The safest Tangle Tower walkthrough is two circuits of the mansion before you enter the passage beside the garden harp. On the first circuit, open every bedroom, take each Statement, solve the room puzzles, and show every suspect both the Tangle Tower painting and the Case File. On the second, ask only the questions that unlock the eight Suspicions, complete those deductions, and finish Sally’s two reviews. Then record four sounds with the wooden crab, match their patterns on the harp, and continue below ground.
That separation prevents the two most expensive mistakes: discovering after the harp that one presentation or inspection was skipped, and owning a clue without having asked the conversation that makes its Suspicion appear. The route below covers all ten current Steam achievements. Controls can vary by platform, and the metronome can begin in different positions, so visual-state puzzles are explained by their rule rather than a copied button sequence. The section after the harp contains full ending spoilers.
Start with an eight-name investigation card
Write the eight suspects down once and give each name four boxes. The first three boxes belong to your collection circuit; the last belongs to the accusation circuit. A bedroom that will not open usually means its resident’s Statement box is still empty.
| Suspect | Statement | Show Tangle Tower | Show Case File | Suspicion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flora | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Felix | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Fifi | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Fitz | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Poppy | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Penny | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Percival | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Hawkshaw | □ | □ | □ | □ |
The two presentation columns are also the practical record for Tangle Tower Historian and It’s my Case File. Mark them when you show the item, not when you merely finish ordinary conversation. The other optional interactions fit around that card:
| Achievement | Interaction to protect | When to do it |
|---|---|---|
| An Unfinished Painting | Inspect Flora’s portrait and finish the opening sentence deduction. | On the first Flora’s Tower visit |
| A Souvenir | Inspect the snow globe on the low table in the Library. | During the collection circuit |
| Professional Snoop | Inspect the Grand Hall family tree and the large suspect board in Fifi’s Room. | Before the harp passage |
| A Swamp Monster…? | Inspect the amphibian statues in the Gardens, Music Room, and Rooftop Garden. | As each location opens |
| A Poet and a Pianist | After meeting Penny, ask Poppy about all eight suspect portraits and let every poem finish. | Before the harp passage |
| Chemistry or Alchemy? | Inspect the Library chalkboard, Greenhouse clipboard, and the notes hidden under the Laboratory papers. | First two above ground; third immediately below |
A Secret and Untangled Tower belong to the below-ground story and do not require a separate upstairs detour.
First circuit: open every room and take its evidence
Finish a resident’s basic interview before expecting their bedroom to open. While the dialogue is already on screen, show the Tangle Tower painting and Case File and mark the two boxes. This order collects the items needed by the later Suspicions without asking you to guess which clue belongs to whom.
- Lake’s Edge, Gardens, Main Entrance, Grand Hall: speak with Sally, inspect the harp, take the damaged tape from the pond, collect the opened letter near the entrance, and inspect the family tree. You should leave with the tape and letter recorded and the first half of Professional Snoop protected.
- Flora’s Tower: inspect the body outline, portrait, paints, brush, and palette. Complete the opening deduction, take the cracked tape from the gramophone, play both tapes to their ends, solve the gemstone egg, and finish Flora’s first interview. The room should give you the Empty Egg and An Unfinished Painting.
- Library and Fifi’s Room: inspect the Bird Book, chalkboard, and snow globe, then interview Fifi. In her room, inspect the suspect board and solve the microscope. Leave with the Secret Diary, the first two research-note locations recorded, and both Library achievements protected.
- Music Room and Poppy’s Room: inspect the horn-playing statue and interview Poppy. Upstairs, collect the Sheet Music, solve the metronome for one ripped-photograph half, and slide the cover from the exterior-door panel so its hidden marks can be read later.
- Greenhouse and Fitz’s Room: inspect the potted fruit and research clipboard before interviewing Fitz. Solve the lockbox under his bed for the Ornate Trowel and uncover his exterior-door panel.
- Rooftop Garden: use the two bedroom panels together. When both accept, the connecting garden appears. Inspect the headphone-wearing statue and take the Four Feathers from the frog display. If the garden remains absent, one panel is still unsolved; a single accepted side is only half of the lock.
- Aviary and Penny’s Room: inspect the Birds and Cage, interview Penny, solve the birdhouse, take the Crumpled Paper, and inspect the flower in the heart-marked pot. Meeting Penny also adds her portrait to Poppy’s People questions.
- Astronomy Tower and Attic: interview Percival, solve the mechanical solar system, ask about the Golden Beetle research, and look through the telescope at the round window above Flora’s Tower. The exposed Attic contains the Reel Thingy; take it now.
- Workshop: inspect the painted model and open the treasure chest for the larger set of Painted Models. Ask Felix about Freya and those models before leaving.
