On the way to the border in Road 96, you’ll come across multiple NPCs who need your help (or who you need to get away from). These chapters are where your choices tend to matter, because you can influence people’s opinion on political candidates and get one of the many different endings depending on what you do. In Short Circuit, it’s Alex who needs your help to disarm a bomb of his own making.
Because of the procedurally generated nature of Road 96, this chapter can either come early on or much later in your playthrough. Either way, you’ll find yourself at a broken-down gas station with Alex inside, and you’ll need to help him in order to progress. Here’s a rundown on what you need to know about Short Circuit, including where to find all collectibles and the car keys in the hidden safe.
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How to Solve Short Circuit in Road 96
When you first enter the broken-down gas station in Short Circuit, you’ll have some time to look around and get your bearings. Alex is inside, busy fiddling with his bomb, so you can make sure that you vandalize all the Tyrak and/or Florres posters and have a look around the area before you meet him. When you’re ready, there are two ways to approach. You can either call to him from the outside of the building, or you can sneak up behind him from the back entrance of the building. This will give him a bit of a fright, and he’ll ask if you’re some kind of ninja.
Your character will then notice that he’s working on a bomb of some kind. Depending on whether you talked him out of making this bomb for Robert in an earlier chapter with John, he’ll either be looking for ways to deactivate it or complete building it. Either way, though, he’s going to say that he needs you to be his ‘duck’ and figure out how to deactivate or arm it correctly.
Agree, and at some point, your character will ask if he’s checked the electricity. Alex will then direct you to a nail gun that you can use to check where the power cables lead so you can check the power. All you need to do here is shoot the panels in the ceiling to reveal where the cable is leading to, and once you’ve found that the cable leads outside, you’ll be able to tell Alex.
From here, you need to look for an old shed just outside the gas station. Go out through the door you initially entered, and you’ll be able to see the cable run from the side of the station out to the old shed. Call out to Alex, and he’ll ask you to break the lock on the door using the nail gun. Once the lock is broken, you’ll see a generator inside, but you won’t be able to switch it on without finding the key to it first.
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Thankfully, you don’t have to look too far, because the key is hiding in a panel inside the shed. When you try and grab it the first time, though, you’ll get shocked. After laughing at you, he’ll pass a magnet to you so you can get the key out of the electrified panel. To prevent yourself from getting shocked, you just need to make sure that you move the key slowly through the panel and don’t let the metal part of it touch the electrified knobs. There are some rubber ones along the puzzle that you can lean against to get past the small maze a little easier.
Once you’ve got the key out, you can start the generator. This will turn on the power for the whole gas station, but it will also attract a couple of new NPCs who seem to be Tyrak supporters. Alex doesn’t seem to like this very much, so he proposes to mess with them a little bit. He’ll give you a button that you can press to give them a shock when they touch their car. All you need to do here is make sure that you press the button when each of them touches their car, and they’ll get shocked.
Unfortunately, Alex will laugh a little too loudly at their misfortune, and they’ll notice you once you’ve given them both a taste of Alex’s electronic medicine. You’ll need to run away and hide, but this part is scripted, so you won’t need to do anything more. Some time will pass, and when you regain control of your character, Alex will have left, and you’ll be able to get going yourself either by using a stolen car, hitchhiking, getting a bus or a taxi, or simply walking along the road. The choice is totally up to you.
Where to Find the Car Keys in Short Circuit
There aren’t too many collectibles to find in the Short Circuit chapter, but like most others, you can find the keys to an abandoned car to take on your journey to the border. To find them, you need to locate the secret safe.
It’s vital that you do this while you have the nail gun that Alex gives you.
You won’t be able to get the keys before or after this part of the chapter, because the safe is hidden behind a Tyrak poster in the gas station that can only be taken down with the nail gun. It’s behind the counter, and once you shoot it, you can open the safe at any time. If you have the hacking ability, you’ll be able to simply open the safe; otherwise, you’ll need to find the code.
To find the code, you also need the nail gun, because it’s in a box that drops from the ceiling. If you’re a little late for that, the code is 1218. Once you’ve looted the safe, make sure to have a last look around and vandalize some posters. Then, you can choose your next type of transport and move on to the next chapter in your Road 96 journey.
- Released
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August 16, 2021
- Developer(s)
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DigixArt
- OpenCritic Rating
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Strong