Puzzle

Puzzle, or 'Mom' in the game files, is the fifth chapter of The Beginner's Guide.

Level
The player walks through a house corridor until they reach a door with a lever on its left. When touched, the lever opens the door, revealing a small black space with a dark smoke, separating that door from another on the opposite side. Touching the lever again will close the door. The objective is to figure out how to open the opposite door. (The solution is simple: just touch the lever to close the door and get in before it closes, then a second lever will appear on the inside).

This same puzzle will repeat in following games, while the "dark space" as a theme will be seen again as well, sometimes acknowledged by Davey (like in House), sometimes in the background (as in Epilogue's cave).

Narration
''Well this is new for Coda, it's an actual puzzle! Go ahead and see if you can solve it.''

(If the player fails to finish the puzzle quickly) ''Alright let me just walk you through it. You're going to hit the switch on the outside to open the door, then hit the same switch and walk through the door before it closes. You'll see a second switch on the inside, which will open the second door.''

''Don't forget that solution, because we're going to see this puzzle again soon. We're going to see it a lot.''

''So that seems to be it, right? You walk down a corridor, you solve a puzzle, you get to the end. Simple enough. Alright, now I'm going to modify the game again so that when you press 'Enter' it'll remove all of the walls from this room.''

(If the player is using a gamepad) ''So that seems to be it, right? You walk down a corridor, you solve a puzzle, you get to the end. Simple enough. Alright, now I'm going to modify the game again so that when you press the 'Use' key on your gamepad it'll remove all of the walls from this room.''

''How about that, there was more to it than we had any way of knowing. I actually find it funny that this game comes after the stairs game, since they essentially convey the opposite idea. So in the stairs game a dull exterior concealed a rich interior, and then in this level a dull interior hides a fantastic outer world. Either way I think the point is the same, is that most of the time you don't get to know what you're missing, or even that you're missing anything, that's not your role as a player. So if your role here is not to understand, then what is it?''

Easter eggs
By activating noclip, the player can explore the other areas that the narrator reveals by deleting the walls. Most of them are empty black boxes or just a texture on the outer boundary of the world. Four of them are corridors all featuring a spiral staircase and a nearly identical layout to each other. They have a similar aesthetic to the main path, but with the distinctive orange trim replaced by a blue, green, red, or yellow trim.