Control Resonant is not purely an action game. Remedy has packed CONTROL Resonant with optional puzzles tucked inside the many enterable buildings scattered across Manhattan, and the Central Zone laundry puzzle is one of the trickier ones. Crack it and you unlock a Secret Hideout, some lore documents, and a Health Upgrade that is genuinely worth the detour.
Where is the laundry puzzle in Control Resonant?
The puzzle sits inside the Central Zone, one of the main districts you move through during the campaign. Like galleries, coffee shops, and gyms, this laundry is one of several storefronts you can physically enter. Most of these buildings just contain a resource crate to smash open, but a handful hide puzzles behind their doors. The laundry is one of those.
You will know you are in the right spot when you step inside and see seven rows of washing machines lining the walls. Most of the machines display an out-of-order status, but several can be interacted with directly.
How do you solve the laundry puzzle?
The solution comes down to binary code. Each row of washing machines represents one line of a binary sequence, and the number of machines per row maps directly to that sequence. Your job is to turn on the correct machines in each row to match the code.
Here is the method step by step:
- Stand facing the left wall as your starting reference point.
- Work through each row horizontally, left to right.
- Interact with the machines that correspond to the active positions in the binary code for that row.
- Leave the out-of-order machines alone, since those positions are fixed and not part of the input.
- Repeat across all seven rows until the sequence is complete.
Once every row matches the code, a secret wall opens, revealing the hidden room behind it.
What do you get for solving the laundry puzzle?
Behind the secret wall you will find a Secret Hideout containing in-game documents that add to the story's lore, plus a Health Upgrade. The Health Upgrade alone makes this worth doing, especially if you are working through the game on a harder difficulty setting.
For a sense of how much content is still ahead of you after grabbing that upgrade, the full game length breakdown for Control Resonant puts the main story at around 30 hours, with completionists pushing closer to 50.
Tips for finding other hidden puzzles
The laundry puzzle follows the same design logic as the rest of Control Resonant's optional secrets. Every zone has at least one building that looks ordinary from the outside but hides a puzzle inside. The payoff is consistent: a Secret Hideout, documents, and a Health Upgrade.
A few things to keep in mind as you hunt them down:
- Check every storefront door. If it opens, step inside.
- Look for interactable objects. Anything that glows or prompts an action is worth examining.
- Read environmental clues. The code for each puzzle is always somewhere in the room, whether it is a number on a wall, a pattern on an object, or a sequence you can count.
- Health Upgrades stack, so completing every optional puzzle compounds your survivability over the full campaign.
If you have not sorted out your copy yet, check the Control Resonant pre-order editions and bonuses guide for a breakdown of every version and what each one includes. For everything else, the full Control Resonant strategy guides collection covers the rest of the puzzles, the main story, and more.