How to hack the gate and find the Bodhi Tree in Chinatown Detective Agency

You might want to have a pen handy.

Screenshot of a neon-lit city

Image via General Interactive

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Early in Chinatown Detective Agency, you’ll receive your first assignment as a private eye, but even meeting your contact will require a bit of detective work. You’ll receive a text message from the mysterious contact, which asks you to meet him under a Bodhi Tree in the botanic gardens. However, upon arriving at the gardens, you’ll have to complete a hacking minigame to enter them. Here’s how to successfully hack the gate.

To hack the gate, you have to complete a matching minigame where you’re tasked with matching every block — each of which is marked with a symbol — with another block possessing the same symbol. The only problem is that you don’t know which symbols you’re selecting at first. To further complicate things, the layout of the symbols is random; what your solution is will differ from what someone else’s is. However, there are a few ways to game the system here.

Screenshot of a hacking minigame from Chinatown Detective Agency
Screenshot by Gamepur

For starters, every time you reveal a symbol, take note of that symbol’s location. In our experience, screenshotting the game every time we revealed a symbol helped us keep track of the locations of each one. Secondly, take note of whichever squares you hit on any given attempt at matching, and don’t hit them again unless you’ve uncovered a square that matches with one you previously hit.

You should use your first few moves to focus on identifying which blocks house which symbols, take note of each symbol’s location, and then match them all up later. Be mindful of how much you mismatch, however, otherwise you’ll fail the minigame and have to pay a hefty $300 fine.

Once you clear the minigame, you’ll arrive at the Bodhi Tree to finally meet your contact, who will feed you some more information about the case you’re working.