Hannah's Tip Corner

Do you ever get stuck in a game and find yourself baffled by the solution once you eventually figure it out? So do I, which is why I decided to give you some tips, UHS style!

After getting lost in the UHS trying to find out what I was missing, I decided to compile a few hints that seem to work for pretty much everything. I have played and watched a couple of P&C's myself, and I can say that Syberia 1 does things a little differently. For one, there's no “combination” mechanic; you can use everything as-is.

In fact, some people have gone as far as claiming that this is less of a puzzle game and more of an interactive novel. For this reason, if you have the patience to sit through endless conversations and read through documents in seek for hints, this is probably what I'd consider the easiest P&C I've played.

Table of contents

Comparing different releases

PC (Steam) release (tested on Fedora 35):

  • Regular Proton crashes; use GE instead.
  • It will only run in 800x600 windowed mode. dgVoodoo seems to do nothing via Wine, and Dxwnd will crash as soon as you try to set a higher window size.
  • Recommended to use accessibility tools (you need to read documents to get hints).
  • Includes a complete PDF walkthrough if you open the system files.
  • You need to manually hide the cursor, or it will overlap the in-game cursor. Furthermore, it seems that this can only be achieved on X11.

Switch (Syberia 1 & 2) release:

  • There are two alternative modes — touchscreen and controller. Touchscreen mode highlights all elements you can interact with at every moment. Controller mode scrolls through all elements you can interact with, but it does not show them all at once.
  • Phone will not let you use the number pad (phone numbers are added to your contact list automatically).
  • Long dialogues scroll very fast. There are several languages to choose from, so choose one you can understand by hearing. Languages available: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Polish and Japanese.
  • Autosave every time you do something or move from one screen to the next.
  • Bonus content you unlock as you progress (concept sketches, as far as I've seen so far).

DS release:

  • No voice acting.
  • Menu is displayed on the top screen. Touchscreen replaces the mouse.
  • Number pad is hidden.
  • Cinematics look mostly like they do on PC (it seems to be a direct port, after all).
  • Drag items to use them.
  • On the items menu, drag items below the Read sign (not onto).

Have you covered every conversation topic?

I am the kind of person that tries to get to know every NPC, but I know people who just skips dialogue and skims through. In here, you pretty much need to go out of your way to hit every conversation topic at least once. Not only they're giving you hints (duh), but some events are only triggered after hitting the right conversation topics.

Listen to the phone calls, too!

Considering phone calls come from nowhere and disrupt the flow, I wouldn't be surprised if you wanted to ignore them. However, phone calls are also important in the game, as one character will give you a hint you need to use later on.

Maybe you need to check the leaflets again!

I also tend to read every item description and every book, trying to get as much of the lore as possible for extra flavour. This is actually a common trope (2x duh), but sometimes the tips are actually in a leaflet (or a book, or a newspaper cutout, or a-) that you read a long while ago and have forgotten about since.

Talk with the NPCs again! (And listen to them again)

This game seems to be heavy on conversation; you really need to invest yourself in the characters for the plot to progress. Not only is this game lacking combination items, but it also seems to be lax in item usage altogether (at least early on). And remember – they're giving you hints, you need to listen (3x duh)!

A small puzzle spoiler, not saying which one

There is one puzzle where you will only get through after having a back-and-forth conversation with three different parties. You don't need to hit every conversation topic every single time, you will know what you need to choose, but bear this in mind before trying to look for missing items for the upteenth time.