The International House of Mojo

A year and a half later: Enjoy some idle speculations on Cogg’s potential puzzles.

It’s hard to say exactly what Cogg Island’s puzzles would have looked like. Ron told us in-game hotspots were removed to avoid confusion, and Myst-like. (Footnote: A big hug to anyone who can find the video where Dave or Ron spilled the tea on that.) is the only description we’ve heard of what could have been.

Dig into the resource files, though, and you can find some more concrete remnants: A file name here and a sprite there are enough to spur some uninformed speculations about the lost puzzles. Find below the findings from some basic sleuthing we did on the five resource files named after the puzzles they contained. While little was uncovered, Cogg increasingly sounds like it was a fascinating island.

Were all the symbols scattered around Mêlée intended for a larger part of the game? It doesn’t seem impossible that the “Symbol Puzzle” room would have involved those runes in one way or another. The asset file includes the statues/graves/whatever with different symbols on them, all reminiscent of those used by the Pirate Leaders. And what’s the green stuff leaking from the skeleton in the bottom-right image? Who knows, but that’s one annoyed-looking idol.

Lastly: The asset file contains a skeleton with a voodoo-esque hat that does not appear in the playthrough. Very Papa Legba.

There was a lot of speculation surrounding the Mêlée clock’s role in ReMI. In the room referred to as “Clock Puzzle,” you’ll find the titular clock set to ten, just like its infamous Mêlée brethren. Seeing how Wally’s map to the Secret shows the time as seven or eight, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that it would have played a role in the puzzle. Particularly with the third hand on the Mêlée clock set right between seven and eight, with a cog flanking the four and five.

The island's center contains the “Compass Puzzle,” and hidden in the asset file is what looks to be a key in a small chest. That goes hand-in-hand with the keys surrounding the compass.

Heck if I know—I guess I had expected this to be a ship puzzle, but going by the asset name, you’d need to change the oars into some sort of pattern. Maybe.

Did we miss anything? Got some juicy information? Why not throw us an email or post in the comments and let us know? You’ll be rewarded handsomely with a special place in our hearts.