Dual Protocol Demo Stuck? The Opening Office Puzzles
The Dual Protocol demo is gone from Steam. It still gets searched, because a lot of players got stuck in the opening and never found out why. This page collects what players reported in the Steam thread “Stuck in beginning” (started June 17, 2026), and what the developers said afterwards.
Treat everything here as demo-only. The developers replied in that thread that they had “thoroughly reviewed the cues since the demo” and “made several adjustments in the Analyst’s room”. The October 2 release may use different clues or codes.
Where pairs got stuck
The thread’s opening post describes a pair that had:
- taken a car key from the locker, and
- found the frequency band for the music player,
but could not work out:
- the date and time for the temporal computer,
- what to do with the sonar computer,
- how to open the safe in the agent’s office, or
- how to unlock the door to leave the office.
They said they had spent an hour with no progress, and they were experienced escape-game players.
What other players added
| Report | Source | How sure |
|---|---|---|
| The temporal computer seems to need the current in-game year and a date format (MMDDYYYY or DDMMYYYY), and the demo didn’t make either clear | One player in the thread | Single report |
| Safe code 10-45-20, seen on the detective’s notice board in the developer’s own gameplay video but missing from their copy of the demo | One player in the thread | Single report, demo build only |
| A player who could not get the key mentions locker 101 and says the locker stayed black for them | One player in the thread | Single report, unclear |
| Clues seemed to have been removed from the demo so it could not be completed | Several players agreed | Opinion, not confirmed |
The developer video does show the dial safe, but its preview frames are too small to read the code, so 10-45-20 is still one player’s reading. If it fails, the full game has probably changed it.
What the developer’s own demo run shows
Aegean Crafters posted a 16-minute run of the demo on YouTube (July 11, 2026). It has no voice-over, but its preview frames and on-screen captions show the order of the demo:
- Office: the agent ID card, the office, a wall clock and a computer asking for TIME and DATE, then a desk calendar, a notice board and a dial safe.
- Locker room and garage: a red car, then a night drive across the city while the analyst has a city map.
- The manor: wall clocks in several rooms, then a sound puzzle. The captions say “The frequency that will break the glass is 1400 Hz” and tell you to compare the songs on the MP3 player with the gramophones, then play the right tracks so the combined frequency breaks the glass.
- Finale: an antenna console with a dish, matched against a signal dial on the analyst’s screen.
The video moves fast and we could not read every code from its small frames, so we only list what is clearly visible. The gameplay video page has it embedded with a full timeline.
Why this kept happening
Every one of these stuck points is the same problem. One player had a number or symbol, and the other player needed it but didn’t know to ask. The temporal computer needs a date, and the date lives on the other screen. If you hit a wall in the full game, run this checklist out loud before anything else:
- Eva reads out every number, date and time visible in the room, including on posters, boards and clocks.
- Miles reads out every input field the terminals are asking for, with its format.
- Match them. If a field wants a date and nobody has said one, the date is somewhere neither of you has described yet.
Our communication tips turn this into a habit.
The full game
A chapter-by-chapter walkthrough for the October 2 release will go up here after launch. We will only post solutions we have checked against more than one source.
Noted. Back to the case.