-256 Walkthrough Guide and Tips

Zero

• Play with the wallpapers. Can we get them for ourselves outside the game? that would require ripping them out of the unity data files, and if I told you how it would be a federal crime.
• After clicking and your focus is on the laptop, hit ‘esc’ and change the game settings to one of the resolutions and full-screen. Stay away from “rat mode,” I had to Alt-F4 to get out of it.
• read old email until you get a new letter from a fan.
• Don’t forget to read the terms of service of the cursed game.
• controls are standard Unity walking sim — WASD, cursor locked in the centre, when it turns into a hand you can click to interact. Run is always on, shift key is walk. “Speech” text comes in one letter at a time, spacebar to speed it up. If you want to speed-run this game, moving diagonally is faster than moving in straight lines (a common quirk in first-person games).
• ‘esc’ is now quest log, with a gear icon for settings. (Is this the same key that exits fullscreen? wasn’t for me.)
• it’s a walking sim, look around, take your time, walk up to things and poke around.

• In the first room, one of the paintings isn’t affixed to the wall (achivement get)
• Go to the room behind the manager. Fail. Leave the room.

One

• In the next room, there’s an info desk, an ice-cream bar, a waiting lounge, and display cases for Jellyhead. You can go to a hall of hotel rooms (all locked), or in the opposite corner is the restaurnt with a logo that matches what’s on your clipboard. When you’re finished poking around, talk to the maitre’d bot in the restaurant, then go to the opposite end of the restaurant to find the kitchen.
• one of the info desk co-workers says “the number of staff is a square unit.” I counted 12 at the info desk, 4 at the ice-cream bar, 1 jellyhead promoter, 4 at the garden, 1 in the hotel hallway,
  2 in the locker room, 2 in the restaurant, 10 in the kitchen. sqrt(36) = 6, checks out.
• go to the back of the kitchen where a bot is wiping a table. get a wipe cloth, and back out to the customer area. wipe down the eight ‘reserved’ tables.
• admire the tropical rubber ducks in the aquarium when you get a chance.
• back to the kitchen, near the entrance is a tray with glasses and napkins. pick that up (where does the cloth go?), and back to the customer area to refresh the eight tables.
• back to the kitchen, follow the right wall to shelves and find the tray with condiments (if you see huge rubber ducks, take two steps to the right) refresh the tables. If you forgot a table in the last step, you can still swap for plates-and-cutlery tray to finish. (Achievement get.)

Two

• back in the centre room, follow the left wall where you’ll see windows have lifted; the garden is open. Be sure to talk to the bot at the entrance to learn more about this completely normal and not at all upsetting place.
• in a partitioned area near the entrance, see how your co-workers are completely healthy, and talk to the bot in the white coat. Then pick up the “head” and get to work.
• Nah, this “head” is too cute. Take it with you for walkies, and introduce your new buddy to the co-workers at the info desk, the ice-cream bar, the one in the labcoat, the one at the garden entrance, the one with the Jellyheads, the two in the restaurant, and finally show it off to your manager. (Achievement get)
• Using the “buddy” to clean up messes requires clicking fast, and moving the cursor a little as you click. Accuracy is a little off, best to stand in the mess and look straight down as you clean.
• The first mess is right under your feet. another is behind the partiioned area. Third is further to the left near the seats. From there, turn around to find a customer debating Kierkegaard with a blue rubber duck, and just past that is a co-worker who’s covering for a tree that called-in sick that day. Talk to the tree-bot (Achievement get)
• fourth mess is other side of the seats. fifth mess is in the back past the bridge. Achievement get. Check out the perfectly normal and typical photo op on the other side of that bridge, then return the “head.” (Achievement get)

Three

• back to the common room, walk straight through past waiting area to the hotel rooms. Observe the caution sign, and remember good fps is good customer service. Walk almost all the way to the back of the hall, to find a bin on a pedestal near the back. Pick it up.
• You’ll see one customer who is pacing up and down the hall staring at their smartphone. Remind them the importance of being aware of their surroundings, and stand in their way. (Achievement get)
• turn back and head into the door with a green light over it. This is an appropriately cozy room, with carefully careless authentic simulated decoration. Study the details, there will be a quiz.
• now leave and head to the hotel room with a red light. This is a simulated authentic carelessly careful mess, which will not do. You must find the six inappropriate items and bin them.
  • Fish belong in full bathtubs, not empty ones.
  • WD-40 spray lubricant is for restaurants, not bathrooms
  • voodoo dolls belong in crypts, not under chairs
  • flasks of blood belong in the garden, not next to beds
  • the televisions are pre-broken, the hammer under the teevee is unneeded
  • rooms come with complimentary serving of orange viscous fluid, but cartons of orange fluid cost extra
• Achievement get.
• before you leave the hall, go to the far back and look around the corner where a co-worker is humbly apologizing for the extra orange-fluid carton that was left in their room. Don’t be that guy.