- Stone Square: solve Hawkshaw’s clock box for the Small Lens. Ask Hawkshaw and Fifi about the lens, and ask Fitz about Hawkshaw; those questions are more important than carrying the lens by itself.
- Freya’s Room: take the photo of the large painting, inspect Freya’s drawings, and solve the paintbrush box for the other photograph half. At this point the collection circuit should have supplied every movable item used by the upstairs Suspicions.
Read each puzzle by the thing it releases
These eight puzzles have a stable arrangement or result. Use the reward column as the success signal; if the named item does not enter the Case File, the puzzle has not been accepted.
| Puzzle | Arrangement or final check | Item released |
|---|---|---|
| Flora’s gemstone egg | From the top, clockwise: red, pink, green, blue, green, yellow, pink, yellow, blue, purple, red, purple. Check the back-line shapes before submitting. | Empty Egg |
| Workshop treasure chest | Match the painted island to its map coordinate and facing: H6W. |
Painted Models |
| Freya’s paintbrush box | Place a short brush carrying pink first. Follow it with a narrow green brush, a standard green brush, a short blue brush, a tall blue brush, and finally a tall pink brush. Match height, tip, paint, and handle to the rebuilt columns. | Ripped photograph half |
| Fifi’s microscope | Left to right, use the base marks +++, +, ++, -. The enlarged key must remain unbroken where the lenses overlap. |
Secret Diary |
| Hawkshaw’s clock box | Move the far-left hand to 3 and the far-right hand to 6. The linked middle faces settle at 9 and 12. | Small Lens |
| Fitz’s lockbox | Rebuild the scraps as: down arrow; rounded drop with a pointed tip; long rectangular leaf with a point; leaf with triangular side cutouts. | Ornate Trowel |
| Penny’s birdhouse | Top: yellow, blue. Middle: red, dark green, white. Bottom: brown, light green. The linked children must inherit the connected parents’ color and facial traits. | Crumpled Paper |
| Percival’s solar system | Treat the rim as a clock. Pair the gray and purple bodies at 9; put orange at 3, pink at 5, and green at 1. The sun belongs at 5 and the moon at 1. All five floor segments must fill with shadow. | Golden Beetle research |
The metronome begins from a state, not from a universal count
The target is the gold ring at the top. Use the symbol buttons to merge the four hoops into two overlapping pairs, then press the buttons matching those pairs until both stacks sit inside the gold ring. If a sequence from another guide separates the hoops, reset the puzzle and work from the symbols currently visible. The ripped photograph is the acceptance signal.
Poppy and Fitz each reveal the other door’s answer
Open both panel covers before moving anything. Poppy’s side hides sun positions beneath movable moon tiles; reproduce those sun positions on Fitz’s side. Fitz’s side reveals the moon positions that belong on Poppy’s panel. Both mechanisms must accept before the Rooftop Garden appears, so do not treat one solved panel as a broken trigger.
Second circuit: turn eight portraits into eight suspicions
Return to a suspect only after completing the named questions. If the Suspicion option is missing, leave the conversation, ask the prerequisite person about the listed clue, and reopen the suspect. Cycling accusation answers cannot repair an unopened topic.
| Suspect | Conversation that opens the topic | Evidence used in the deduction |
|---|---|---|
| Flora | Ask Felix about the Painted Models and Fifi about the Bird Book. | Use the Bird Book to reject the knife, connect the feather to the Painted Models, then use the Empty Egg to establish where Flora kept it. |
| Felix | Discuss Freya and the chest’s Painted Models with Felix, then ask Fifi about Freya’s Paints. | Reject ownership of the pot, compare Freya’s Paints, and connect the exchanged lids to the blood-filled red pot. |
| Fifi | Discuss the Secret Diary with Fifi and take the Freya-room photograph clue to Poppy. If the topic still does not appear, discuss the other photograph half with Poppy too. | Identify the diary as someone else’s, use the half showing Fifi and Freya, and connect the blue book to Freya’s private writing. |
| Fitz | Meet Poppy; ask Fifi about Fitz, Penny about the Potted Flower, and Fitz about the flower and Ornate Trowel. | Use the trowel, then compare Penny’s pot and soil with the Potted Fruit from the Greenhouse. |
| Percival | Inspect the telescope window over Flora’s Tower and ask Percival about the Golden Beetle research. | Challenge the astronomy explanation and use the beetle material to explain what the telescope was observing. |
| Penny | Collect the Four Feathers and discuss the Birds and Cage and Crumpled Paper with Penny. | Use Freya’s Drawings to identify the red roses, then use the Four Feathers to place Penny’s yellow bird on the rooftop. |
| Poppy | Play the cracked pink tape to its end, recover both photograph halves, and ask Poppy about the photograph. | Use the cassette-player half to establish her former color preference, then add the other half to explain the change in appearance. |
| Hawkshaw | Meet Percival, obtain the Golden Beetle notes, ask Fitz about Hawkshaw, and ask both Hawkshaw and Fifi about the Small Lens. | Challenge the claim that the handheld device is a microscope, then use the beetle lead and telescopic lens. |
The game allows some variation in accusation order. After all eight Statement boxes are marked, return to Sally at Lake’s Edge for the statement review. Complete her separate crime-scene review after Flora’s Suspicion and the telescope observation are available. Before leaving Poppy, finish every portrait poem now that Penny has been met.
