[Secrets/Introduction]

Habbo Hotel and its homepages are pretty complex and hold a variety of unexpected (and sometimes unwanted) ‘features’. Here we’ll try to uncover all of the secrets, unveil the bugs and satisfy the inner investigator in all of us.





Investigating and compilation: Magnea, Star-Fighter, Laurensh1, Spanner & Luucaz.

[How to get up there/Introduction]

There’s a couple of places inside the hotel (if your local hotel has that specific public room), that you can’t just get to without knowing how. You might just find people there unwilling to reveal how they succeeded in doing so, so here’s the secrets:

Sun terrace
Picknick garden tree
Zen garden tree

Above spots are intentionally, build in by design. These are not intentionally:

Library wall
Diving area: staying there
Hallway: float in space
General: chillin’ on the exit

[How to get up there/Library wall]

The Library has an additional spot you can stand at. Just hover the spot, click when the yellow rectangle appears.

[How to get up there/Diving area: staying there]

After a dive, you automatically climb up the stairs out of the pool. From the sides, you can’t get in this area (well, small area where it looks like you’re in, but you don’t get far).

To stay in the diving area after a jump, either quickly ‘vote’ before being transferred out, or click on the far end of the area, near the toolbar.

Sidenote by Laurensh1: “Also, get yourself teleported to where-ever in the Lido (part 2, at the dive). Block (with 3 people) the sides of the beginning square of the waitingline. Then go on the line (with clothes on, or without tickets) and you get teleported to somewhere!”

[How to get up there/Hallway: floating in space]

To float in space in the Hallway room with the statue:

1. Go there, then go to the room on the right side of it;
2. Walk in a little, then head back;
3. At the moment you’re about to get transported to the room with statue, click the part of the sofa pictured aside.

You’ll walk into the room to the exit and stop in space. Click a character to turn around and start pretending you’re the plumber.

[How to get up there/General: chillin’ on the exit]

Quite a couple of public rooms have an exit/entrance that sticks out a little. You actually enter somewhat more in the room, and clicking these squares transports you out of the room. If you want to stand on these squares:

1. Hover your cursor over the square until it turns into the little hand;
2. Click the square, keep holding your mouse button down;
3. Once safely there, gently release the mouse button.

[Extend limits/Introduction]

Some more or less known little tricks people use to impress.

No walls & floor
Beyond the furniture limit
Rocket science
How to run
Merging gates

[Extend limits/No walls & floor]

Use the mood light to make your walls and floor vanish. There might be more combinations working, but we did it by buying a solid pattern floor, darkest red available, and the wallpaper with two color strips, also darkest red available. Then set the moodlight to produce dark blue light, at its strongest, and you should be set.

[Extend limits/Beyond the furniture limit]

Angry because you encountered the furniture limit and your room was nearly done ?!

Spanner: “If you reload the room and drop 1 sticky note it lets you drop more furniture… ideal to add those finishing touches. It’s recommended not to go mad though as too much furni over the room will error you and your visitors :(.”

[Extend limits/Rocket science]

Rollers allowed for a lot of stacking, and rollers have their own (not always understandable for the regular Habbo) rules. Funky stuff evolves. Like this rocket, it really lifts off. Set up 4 rollers in a circle, put on a pillar. Pick up a smoke machine and put that on top of the pillar. These items will separate, each taking their square (but the smoke machine will be heigh up). Put another pillar in between and you’ll see the smoke machine being lifted off periodically. Pretty heigh even.

Pillars and smoke machine to be variated with other things, so much to throw around.

[Extend limits/How to run]

Another funny glitch. You can actually run inside the hotel. Put down two rollers opposing eachother. Then put a doormat on, and stand on it. Get a feel for the speed it’s going back- and forwards, place your cursor on one position (so you see the square). Let yourself roll onto that position, but only click the (milli)second the doormat (plus yourself) is starting to move to the other position. The doormat will move, but you’ll step off and be running (as seen in the picture, that’s just walking, but much faster).

It’s all about timing, this one, so you’ll need a little practice. Once running, you can switch to dancing, or waving.

Experience learns there’s a point, after much fiddling, where it will not work, whatever you do. Re-enter the room and start a new session.