Four

• – go back to the common room, and on the other side of the ice-cream bar is the manager room where you started. Report to the boss, who will give you an authentically fraudulent management advice “you can’t leave but I won’t tell you what you’re supposed to do.” An new agenda appears on your ‘esc’ clipboard to reflect this foolishly wise advice.
• one of your co-workers at the info desk (one of the two closest to the staff room, between the rumour-teller and the get-off-work teller) needs you to find a missing co-worker. Ask your manager for a pass to the staff room where bots do their goofing-off duties. If you can’t hear the dirty jokes in this locker room, you can turn off the radio. There’s also a lurid magazine on one of the benches. The two co-workers are diligently wasting time.
• these lockers don’t have locks, making them mere “ers”. Unlike other things in this game, you can interact with them even thought he cursor doesn’t change when you mouse ovter them.
  • On the far wall, the one on the left has extra toilet paper, good for quarantine. Fifteenth from the left is enlightening. Second from the right has extra display panels displaying panels, and eleventh from the right surely has everything you could ever want.
  • On the near wall, fifth from the right is rented to a rubber duck family, as housing is precious in this economy. Fifth one past that is reserved, please stuff nerds in another locker. Fourth from the left is where the conspiracy is kept, but we’re short on red string, please move the yellow post-it notes on your own; if you do, a pink post-it note is visible with a message. (in the real world, copy the post-it note onto real paper you’ll need it later.)
• back in the unreal world, take the pink note back to the distressed co-worker at the info desk, who will notify the manager.
• back to the manager’s office, to ask about the pink note. Or you would if you could. That thing you failed to do when you first showed up in this room? try it now.
• oh look, the name of this video game, surely this is important.
• remember the low fps warning signs? Not so silly now. Remember to move your head slowly as you can easily get dizzy (framerate can jump around and you could point in a random direction)
• Head to the right, slowly, and find a discarded electric torch. pick it up, then turn around and walk past the elevator.
• Find a hand-print scanner. Try it, realize the hand icon doesn’t really have a handprint.
• turn around, find a print on the floor inside a knocked-over shelf. Disregard that the print has a hand attached. Perhaps someone’s misplaced a hand nearby? Oh, gosh, someone’s misplaced an entire body over there, this is not good hotel housekeeping.
• Use the print with the attached hand on the door lock behind you. Now with your photographic memory (or the note I told you to write on paper), tap your clean finger-icon across the greasy spots on the glass.
• autosave get. Surely this is a sign you won’t make a regrettable mistake soon.
• just inside the door, on your left, is an old-fashioned cue-cat. pick it up. pay no attention to the walking steps you hear in the dark room where your manager was perfectly safe.
• if you had regrets on wearing headphones, now’s a good time to use them.
• go straight forward. Notice the painted signs on the floor. You should start to hear music, and then find the missing co-worker, who will ask you questions you don’t have answers for, and tell you to “return to where you started”.
• I went exploring in the garment warehouse. Every ‘glitch’ means stepping into a new area. You can use the cue-cat on the barcoddes under the garment bags to find out where you are. The entrance is at “0.00” if you want to go back. You can run away in fear, but screaming is frowned upon as it it will disturb customers.
• at this point I did run away in fear, back to “0.00” and the elevator to the manager’s office. There was where I ‘woke up’ after all. The hand without a body and body without a hand were missing, but so is the manager in the office, so I got to see what’s on the manager’s second screen. Screensaver password is “press any key”, all one click. There I learned something about my employment and compensation here.
• back to the garment warehouse. Still scary, but I should face my fears, so I paid attention to the symbols on the floor. Each time I glitch into a new area, I’m in the middle of three new floor symbols that lead further into the spooky warehouse. If I felt afraid stepping on one, that seemed like the best direction to go to face my fears.
• after about a dozen of these, I felt a little sick, and heard one garment trying to escape its bag. Throwing up in a garment bag is cleaner than throwing up on the floor, so I took it off the rack, and fainted.
• CARRIER LOST. ATTEMPTING TO RESUME WRITING THIS TEXT FILE.

(two) Five (six)

• When I woke, I saw a configuration signpost next to an autosave. I was tempted to try rat mode again, but resisted; I could feel someone was watching me, but it felt kind not critical.
• I walked… er, floated to the kind figure and spoke to them. It didn’t make much sense, but they took pity on me and said there’s a sandwich at a nearby patio.
• The sandwich wasn’t much help, but the halo’d figure next to the sandwich had answers for me if I kept talking to them.
• Once the halo’d figure started repeating themselves, I returned to the someone with more questions. The someone said I’d have troubles but there’s nothing they could do because I did read the Terms Of Service after all. (oops, I told you to do that. sorry.) They did offer to send me back home, though there would be side-effects.
• (achivement get) Looking in a mirror after I got back home, yeah, minor side effects.