The harp reads four sounds, not a text code
When the wooden crab appears near the garden pond, use it as a recorder. Each sound produces a pattern that belongs on one harp segment.
| Sound | Where to make it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Bell | Main Entrance | Ring the entrance bell while the wooden crab is available. |
| Humming | Flora’s Tower | Play the damaged pond tape on the gramophone and let it reach the humming. |
| Piano | Music Room | Show Poppy the framed Sheet Music and ask her to play it. |
| Birdsong | Lake’s Edge | Inspect the birds at the birdbath. |
At the harp, handle one sound at a time: recall its wooden-crab display and rotate the corresponding segment until the engraving matches. If one segment is uncertain, replay only that sound instead of copying a four-part text answer from another screen.
Before entering the opening, stop and read your card. All eight names should have Statement, Tangle Tower, Case File, and Suspicion marked. Sally’s Statement and Crime Scene reviews should be complete. Confirm the snow globe, family tree, Fifi’s board, three amphibian statues, every Poppy portrait, and the Library and Greenhouse research notes. Treat this passage as the end of upper-mansion cleanup.
Below the garden, spend the objects you carried
The remaining rooms are more linear, but each one consumes something from the collection circuit.
- Laboratory: inspect the beetle display, then move the loose papers until the third set of research notes can be selected. Chemistry or Alchemy? should unlock here. On the safe, pull the nine edge latches until every square joins one unbroken path from the key icon to the lock icon; an isolated square means the arrangement is incomplete. Take the Secret Research and use the Golden Beetle evidence in Sally’s laboratory discussion.
- Lowest Level: inspect the lake window and complete Sally’s Lake topic. Examine the damaged photograph, Children’s Book, Metal Rod, and rolled building plans on the cabinet; mark the Study on the plan. For the strange-photograph topic, use the Painted Models to identify Lord Remington.
- Grand Hall: return to the illuminated mechanism in the central tank, pull its control, and climb the ladder it reveals.
- Study: A Secret unlocks when this room opens. Inspect the Burnt Items in the incinerator, the notebook, Group Photo, and central pinboard. Complete Sally’s Study reconstruction with the Photo of Painting and Freya’s Drawings, then inspect the Group Photo below Sally and finish the Five People topic.
- Wall crab and weapon: reopen the Children’s Book and copy both the angle and open-or-closed state of each pincer onto the wall crab. The large left pincer points up and right while open, the smaller left limb points up, and the right pincer turns right while open. The hidden wall exposes a crossbow. In Sally’s Weapon topic choose that the parts were already found, then rebuild it with the rod from the Lowest Level, the Attic reel, and Hawkshaw’s lens.
Finish the accusation from the evidence on screen
The final dialogue becomes manageable when every answer explains a physical detail rather than merely sounding suspicious:
- The shot came from above Freya, but she was already lying on her back and unconscious.
- The gramophone caused the collapse because the Golden Beetle had been placed inside it.
- Freya’s Paints were part of the tampering, and the culprit avoided the beetle’s effect by sheltering behind the rooftop Lute Statue.
- Return to Flora’s Tower and inspect the plant, portrait, brush, and palette area. Tell Sally the missing material was found elsewhere and use the Burnt Items.
- Use the Brush and Palette, identify the unused yellow paint, then connect the Birds and Cage and select the yellow bird at the window.
- During Hawkshaw’s last exchange, use the Reel Thingy when restraint is needed. Tie the old mansion story to the Study and Group Photo, the entomology identity to the Golden Beetle, and Freya’s intention to the Photo of Painting.
If one card is absent, its home gives you the shortest repair: the Small Lens is from Stone Square, the Reel Thingy from the Attic, the Metal Rod and Children’s Book from the Lowest Level, and the Burnt Items, notebook, and Group Photo from the Study. The yellow-bird conclusion also needs both the telescope-window observation and the Birds and Cage clue. Once those pieces are present, finish the accusation and continue through the ending; Untangled Tower is the final completion check.
Official game details and the screenshots used here are available on the Tangle Tower Steam page.