RetroSpace Walkthrough Part 1: Stasis Chambers, Nexus Plaza and Nexus Gardens

Pick your difficulty — Normal is the developers' recommendation, and remember the choice is permanent — then watch the intro and climb out of the pod. Head up the ramp on the left and take the Power Wrench; it is your melee weapon, your repair tool and, soon, your vent-opening crowbar, and it never leaves the hotbar again. Sweep the starting room properly before you leave: a Rocket Doughnut, a Crunchy bar and the Flashlight sit on the table, credits lie near the poster, and a storage chest by the door holds ammo.

Outside, Amira warns you about a gas leak. Check the bin for another doughnut and grab the two water bottles by the terminal, then use that terminal to open every pod section — the casualty counter ticking up is how the game tells you what happened here. Work up the ramp and loot the cryo chambers as you go: scrap and credits are tucked into most of them, and near the top on the left sits the A.U.C.S. Helmet, which switches on your HUD. Note the two valves set into the floor on the way up — you will want valves later — move the large box for the scrap underneath it, and take the audio log from the seat on the right.

Take the Fire Extinguisher from the wall left of the seat and douse the fire burning on the right; the scrap behind it is your reward, and the extinguisher itself is worth keeping — it doubles as improvised propulsion later. Drop through the floor hatch near where the gas was leaking, follow the lower path past the ammo, crouch through the low opening, and pass the corpses and the locked hatch until you reach the unlocked one at the back. Through it, the story advances, and at the back of the room — beside a console with a medical sign — you will find the Universe Cleaner spray.

The console is dead, and waking it is the game's first real puzzle. Two electrical boxes stand in puddles, one here and one at the back of the room. Use the Universe Cleaner's alternate mode to lay a third puddle that connects the two, then hit the rear electrical box with the wrench to complete the circuit. Do not stand in the water while you do it — conductive puddles are a weapon in this game, and they do not care who is standing in them.

With the console powered, the game sends you hunting for two codes, and both are hidden within a room or two. Start with the audio log at the bottom of the ramp beneath the ceiling-mounted gun — it glows green and is easy to walk past. Up the ramp you will find a medkit by the projector, a shop terminal, and a room signed for the Stasis Distribution Nexus Plaza. Play the audio log there and you will hear the Janitor's Closet code:

0937. Beside it, use the Biometric Scanner to open the lockers — inside one is a sticky note with the second code, 1477, plus beer and a spare cleaner.

Now go to the bloody terminal at the back, choose the security override and enter

1477. This turns the Stasis turret to your side — FinalBoss calls it the turret override, and it is the game's first lesson that hacking the station beats shooting it. Loot the food around the projector, then head back down to the Janitor's Closet and enter

0937. Inside: an audio log on the table and, in the chest at the back, a handgun and ammo — your first firearm. Open every remaining locker before you move on.

Go back up the ramp and through the door marked Stasis Distribution Nexus Plaza. Check the toilet on the far side, then head down the ramp: at the bottom sits your first Heal-O-Dome. This is where the game quietly introduces its death system — the dome heals you, and it is also the machine that will re-clone you when you die, at the price of a random cloning degeneration and a corpse run to recover your gear. For now, just register where it is; the full system is covered in our cloning guide.

Turn right into the conveyor area, pass the malfunctioning elevator, climb down the ladder beside the belts and crawl through the space on the left, shooting the grill at the end. Equip the Power Wrench and work the generator: FinalBoss states the completion condition precisely — wrench the faulty components until all three indicator lights turn blue, and the elevator comes alive. Back up top, a second crawlspace loop (move the box, break the grill, down the red ladder) leads past lockers of credits and scrap to a corpse holding the audio log "Tough as Hell!", and drops you back into the Janitor's Closet — the first of many shortcuts this station folds into itself.

Ride the elevator up. Of the two doors, take the unlocked one on the right: your first enemy waits inside. Drop him, take the ramp down, and note the second Suzie Smallgun by the corpse — duplicates are scrap waiting to happen. The door at the back of the room unlocks a shortcut to the lobby where you found the codes. Return to the ramp and go forward to the door marked with two angel symbols. Through it, a cutscene plays, Dr Nebula makes contact, and beside the corpse on the right you will find the PHCD — your personal hub device, and the reason half the terminals on this station will talk to you from now on.

You are in the Plaza proper now. Circle the electrified pool at the statue's base — the puddle lesson from Stasis, applied to you — and check the desktop console on the table: it wants a password. (One code list prints a value for this terminal; it is single-source, so we cover it, flagged as such, in the codes guide rather than as fact here.) The map terminal directly behind it is the real prize: download the Plaza's sector map. Then take the stairs toward the upper level, pass the door to the security section, and go through the door marked Garden.

