Octavius waits until the coast is clear, then squelches his way into Dantar's office and waves for you to follow.

He climbs onto the desk and points at Dantar's computer terminal. It's showing Dantar's game library, but it seems to have been scrambled. Perhaps it, too, has been infected with the virus that's plaguing the bots? Dantar has scribbled various notes and left them on the desk.

"Games still in database, but names altered. Each title altered by one letter?"

"Game description seems to match NEW name? Why? HOW??"

"Some games appearing on other terminals around factory. What does this mean?"

"Other data on same terminals. Fragments of a coded message?"

The rest of Dantar's notes are about the locations of terminals showing particular games with mangled titles. Perhaps you should take a look and see if you can spot a pattern?

Note: Originally these were hidden around the venue with various clues to their locations. The information on the clues is reproduced here:

Submitting answers

To submit your answer, do the following:

• Join the Sidequest Ninja Discord server.
• Send your answer in a direct message to the Octavius bot, in the format

  !answer This is the answer

  The bot will tell you whether your answer is correct.
• If you've solved part of a puzzle, send what you've got so far to the bot (in the same format), it may confirm that you're on the right path.
• For the sake of clarity, the Discord version of Octavius will reply in proper English.

Hints

If you're having trouble, you can highlight the obscured text below for help. Each bullet point is a separate hint.

• If you think you've worked out what the modified name of a game is, the Octavius bot will confirm if it's correct. Use the modified name, not the original.
• Once you've got all the game names, take note of the new letter in each game's name and see if you can do anything with them.
• The message fragments need to go in the same order as the letters.
• You'll need to decrypt the message using the key made from the letters.

Solution

If you're totally stuck, these spoilers will take you through the steps of solving the puzzle. Again, each bullet point is a separate step.

• The altered game names are:
  • Super Stash Bros
  • Dear Space
  • Slack Desert Online
  • Splinter Call
  • Half-Like
  • Carcraft
• Rearranging the updated letters from the game names, you can spell "TRACKS".
• Combining the five-letter message fragements into the same order as the letters for "TRACKS" gives an encrypted message of "afwokfryecblluogcsgfcvyhnjhcfw"
• The "TRACKS" key decrypts the message using the Vigenère cipher. There are various online tools that will allow you to decode the message.
• The decrypted message is "howmanyheartsdoesanoctopushave".
• Therefore, the answer is "3".