[Extend limits/Merging gates]

To merge two gates, Spanner & Logic explained:

1. Place a handwoven rug, doormat or Japanese tatami rug in your room.
2. Place an opened gate/marquee onto the rug/mat.
3. Do note the rug/mat has to be purchased last, after the gate. Check by picking them up, leave and re-enter room to reset the hand. Oldest furniture comes first, later purchased last.
4. Leave your room for 30 seconds to a minute, then return.
5. Now you should be able to place another hatch/furniture item onto the square you placed the first gate! If this doe not work, possibly you re-entered the room too quickly, have a little patience and try again ;).

Second item doesn’t necessarily have to be a gate though. You can use this technique to add anything inside a gate.

[Mystery Furniture/Introduction]

You might have heard about these pieces of furniture. Some say they exist, some say they don’t. Here’s where the stories originate and if these might be true.

White parasol
Green Gothic fountain
Silver Amber lamp
Holo variations
Black Romantique divider
High value exchange items
Almost forgotten

[Mystery Furniture/White Parasol]

In July 2007, seen in ‘Vote for the next rare’ poll at Singaporean homepage. It does exist - spotted before in Germany and in other hotels afterwards. Why did it take years for this version te be seen ? It might have been a forgotten, not intended for release item.

The hotels use textfiles with furniture names, mostly called ‘externals’. Inside are these lines:

furni_rare_parasol_name=Parasol
furni_rare_parasol*0_name=Green Parasol
furni_rare_parasol*1_name=Yellow Parasol
furni_rare_parasol*2_name=Orange Parasol
furni_rare_parasol*3_name=Violet Parasol

Some of the old rare pieces of furniture (with color variations) have this, a general line and a set of numbered lines. In Singapore files, positions are reversed, general line says Green Parasol, the line numbered *0 says White Parasol. Maybe it’s inside as an uncolored prototype, not intended for release. It can be released though, but has no small version for it created yet.

[Mystery Furniture/Green Gothic Fountain]

In October 2007, a red gothicfountain showed up at a ‘Vote for the next rare’ poll at the Swedish homepage. Unlike with the white parasol, there was no trace of it in local ‘externals’, so we thought we could conclude it did not exist at that time. Logic however alerted us the palette of regular gothic fountain can be changed in .cct files (where furniture display comes from) to the bloody version. And indeed, during halloween 2008 it appeared as a prize in several hotels. Same halloween we saw a green version appear in some group backgrounds. Take notice, this is very, very clearly just a swift edit of the original (not the same amount of colors, just an ‘effect’ applied on top of it). It’s just something we reckon might happen next halloween.

[Mystery Furniture/Silver Amber Lamp]

Once shown in a newsarticle on Dutch homepage, a silver version of the Amber lamp. When we, again, check the ‘externals’:

furni_rare_beehive_bulb_name=Blue Amber Lamp
furni_rare_beehive_bulb*1_name=Red Amber Lamp
furni_rare_beehive_bulb*2_name=Yellow Amber Lamp

Alike the lines for the parasols, a general line plus numbered ones, but the general line is used for the blue version. So we can conclude it does not exist.

It’s still an option it does exist as an uncolored prototype in the hotel files and was copied from there. Then it needs to be ‘made’ by adding some proper lines (and probably a small version to be created). But there’s a good chance we’re looking at an alteration too.

[Mystery Furniture/Holo variations]

A ‘Holo-hat’ and ‘Holocrab’ ?! These were on the homepages in Denmark and USA respectively. Shortly before April 1st, that is. Got ya ;).

[Mystery Furniture/Black Romantique divider]

Everywhere the black line of Romantique is being released, the divider of the set is missing. Not just once or twice, more towards 10 of so releases. In Australian hotel they had a competition where Habbo’s had to come up with a reason for it lacking to be there. Bamaloo wrote this in the article announcing the winners: “I’m afraid the truth is probably quite boring …like someone in Habbo HQ forgetting to colour in the last bit of the Romantique furni or it being too ugly to release (…)”.

Now we are aware articles are usually spiced up with funny, rather random lines, yet, find it hard to believe it missing all the time is a coincidence either. Maybe it is simply buggy, having some unwanted transparent part(s) or something alike…

[Mystery Furniture/High value exchange items]

There’s some of these items floating around hotels, mostly reported in staff rooms. Exchange items with a value 10 times higher as usual. Real, and not a real mystery. They were created to accomodate the - now closed - Chinese hotel. A credit purchase would get you 10 times more credits there, but at the same time furniture would cost you 10 times more. It was just done to make the numbers more matching towards real Chinese currency. Take one of these items to a non-Chinese hotel though - and we reckon these items could work when exchanged - and you have a treasure. When exchanged, but as is right now, more even as a rare item of furniture, maybe.

