Indiana Jones Great Circle: All cogwheel puzzles and how to solve them

The jungles of Siam are hiding all sorts of secrets, and scattered across it is a series of puzzles that might just be the hardest in the entire game. When you first find the hidden pyramid as part of the story you’ll have to solve a small puzzle where you must link up some cogwheels to activate a mechanism, but this is just the first of several puzzles like this in the game, and you’ll need to take some parts of each puzzle across the map with you.

You’ll need to solve all of these cogwheel puzzles to get every Ancient Relic in Great Circle, so we’ll show you where to find each one and how to solve them.

All cogwheel puzzle locations

In the image above we’ve numbered each puzzle according to the order we recommend you do them, as the idea is that you have to collect the small cogs from each puzzle and use them in future puzzles. The simplest of these will require just four small cogs, while the last one will require all ten.

You don’t need to solve each puzzle to take the small cogs though, so we recommend you go to each location and collect all 10 cogs before you start, as it will make each puzzle much easier.

Here is the full list of all the puzzles and where they’re located, as shown on the map above:

1. Hidden Pyramid – This is mandatory as part of the story
2. Waterfall Ruins – Minimum 4 cogs
3. Wat Mahathat – Minimum 5 cogs
4. Hidden Platform – Minimum 7 cogs
5. Village – Minimum 5 cogs
6. Wat Si Sawai – Minimum 6 cogs
7. River Bank – Minimum 10 cogs

Hidden Pyramid cogwheel puzzle solution

As this is a main story puzzle it is the simplest of the set. The only major challenge is finding all of the small cogs in the area, as two are hidden behind a crawl space and a point where you need to yank with your whip. Once you have all the cogs, arrange them as shown in the image above.

The important thing to remember for all of these puzzles is that the small cogs only attach to other ones when they are horizontally or vertically adjacent to each other – diagonals don’t work.

Waterfall Ruins cogwheel puzzle solution

This one teaches you the basics of the rest of these puzzles, which is that to succeed, you need to connect the two big wheels with the cogs in between. The image above shows the simple pattern you can use to connect them in this puzzle.

Wat Mahathat cogwheel puzzle solution

This puzzle gives you some fixed larger cogs that you can use to transfer the movement over a gap that appears small but is actually impassable with any of the cogs. Arrange everything as we have in the image above to solve this one.

Hidden Platform cogwheel puzzle solution

This one is one of the trickier puzzles and in the end, we cheesed it by using nine cogs instead of the minimum seven that the puzzle requires. The tricky bit here is the overgrown cog in the middle which cannot move, meaning you have to avoid connecting any cogs to it. Our solution is in the image above.

Village cogwheel puzzle solution

This puzzle introduces you to the extra side-cogs that are secretly connected, letting you transfer movement across the board without needing to directly link everything up. Our solution was a little more complicated than necessary, but as you can see in the image above, it works.

Wat Si Sawai cogwheel puzzle solution

This one is a bit more straightforward, you just have to ignore the bottom right section of the puzzle entirely, as you can see in the image above.

River Bank cogwheel puzzle solution

This final puzzle can be a real headscratcher, as you have to use the special wheels that transfer movement while avoiding one big immovable cog in the middle of the puzzle. We cracked it though, and you can see our solution above that requires all ten cogs.

Once you’ve completed all the puzzles you will complete the mystery and have several more relics under your belt, getting you one step closer to unlocking Great Circle’s secret ending.