Resident Evil 7’s dummy finger puzzle now has a solution

The Resident Evil 7 biohazard demo has taunted players with a one heck of an involved puzzle since it first launched back in June. With the game’s final teaser hitting the PlayStation Store over the weekend, one player found that Capcom didn’t forget to conclude the frustrating finger mystery — albeit with a pretty convoluted solution.

For those who haven’t subscribed to Resident Evil 7 demo players’ favorite conspiracy, the dummy finger was an item discovered in the game’s first trial, released just after E3 2016. A lone digit found in the creepy house belonged to a mannequin, but players weren’t content to just leave it at that. Instead, it became the center of several fan theories about its greater purpose, an obsession rivaling that with another eerie, secret-filled demo, P.T.

Capcom stoked the flames even further in July, sending a seemingly unrelated message out to the franchise’s most passionate fans. Included in the details about the Resident Evil Ambassador Program was a note “about a certain ‘finger’”: “The path for now is closed, but patience ...”

By patience, the developer meant “wait another six months for an answer.” And now, courtesy of one dedicated Reddit user, players have found the purpose of the dummy finger.

Just one day after the new “Midnight” demo hit the PlayStation Store, BruhTheShark posted a step-by-step guide to completing the dummy finger puzzle on Resident Evil’s subreddit. It requires 34 steps, which run from the highly specific to the slightly vague; it’s a surprising set of requirements that the average player likely would never figure out on their own, as it sends them running from room to room and using items in some pretty particular ways.

The solution is really something players need to see to be believed, and SwingPoynt’s half-hour walkthrough of the demo’s final update below puts the Reddit guide into practice.

Be warned that things get pretty creepy toward the end. That’s to be expected, of course, based on Resident Evil 7’s earlier demo updates. Solving the survival horror’s strange mystery nets players an appropriately bizarre reward: the Dirty Coin item. What it’s used for in the full game remains to be seen, and thankfully, Resident Evil 7 isn’t that far way.

The game hits PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One on Jan. 24. The demo is just available for PlayStation owners for now, so PS4 and PlayStation VR fans can get cracking.