System Shock Remake – How To Solve All Puzzles

System Shock Remake sees the return of Junction Box minigame puzzles. This gameplay mechanic is barely and poorly detailed in-game, and this guide will serve as an explainer for it and offer some tips you can make use of in order to solve them.

To begin with, all puzzles are randomized, no matter the location, difficulty, or playthrough. The only way to solve these Junction Box minigames is to get a good grasp of their underlying mechanics. There are two types of circuit board puzzles in System Shock Remake: Tile-based Junction Boxes, and Wire-based Junction Boxes.

Tile Junction Box Puzzles

Tile Junction Box puzzles are relatively easy and straightforward. On the circuit board will be two Red square nodes, only one of which will be powered and glowing. Your task is to connect it to the unlit Red square node by building a circuit for the current using the Green straight and right-angled Circuit tiles, which can be rotated ninety degrees at your discretion. Orange straight and right-angled Circuit tiles cannot be manipulated manually and display the tooltip “It Won’t Budge” at the top of the screen. The other unlit red nodes with the rounded corners are dead ends, and need to be skirted entirely. As you design a viable pathway, each intervening Circuit tile will be lit up as well.

Added complexity at higher difficulty levels will task you with solving a variant with Blue Switches that rotate by ninety degrees both themselves and multiple surrounding straight and right-angled Circuit tiles in a predetermined manner–these can be colored both Green or Orange. Some of these Blue Switches may also act as circuit junctions that can transport current themselves, and you will have to look closely to see which of their four sides will actually do so–the barely visible tracers will be readily apparent by their dull Orange or Brown color, with the non-usable sides being simple metallic dead ends. Green straight and right-angled tiles can be freely rotated by ninety degrees, as with the first variant.

Wire Junction Box Puzzles

The Wire Junction Box puzzle is quite difficult in comparison. As you hover the reticle over elements of the puzzle, look at the top of the screen to learn what they are actually known as in-game. One edge of the circuit board will have a power meter or “Battery Cell”, that has to have its current modulated to within an indicated range, neither higher nor lower. To accomplish this, begin by identifying the plugs or “Wire Plugs”, in their “Wire Holders”. These cables need to be inserted into sockets or “Wire Ports”. This will light up a circuit or “Wire Trace” in glowing Orange just like with the Tile Junction Box puzzles. When that current reaches a Red knob or “Dial”, it can be redirected by rotating the Dial appropriately–the Blue light on it indicating which direction the incoming flow will travel. Any “Switches” along the circuit can be used to further regulate the flow of current–both higher and lower as the case may be.

Of note is that the Wire Plugs have two variants: “Wire Plug (Single Power)” and “Wire Plug (Double Power)”. This is also indicated on the Wire Holder itself by the number of lights that are lit up on it, and determines the amount of current being transmitted. Single would only light up one level on the Battery Cell, while Double would light up two, assuming nothing else modified the current along the circuit. “Combiners” and “Splitters” do exactly what their names suggest. However, Splitters do not cause the circuit to lose power as it flows out.

With the Wire Junction Box puzzle, your best strategy is to brute force it till you achieve almost, but not quite, the required power level. From that point you can fine-tune it either higher or lower as the case may be, by manipulating Switches, or swapping around Wire Plugs of different Power levels.

And that is both types of puzzles minigame in System Shock Remake.