Enigma of Fear: [EN] Samuel’s Puzzles

Open the program “cornix.exe”. When clicking on a sigil, you can try to see which letter corresponds to it in the Latin alphabet A-Z. If a sigil is correct, the letter turns green. If it is incorrect, it turns red or orange.

The file newton.png contains a repetition of 7 colors. Newton conducted an experiment with white light reflecting through a prism, producing 7 colors. Opening the program “visio.exe,” you can click on certain spots. There are 7 letters at the bottom, representing 7 layers, from “I” to “VII.” At the top, you can “activate” the device, and each display has 4 buttons: two to adjust the left part (referred to in computing as a nibble) and two for the right part. This setup is available for each display.
You need to take the first color from the newton.png image, find its hexadecimal color value, and input it into the program.
Example for the letter “D” (spoiler):

Listening to the audio, you can identify various droplet sounds. By noting the intervals between these droplets with “dots,” using two spaces for long pauses and one space for short pauses, you can create a code. Opening the audio file in a sound editing program like Audacity and viewing the spectrogram makes it easier to analyze.

There is a cipher called the tap-code that can be used here to decode this sequence, resulting in the answer.

Play the “Simon Says” game so that, in the end, the sigils will be revealed to compose the answer.
Image (spoiler):

The hint says “tactile,” and the image file name says “grade 2.” In the background of the image, you can see a Braille symbol. You need to type all the text from the image, input it into a grade 2 Braille translator, and you will get the result.
If you don’t want to type the text yourself, I have already typed it below:

In Braille:

Throughout the game, we notice that there is an hour within the game of great importance: the hour of the Strachs’ vision, when the unhaunted was born.
Thus, changing the computer’s time to 04:13, running the program, and clicking on the ball to make it roll will reveal the answer.

Opening the image in Photoshop (or a similar tool) and adjusting its matrix reveals several dots. The hint “zero dimensions” and the fact that you’re working with a “matrix” to reveal these dots lead to DotCode. DotCode is a 2D barcode matrix.

When opening the file lupi.exe, you’ll solve a box-pushing game (sokoban). You must complete each level in the minimum number of moves. Each stage gives you a letter and a number (the number of moves). After solving all the letters, it loops back to the first stage (first letter).

The hint refers to the control buttons (minimize, maximize, restore, and close). When opening the program, the window’s title shows no information while it is running. However, upon minimizing, the window’s title changes (but remains hidden).
To view the title, hover the mouse over the program on the taskbar.

The file name and hint are enough to understand that we must follow the “frog” along its trajectory. When opening the file, we see a frog and various directional cues. This might reference “The Frog Path” from Professor Layton. Tracing the entire path on a grid will result in the answer.
Below are the movements:

Image showing the path (spoiler):

This puzzle might lead you to a cipher called “clock code,” but that’s a rabbit hole (an expression meaning you’re overthinking and heading in the wrong direction).

If we focus solely on the hints, we have the traffic light and how to talk to a plane. Additionally, opening the image shows times and small flags. Researching “Clock flag plane semaphore” leads to “flag semaphore,” a signaling system that transmits information over distances. This involves people using flags to signal planes.

Using the times from the image, convert the times to an analog clock format. These correspond to the shapes of letters in “flag semaphore.” Convert these signals into text to get the result.

Inside the folder Znalost\Krev\Strach\Krev, there are 6 other folders at the root. Within each folder, there are several subfolders. The hint “Pig” and the presence of a file with a bacon emoji at the end of the folder paths lead to the “Baconian Cipher,” also known as “Bacon Code.”

Taking the initial letter of each folder from the root to the last file and noting the numeric value (the name of the last file), we have:

The numbers do not repeat, indicating the answer has 8 characters. We must organize each letter in numeric order.

Decoding each group gives: “N,” “E,” “A,” “O,” “R,” and “S.” Arranging them correctly according to the numbers, the result is: “RESONARE”.