Dr Nebula calls again as you enter and sets the objective: obtain a Gene Sucker. Read the note on the first couch by the corpse, then work the sections in order. In section B you will find another Heal-O-Dome; a spider attacks here, and down the left path hangs a body with the Bertha Shotgun at its feet — FinalBoss flags this as the pickup players most often walk past, and it is your first serious room-clearing weapon.

Push on toward the Head Gardener's Office. To the left is section C and a map terminal; the corpse beside it carries the Map Attachment for your HUD. Use the terminal after picking it up and the minimap appears at the bottom of your screen — RetroSpace's most-requested quality-of-life feature is an item you have to find. For the Hacking Attachment, work past the steam-blocked service door (it needs a valve, unless you came carrying one) and the console-locked door: shoot the enemy beyond it, pass the malfunctioning elevator, cross the narrow ledge — grab the Cosmi Cola on the way — and the attachment is at the end of the path. The balcony with the broken railing loops you back to the map terminal area.

The Head Gardener's Office door takes a keycard or a hack — with the Hacking Attachment fitted, clear the simple minigame and walk in; the keycard route exists too, on a body you will loot later in this area. Inside, loot the body to retrieve the Gene Sucker: the tool that pulls genetic material out of corpses — enemies, Biomatter, and one day your own previous clone — and the engine of the game's whole death economy.

The office complex also holds this stretch's security terminal, behind a desk in the room with the couch, medkit and food chests. Read its messages before you touch anything: they give you the Garden Storage Room code, 1212 — confirmed by the codes list, the walkthrough and a second outlet. The same terminal carries the Nexus Gardens Security Override, and here we have to be straight with you: the walkthroughs say 9636, the biggest codes list says 5315, and nobody outside the game can prove which is right. Try 9636 first, then 5315; the terminal is also hackable at 3 Skull difficulty, which is the guaranteed route. Either way, entering the override shuts down the Gardens turrets. Under the foliage on the left of the room, a path leads down and onward: storage chests, a door to revisit later, and a ventilation fan to break with the wrench — beyond it, Dr Nebula tells you the Janitor's Haven needs a code of its own. Break the glass at the back of that room for your first Blueprint, the other half of every weapon upgrade.

The Janitor's Haven lock is not digits but a four-symbol sequence, and the game scatters it across the Gardens in three sightings. The first comes from the Haven antechamber itself: move the middle portrait and you will see the outline of the code — two symbols visible, the middle hidden. The rest of the hunt is a vertical lap of the Gardens: out past the body that carries the Head Gardener's Office keycard (your alternative to the hack, if you missed it), through the rest area with the audio log "The Last Beerpong", a crawlspace where a spider jumps you after you extract genes from the Biomatter, up the ladders of section A, past the gas and down a hatch, then up again by the elevator near where the Hacking Attachment was. Wrench the generator up there, cross the circular balcony, take the battery, and climb the central column: in the storage at the top, beside the beer and an audio log, is the third symbol.

The full sequence, as the walkthrough records it, runs: Black hole → Cell Mitosis → Triangle → Square. Enter it at the Portal Gate in the antechamber, and the way to Janitor's Haven opens. What waits on the other side — Mia, the workbench, the stash, and the road into the Medical Section — is where Part 2 begins.

I missed the A.U.C.S. Helmet. Can I go back? Yes. The opening areas stay connected — the elevator, the crawlspaces and the shortcut doors you open all persist, and the Janitor's Closet loop in section 4 exists precisely so you can re-sweep Stasis. Go back before pushing deeper; playing without a HUD means no health bar and no minimap even after the attachment.

Which Gardens override code is correct, 9636 or 5315? Nobody outside the game can say for certain — two publications print 9636, one major list prints

5315. The full story, and the statuses of every other code, are in our codes guide. In-game, try both, then hack: the terminal is a 3 Skull hack and the outcome is identical.

Is the Bertha Shotgun missable? It stays where it lies, by the hanging body in section B, but players walk past it constantly because the path forks and the objective marker pulls you toward the office. Grab it before the office run — the spider fight in B is much easier with it.

Does the Gene Sucker work on any corpse? On enemy corpses and Biomatter, yes, and later on the corpses of your own previous clones — which is how you claw back the genetic material death takes from you. The full loop is covered in our cloning guide.

Where does Part 2 go? Through the portal into Janitor's Haven — the hub, the workbench and Mia — and then into the Medical Section, ending with the quarantine release and the Hyper Drive jump that opens the station's second timeline.