Amnesia: Rebirth. It’s a long-coming sequel to a longtime horror classic, it just came out, and many of the reviews are up there in score. Our own Morgan Shaver gave the game an upper-shelf review, awarding it a more than solid 8/10. As you’ve seen if you’re keeping up with the site, Amnesia: Rebirth is also pretty puzzle-heavy between the scares. And the first puzzle is a doozy!
Amnesia: Rebirth Radio Room Guide
The introductory moments of Amnesia: Rebirth are largely linear. You won’t be solving any puzzles while the basic mechanics are introduced, and the game doesn’t quite open up until the story really starts moving. Once you’re out of the caves and heading towards what seems like civilization, you end up in what seems like a dilapidated fort. At this point, protagonist Tasi is still trying to contact… anyone, and inside the fort is an incoming radio transmission echoing through the entrance.
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Your goal here is to figure out how to get into the radio room. It is completely gated off from the foyer, and the only doors are locked. You’re starting in a dark-ish area with lanterns and candles strewn about, and this is a hint of what’s to come as you navigate this structure. At first, it’s going to feel like you’re fairly railroaded, as Tasi notes you have to find a way around, and there isn’t more than one way to go.
But once you go in a little further, you’ll be spit out in a sort of loop, that takes you around what seems like a quarters-type floor. There are several locked doors, a couple of bedrooms you can enter, and what looks like a mess hall. Tasi will comment on an old, wooden elevator, guessing it’s possible to get into the radio room from above. But the elevator is missing pieces, and you aren’t alone in the building.
From here, your main goal is to figure out how to use the elevator, but your immediate goal is to establish as much visibility as possible. You’ll need to leverage your limited supply of matches and lantern oil to help you get around this loop, and use the lanterns and candles to establish safe spots you can duck into between stretches of darkness. There are matches and oil canisters all over the place, but you’ll need to be thorough to find them. Open drawers, look inside pots, check every surface possible, so on and so forth.
You should eventually see a large, crossbow-like trebuchet tucked into a smaller walkway among a bunch of other junk. It’s huge, so it’s hard to miss. But what is easy to miss is a little crank that’s slightly blinking on the rear of the machine. Grab that. Another thing you should take note of is a number of long, wooden planks strewn about, which you can grab. One is even in your way at one point, so Amnesia: Rebirth is not being subtle about it.
You can place the crank into the little wooden contraption, and you’ll be able to operate the elevator. The only problem is the elevator doesn’t have a floor anymore, so you won’t be able to go very high. But you get a taste of the game’s physics working in non-scripted ways to solve puzzles, as you’ll need to grab one or two of those planks and drop them inside the elevator. Once you get them to stretch across the open floor space and steady enough to stand on, you can crank the elevator up no problem.
There’s another loop up here, and when you end up above the radio room Tasi will notice how damaged the floor is. You can jump on the weak spots, but all you’ll get is some disappointing rumbling. A hallway across from that spot has a cannon sitting off to the side, and it’s missing its wheels. If you try to grab and move it, Tasi will remind you it needs wheels. It’s somewhat easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it, but one of the wheels is right there on the ground by the cannon. All you have to do is pick it up and sort of wobble it near the axel, and the game will do the rest for you.
The second wheel requires more of a journey. Like the previous floor, you’ll inevitably find yourself scrambling around to light as many candles and lanterns as you can, while a Certain Something continues making its presence known. In the same room as the cannon, you’ll see a pretty substantial crack on a far wall. If you look through the crack you’ll see a room full of dead soldiers. This is where you need to be next. Again, just make your way around collecting matches and oil, and finding the various lore-delivering collectibles. Eventually you’ll find a dark corner with a sturdy barrel in the way, but you’ll be able to push it aside to gain access to that cannon room.
You have to be quick here, as being near corpses has the same effect on you as darkness. There are two cannons, and you’ll want to snoop around the one on the left, away from the soldiers. You’ll find the second wheel on the ground there, so grab it and run back to the cannon you’re fixing. Luckily you only need the two wheels, and once they’re on you’ll be able to push the thing right over to the radio room, and gravity will do the rest. After that you can hop down, and the story will continue from there.
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Despite being the game’s first puzzle, the journey to get into the radio room can be overwhelming if you aren’t used to stuff like this. It’s especially rough because of the limited visibility, which makes smaller details easy to miss. But just know you can take your time, and stand around in lit areas without facing any consequences while you think about where to go next. Don’t be too wasteful with your matches, but there are enough to get you through with some room for error.
Are you pumped to play Amnesia: Rebirth? Or are you worried you’ll get the crap scared out of you or get stuck on frustrating puzzles? Is there another Halloween-appropriate game this year you’re going for instead? Let us know over in the Prima Games Facebook and Twitter channels!
