BIOFORGE SOLVE
==============
By the Magnificent Llama, the Netherlands.

Bioforge is a beautiful game, but the fighting scenes were a bit
too difficult for me, so I played in easy mode and still had lots
of troubles. This solve concentrates on the puzzles, not on how
to survive fighting, simply because I am not the right man to tell
you about that.

Generally, the game is quite difficult. The most difficult I think
is that the game is very lineair. You need to solve puzzles in the
correct order, even if you have access to a few puzzles at a time.
If you try to solve them in the wrong order, you will eventually
get stuck. Trouble is that you cannot always foresee which puzzle
has to be solved first. So, if you're stuck, maybe you should track
back a little and try to solve another puzzle.

One tip before you start: Save often, and keep some old saves.
It may happen that you have to track back some time.

And now on to the solve:

When you get up from your bunk, get in combat mode and kick the robot
around a bit. Eventually it will start bouncing around in your cell.
It should land in the force bars. If it doesn't, just try to kick it
once more when it goes past. Read the log and get the meat, if you
like (you don't really need it). Leave your cell by passing through
the flickering force bars. It is possible to leave without getting
hurt.

In the hallway, go to the large doors and try to force them open. If
you want, you can also try to open the panel on the wall. Now go to the
cell with the blue fellow. Save, and then try to enter. It is possible
to get through the force bars without getting hurt, but it is a lot more
difficult than it was with your own cell. As soon as you have safely
entered the cell, get in combat mode. Defeat the blue guy, who's name
is Caynan by the way, read his log, and get the picture and the fork.
Leave the cell.

Use the fork on the panel to open it. Click on the small dots at the
lower side of the panel to move the bright rectangles. Connect the
flickering bars at the left and right side by forming a path with
the bright rectangles. Watch out, if you make a mistake you may get
hurt. As soon as the path is formed, at the top the message "unlocked"
will appear. You can now force the large doors completely open.

Enter the Control Room. Go to the back and look at all the screens.
Shut off the force bars wherever possible. Now go back to the cells,
and get the flute from the cell with the robot. Try it out. Read the
log to find out Caynan's code. Go back to the Control Room. Use the
three screens at the desk. From one of the screens you can control
the robot. Set it on manual, and manoeuvre it outside the cell. Get
the arm by using the icon of a closed gripper, and move the robot
towards the Control Room, to the palmprint panel near the second door.
Use the injection icon to place the blue hand on the panel. Now choose
"access" from the personnel screen, and type in Caynan's code. The
screen says there is insufficient weight on the floor before the panel
to open the door. Walk over there, and stand on the pressure plate. The
door will open.

When you look into the hallway, halfway down you see a small depression
with a large door. You should now run into the hallway to that door.
When you reach it, wait before it. The robot in the hallway will
pass you without spotting you. Outside the niche, to the right side,
is a small panel. If you use it, the door opens and you can enter
the Elevator. Inside the Elevator, you can use the panel besides the
doors to go to another level. However, these are far to difficult for
now. So, when you're standing in the niche, after the robot passed from
right to left, run behind his back to the Cryogenics Lab.

You can use the panel near the entrance to get some information
about this room. Go to the other side, and press the red button to
open the iris door. If you descend, and you walk into the dark
corridor, you'll meet the creature from chamber 3. So stay up
here, and turn the wheel. Go back to the panel and look what happens
to chamber 1. Suddenly the door of chamber 1 blows out and a creature
emerges (nicknamed Fido by the creators). This creature is not very
strong, but when defeated, it regenerates after a few seconds.

How to get rid of it? Well, after you defeated it the first time, run
to the back of the room, turn the wheel to stop the acid flow, and
close the iris door. Now, when the creature attacks you again, manoeuvre
it onto the iris door while keeping close to the red button. Pressing
it doesn't work, however, since the computer detects movement on the
door. Just kick the monster into a dazed state, until it starts
staggering. Then position yourself before the red button. As soon as
the monster is on the border of the iris door, press the button. The
door opens, the monster staggers one more time and falls through. Now
listen to the sounds from below. A mighty fight is going on. Don't try
to watch it, but turn the wheel once more to flush the fight away.
Close the valve, and descend. Now weren't you glad you didn't become
a spectator?

Continue in the corridor, and at the end, enter the right hole (just
walk forward towards it at exactly the right spot). You end up in
the last cell. Defeat the guard who lies there, and take the blaster.
Return to the Cryogenics Lab, and from there go to the Elevator.

First, go to the very top. Make sure you stand near the door that also
opens to level 2, or you'll get shot immediatly on arrival. From the
opening of the elevator, shoot the floating robots you see (you may
have to descend once and go up again to fire from the other side of
the door). When they're gone, step outside but don't go too far.
You see four more robots floating. You can shoot these by making your
blaster bolts bouncing in the room. When they're all destroyed, leave
the elevator and walk to the other side.

