Solve the puzzle to unlock a door, surely! …what do you mean “maybe we should take a break from gaming?”

We’ve done a fair few articles along the lines of “you know when you’ve been gaming too much when…” involving real-life save points or enticingly smashable-looking barrels.

But this latest one is a little different. This time, a photo from Twitter user @yunyundetective tugs at both the gaming-obsessed and the logical parts of our brain in which patterns just have to conform, lest the laws of physics be broken and chaos descend.

▼ “Must… resist… urge… to… fix….”

I like to think that I’m fairly carefree when it comes to things lining up, except for an irrational fear of setting a volume level to an odd number (one reason I never turn life up to 11), but this innocuous-enough photo of the ground flares up both my game-based puzzle solving compulsion and my need for things to be just right.

It seems from Japanese Twitter that I’m not the only one:

“If I came across this in town, I’d want to set it right, but the stress of being unable to would cause my head to explode.”
“Match it up, and a jingle will play, right?”
“Step back, I’ve seen this in Resident Evil loads of times. I know what I’m doing.”

Thankfully one netizen stepped in to fix the travesty and solve the puzzle:

▼ Suddenly, all’s right with the world; passing pedestrians can breathe a sigh of relief.
Now to find out which door it unlocked… some local residents may be in for a surprise.

Except that it seems that rather than tapping X or using specialized tools, the above photo simply employed Photoshop-wizardry to alter the photograph. Which means that somewhere out there in Japan, a drain cover is still out of sync. A key item is still waiting to be retrieved.

To the streets, without delay! Although, it’s dangerous to go alone, so maybe we should summon Epona to get there quicker.

Source: Twitter/@yunyundetective via jin115
Featured image: Twitter/@yunyundetective