Don’t let the change in perspective and style fool you — Resident Evil 7 maintains many standard conventions from the survival horror genre’s earlier days, like offbeat puzzles that don’t make a lot of in-game sense but still provide access to upgraded weapons or unique items.
This time around the game has a peculiar fetish for “light puzzles” where objects must be rotated in such a way that their shadows create a different pattern than expected. Hit the right pattern and doorways will open or chests will unlock.
Much like how the wooden statuette is used to create a shadow of an eagle over a painting to open a secret passageway, the toy axe is used to cast a shadow of a number to complete a sequence. If you can figure out how to get the proper rotation pattern, a chest is unlocked giving you a boost item not found elsewhere.
Finding The Toy Axe
First thing’s first — before you can even acquire the toy axe at all, you need to go through the thoroughly disgusting process of grabbing the snake key out of a dead body’s neck hole. If you haven’t done so yet, check out our full guide here. It’s unpleasant, but necessary.
With the snake key in your inventory, travel over to the second floor of the main house and look for a locked snake door offering access to the black area of the map marked as the Kid’s Room (to the south of Grandma’s Bedroom and east of the Master Bedroom).
Inside the Kid’s Room, go to the center of the room and pick up the lamp on the dresser. Rotate the lamp until a red button comes into view underneath the shade that you can interact with — this will unlock the attic area above and bring a ladder down from the ceiling on the other side of the room.
Kid’s Room Lamp
Go up the ladder and head through the attic area until you find a shelf where the wooden toy axe is sitting. You won’t be splitting any skulls with this one, that’s for sure, but it’s still helpful to pick up anyway!
Toy Axe
Solving The Toy Axe Puzzle
With the toy axe in hand, leave the main house and return to the Yard area outside. In the southwest corner of the Yard is a hidden section behind some bushes and barrels where you can find a pedestal, an old chest, and some numbers written on the wall. Without the axe in your possession, there’s no way to interact with the numbers.
Yard Pedestal
You aren’t going to try to carve a number on the wall – instead walk up and interact with the pedestal and then select the toy axe from your inventory. Just like with the wooden statuette puzzle to access the basement, you have to rotate the axe to get a desire effect. In this case, turn it backwards so it creates a number 7 in the string of numbers.
Casting a Shadow
After you hit the right angle, the number 7 will be burned into the wall and the antique chest will open automatically, revealing a stabilizer syringe, which increases Ethan’s reload speed when used from the inventory screen.
Who doesn’t immediately inject themselves with random syringes?
Need More Resident Evil 7 Help?
The hidden toy axe and light puzzle is just one of many secrets scattered across the Baker estate that Ethan can find while trying to rescue Mia. If you haven’t managed to find everything yet, be sure to check out our other Resident Evil 7 guides:
- Finding every single Resident Evil 7 weapon
- How to find the snake key
- Boss guide: defeating Marguerite Baker
- Treasure photo / secret loot locations
- Solving the shotgun puzzle
- Good and bad endings guide