Opening the program mentior.exe launches an application with a screen and a VHS video tape. You need to turn on the screen and note the pauses in the noise, as it is Morse code. One way to solve this is by using Audacity to record the audio and view the spectrogram (or wave view) to correctly identify the dots, dashes, and pauses.

Morse code:

Converted text:

After obtaining the result, type it on the label of the VHS tape, insert the tape, and press play to run it. The answer will appear on the screen.

The file intus.png contains random text, and the arca.zip file requires a password to access its contents.

The hint “Tabula Recta” refers to a reference matrix for shifted alphabets. Vigenère cipher, which uses Tabula Recta and a keyword for polyalphabetic substitutions, is the likely method here. Tabula Recta itself is not a cryptographic method but a tool used for ciphers like Vigenère.

However, Vigenère requires a key to decrypt the text. The hint “intus” in the file “intus.png” leads to the word “inside.” Opening the “intus.png” file in a text editor, you’ll find the key at the end of the file.

Text in the image “intus.png“:

Key inside (intus) the file “intus.png“:

Decoded text:

With this information, you can open the file arca.zip using the decoded text in lowercase (praemium) as the password and retrieve the answer.

The image features a scarab beetle. The hint is “gold” and also “poe.” Searching online reveals the “Gold Bug Cipher” and the book The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe.

The text shown in the image:

Decode the above text using the “Gold Bug Cipher” to obtain the answer.

When running the program “fracta.exe,” multiple windows will open. You must solve the puzzle by arranging the windows carefully so that none overlap. Once complete, the program will merge, revealing the answer.

Searching for the code “1507580” online leads to the Steam page of the game. In one of the images, you can see a photo of Sam with a computer monitor in the background showing the Raven Skull Ring item. The password can be seen in that image.

Upon opening the audio file in an editor like Audacity, the first observation is the spectrogram, which shows:

Using the hint “2 steps,” it becomes clear that to find the characters corresponding to the asterisks, another step is needed. By speeding up the audio by exactly 413%, letters can be heard being spoken:

Substituting B, I, and U for the asterisks, in order, gives the final answer.

Just a note here that this one took me a lot of time to solve.

Upon opening the image, you can see various chemical bonds and elements.

To solve this puzzle, you need to try reading the letters that the formulas create by connecting the molecules. This corresponds to the hint “read the formulas.”

The result is:

Looking up the atomic numbers of each element gives:

Finally, using the simple a1z26 decoding method (assigning letters to numbers), we get the answer.

Illustration of how it looks (spoiler):

Go to the main menu where the sigils are displayed and input the sigils shown (ELIA). The answer will appear directly on the screen.

Representation of the initial game map, before entering the Strach mansion:

Each “?” represents one of the petrified black ooze pillars on the map.
The numbering corresponds to the time of Strach’s family vision: 04:13 am.

You need to interact with the pillars using the UV flashlight and hit them three times with the crowbar in the order 0413:

1. Start with pillar “?0” (bottom right),
2. Then “?4” (bottom left),
3. Followed by “?1” (top left),
4. Finally, “?3” (top right).

Overlaying the image on Samuel’s computer with this map aligns some key elements: the Order’s van, Veríssimo’s car, the gate, the front entrance of the mansion, and the basement entrance.

After completing the procedure on all four pillars, go to Veríssimo’s car and walk south until you reach the scarecrow. Below is a photo of the scarecrow (the photo was taken after the item was removed; if everything was done correctly, the scarecrow will have an item with it):

Finally, the item is this:

Note: You don’t need to keep the UV flashlight on all the time. Also, there’s no need to leave the area to reset if you make a mistake. What matters is starting at 0, keeping the UV flashlight on while hitting the pillar with the crowbar, and making three hits.

• The collectible items are a reward for backers of the crowdfunding campaign for Ordem Paranormal: Enigma do Medo on Catarse, specifically for the tier Secret Agent of the Order. The limit was 20 backers.