[Mystery Furniture/Almost forgotten]

Finally there’s some old furniture items which are not really mysterious, just removed, but years back. Being forgotten gives them a mystic glance - find these referenced here.

[Designer Jokes/Introduction]

A.k.a. ‘Easter Eggs’. Jokes, hidden things put in by the designers of Habbo Hotel and/or the homepage:

Spinning homepages
Background detail
Painimies’ ball
Reference to beta time
Reference to beta time II
Reference to Lumisota
Crikey!
Take your shoes off!

[Designer Jokes/Spinning homepages]


This is a build in Easter Egg, and a pretty good one actually. If you doubleclick at a Habbo’s head on a Habbo home, the stickers, widgets and notes will start to spin for about five seconds.

Note: You must reload the page, if you want to do it again. And, stickers on top of the head prevent the doubleclick.

[Designer Jokes/Background detail]


Little joke in one of the backgrounds available for your Habbo Home. You remember when a piece of furniture inside the hotel wouldn’t load, a PH-box (placeholder) was shown instead ? It's tributed as part of this wallpaper background.

[Designer Jokes/Reference to beta time]


This little cactus in one of the new windows is a reference to Habbo’s beta time, where it was also found inside the (solid) window, but removed in final version.

[Designer Jokes/Reference to beta time II]


When opening the room-o-matic there’s the outlines of a female Habbo. Those looks, the hair, upon closer look, has never been available inside Habbo. Well, in beta time, and maybe early Kultakala, you could encounter a girl like that, the image in room-o-matic is a left-over from those days.

[Designer Jokes/Reference to Lumisota]


In the background of the Snowstorm group you can find this little guy. He’s been put there on purpose and a reference to Lumisota (‘Snowwar’, 1999), a predecessor to Habbo hotel and the game of Snowstorm.

[Designer Jokes/Crikey!]


Not really a big secret, as it was revealed at the time, yet it’s slowly getting forgotten and re-discovered at times. Once logged in on homepage, you can swiftly change your motto there. At the time the Australian collectible, koala in tree (November 2008), was released, you could - and still can - change your motto to ‘Crikey’, resulting in your avatar being turned into a crocodile. Only on frontpage though.

[Designer Jokes/Take your shoes off!]


With the UFO, and later car ‘effects’, you may have noticed your Habbo in inf-o-matic appears to wear no shoes. Whether originally intentional or not, Antibiootti (Elukka) at the Finnish hotel states this is a deliberate thing, meant to keep your UFO or car clean and neat.

[Behind the scenes/Introduction]

Some shocking, funny and/or intriguing trivia about our hotel(s) in the past. Mostly found in the Finnish ‘Käsikirja’ (Handbook).


In the sauna
Ducky organ
A pink elephant
Kolumbus
Cyclopses

[Behind the scenes/In the sauna]


Habbo Hotel wasn’t made with a young audience in mind, originally. It just ‘came to be’. A design by lead designer armasK that never made it in might be just the perfect example. When targeting a young audience not that applicable anymore. A reconstruction in full-color and illustrating building a room is here.

[Behind the scenes/Ducky organ]


ArmasK also reveals the well-known rubber duck had animation-frames in its early design state. The animation had the rubber duck’s mouth open, and the idea was to add a little ‘quack’ sound to it, and the higher it was placed in a room, the higher the sound would have been - like an organ. Quote: “Luckily the designing of the duck stayed only as an idea…”.

[Behind the scenes/A pink elephant]


The handbook also reveals the duck statue in the Lido at one point in 2002 got replaced by a pink elephant (Finland). Two people could sit on its back. Rino: “It was actually made for a campaign about this ‘improvements and innovation for the future’ -type of competition held by the Finnish teleoperator Elisa. The competition was called ‘Utopia’.”

NB - Picture is a reconstruction, Elephant itself believed to be accurate, with much help from Logic and Kuplakylpy.

[Behind the scenes/Kolumbus]


In early years, Finnish hotel was part of a portal of Elisa/Kolumbus. Alike the costumes available in old cinema, one could encounter a fellow dressed up like Columbus inside the hotel.

[Behind the scenes/Cyclopses]


Source: Retiisi (from the handbook again). In early days of Habbo, a cyclops-head was available to choose, but not for everyone. Staff walked around with one eye only, just to make other people confused. They had to get rid of this because people could script the head for themselves.

Image source: Nerokala(.com), unconfirmed.