Silent Hill f: Secret Box puzzle solution

Is it really a Silent Hill game if there isn’t an inscrutable box you have to figure out how to open? Silent Hill f certainly doesn’t think so, which is why somewhat early in the game there’s a puzzle that has you solving clues to open a secret box. These clues are given to you via notes left by Rinko, who intended Shu to read them and figure out how to open the box. He never did, and you need what’s inside it, so we’ll have to solve the puzzle to progress.
The Secret Box in Silent Hill f has you sliding panels to reveal symbols that directly relate to the things Rinko is saying in her notes. Some of these notes are a bit hard to parse, and it might not be immediately clear which symbols you need to expose, which is why we’ve put together this handy guide.
We’ll go over the solutions for the Secret Box puzzle on all three difficulties in Silent Hill f: Story, Hard, and Lost in the Fog.
Silent Hill f Secret Box puzzle: Story difficulty solution
First box
The first box has you looking for symbols that represent a sweet and tart fruit cake, which Rinko and Shu shared a love of. You have to expose three symbols: the cake symbol, in the second row from the bottom, the strawberry symbol on the top row, and the cherry symbol on the bottom row on the back side of the box.
Second box
The second box has you looking for symbols that represent Rinko’s imagined journals, so you’ll want to expose every symbol that has a book in it. On the front side, that’s the second row from the top, while on the back side it’s the second and third rows.
Third box
The third and final box has you looking for symbols that represent sakura trees. On the front side, there’s a blossom branch on the second row from the bottom, which is all you need to open the final box and progress.
Silent Hill f Secret Box puzzle: Hard difficulty solution
First box
The first box, like on Story difficulty, has you looking for symbols representing the sweet and tart fruit on the cake Rinko and Shu enjoyed. In this case, you’ll want to expose the grapes, strawberry, and pineapple on the front side, and the apple, cherries, and orange on the back side.
Second box
Here, we’re looking for representations of Rinko’s imagined journals, so you’ll want to get all of the books. The front side has one book, while the back side has three.
Third box
Lastly, we’re looking for cherry blossoms on the third and final box. The front side has two blossoms, both of which are on the right side, on the top and bottom rows. The back side has a cherry blossom tree, located on the right side of the middle row.
Silent Hill f Secret Box puzzle: Lost in the Fog difficulty solution
First box
Lost in the Fog difficulty increases the complexity of the challenge slightly, but it’s still much of the same compared to lower difficulty settings, just with more panels to check. The first box has you looking for tart and sweet fruit, so you’ll need to expose the orange and apple symbols on the front side of the box, and the cherry, strawberry, grapes, and pineapple on the back side of the box.
Second box
The second box has you looking for symbols representative of Rinko’s imagined journals, so you want to expose anything that looks like a book. There are four books on the front side, and one additional book on the back side.
Third box
The third box requires you to find the mentioned cherry blossoms from Rinko’s note. There are three blossoms on the front side (for quick reference: the second row on the left side, the fifth row on the left side, and the sixth row on the right side) and just one on the back (the second row on the left side).
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