| Holiday Hack Challenge 2023 Report | Cody Travis <cwtravis@gmail.com> |
Difficulty: |
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Hidden around the Geese Islands are Gamegosling cartridges that can be played. Gamegosling cartridges are very similar to Gameboy cartridges. So similar, in fact, that they can even be played in a proper Gameboy emulator. Locate the first Gamegosling catridge under the straw hat at Squarewheel Yard on Island of Misfit Toys.
Once the cartridge is picked up, you can play it by clicking your badge, then clicking items, then clicking the cartridge you want to play. A web-based Gameboy emulator will launch the game. For Elf the Dwarf's Gloriously Unfinished Adventure Vol 1, no special emulator or hacking is necessary. Just play through the game by following the directions.
When you start the game you will have a nice conversation about finding the mystical Tom Liston. When you set out on your adventure, you will meet a dog named Kody that will challenge you to complete a QR code. 7 blocks of the QR code are out of place and you need to push them back to their correct location. Kody informs you that if you sing to the blocks out-of-place blocks, they will sing back. They will also tell you where they go.
To beat this challenge I wandered around the large QR code singing to random blocks until I found all 7. I will try to show their locations. The QR code map is 29x29 blocks so I can reference the out-of-place blocks by their coordinates starting with top left corner being (1,1).
This is the order I did them in:
| Block Number | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | (13,1) | (15,1) |
| 2 | (25,27) | (23,26) |
| 3 | (21,24) | (23,23) |
| 4 | (17,25) | (21,25) |
| 5 | (18,24) | (22,25) |
| 6 | (19,26) | (21,24) |
| 7 | (7, 9) | (28,9) |
Block one is found directly south of Kody. Just push it to the right two blocks.
Block 2 is down toward the bottom right of the map at (25,27). Just push it left 2 and up 2.
Blocks 3 through 6 are close together toward the bottom right as well. I have a series of images to show how to solve these 4 blocks.
The last block (block 7) must be taken out of the QR code and pushed all the way around the outside to its position on the other side of the code. It starts at (7, 9), push it left out of the QR code, up above the code, all the way right of the code, the down and left to its position at (28,9).
Once the last block as been put in its correct position, the game will show you a complete (but different?) code!
I did it! I fixed the QR code! What's a QR code?
I entered the QR code into an online QR code decode service and it spit out a url:
https://8bitelf.com/
That URL has the flag I entered in my badge!
"santaconfusedgivingplanetsqrcode"