Here you find a giant gun and a marine. Go to the gun. Now you need
to act quite fast. Kick the marine three times, and he'll agree to
turn the gun on if you step back. Step back to the other side of the
gun, and the marine turns it on. Now go to the gun, and use it. You'll
be just in time to shoot the first ship that is landing. Use the gun
again, wait a few moments, and the second ship will rise. Shoot it
also. Now the landing parties are destroyed, and you have one worry
less.

Descend to level 3, using the panel near the closed Elevator door.
At your arrival you find a robot guard waiting with a gun aimed at
the door. Save, move backwards, and try to fire at the right leg of
the robot. After a few shots, the robot is destroyed.

Walk into the corridor. Take the door on the left, which is Mastaba's
Medical Lab. He gives a small demonstration of his power, and after
that you are left alone in the Lab. Take the medical device from the
ground, read the Medical Database (on the wall) and get the battery
from the right side of Dane's body. Exchange it with your own (not
that it's different, but at least it's full). Don't worry about
the code to enter the secure part of the Medical Database.

Leave the Lab. If you didn't shoot down the ships, there will be a
marine here and that will end the game. But if you followed this solve,
you did, and you can go to the door at the far end (from where you saw
the female marine come during the Mastaba scene). Use the panel, and
it will open. Enter the room. There is a marine here. Defeat him, and
read his log. Read all the walls, and also the desks. Note the Reactor
Access Code, which is on one of the wall panels. You'll also find a desk
from which you can control a forklift.

Roll this forklift out of the room, to the Reactor Room (the first door
in the hallway) and use it to push the guarding robot off the platform.
Now stand on the pressure plate, and you get encased in armoured
plating. This is a hardsuit. Go outside, and kick the sh*t out of the
marine standing here. This gives you a new blaster. Go back inside,
access the Icarus flight bay, kill the marine and get the walkie-talkie
and the alien artifact. You can also get an alien battery from the front
of the Icarus ship. Go up again, and head towards the Reactor Room.

Use the panel outside the door to close the door at the other side,
and get in. Wait a few moments before the door at the other end, until
it opens. Now enter the Reactor Room. On the small platform you are
on when you enter, there is a button to turn on the force bridge.
Use it. Now you can get to the main control panel, that is guarded
by a creature, called the Drogg by the creators. You only have one minute
to defeat the Drogg and shut off the reactor.

Run towards the central platform. When you've reached it, fire your
blaster three times at the Drogg. Now it's mad and it's going to
get you. Run back towards the entrance, across the force bridge. The
Drogg will follow you, but it is considerably slower than you are.
Turn off the force bridge while it's on it. It falls down (but it isn't
gone for always...). Turn the force bridge back on immediatly. Run
towards the central platform. You will now have 30 seconds left.
As quickly as you can, go to both pylons and pull the bar down. Turn
towards the control panel and use it. The countdown from ten will have
started now. Punch in the Reactor Access Code, and press Power down.
I had 2.78 seconds left by that moment, after three tries, so it's a
very tight schedule. This is not a game for the weak of heart!

Leave the Reactor Room. You'll find out that you only postponed the
inevitable. Too bad. Enter the elevator and descend to level 4. Step
into the hall. You can do nothing now until the robot has entered and
the opposite door has closed. Fire your weapon, evade his shot, and run
towards him. Get close but don't pass the robot, evade his shots, and
keep firing. If you are too far away, the robot will shoot five bolts
at a time, and you will be killed always. After a few hits from you,
however, the robot blows up. This is one stupid puzzle, since it all
hinges on the fact that the code for the robot is so that every shot
except for the first one that the robot fires at you, will always kill
you if you are either behind it or not within 75 centimeters. I really
had to decipher the scriptfiles to find that out. Blast.

Now go to the panel near the airlock. If you don't have the hardsuit
on at this point, go back and get it. Use the panel. The aim of
the puzzle is to get every square on except for the centre one. If
you press the centre square, the four corners get switched. If you
press a corner square, the side-square on the two opposite squares
get switched. If you press a side-square, the two opposite corners
get switched. Now just try to get the right pattern. It shouldn't
take you more than a few minutes to get it. As soon as the airlock
opens, enter it or it will close on you and you just have to do
the puzzle all over again.

Wait a few moments before the second door, and it will open. Leave.
You are now outside. Go to the right, and press the button on the side
of the structure. Enter and wait. You'll arrive on a ledge. There are
floating robots here, but they are quite easy to evade. Just run past
them, and you'll be allright. Pass the small side entrance (you may
look into it: it contains a blast door you cannot open now), and
continue on the ledge. At the end, you reach large standing blocks.
You can climb most of them and jump down from them. Some blocks let
you use the alien artifact as a transporter. If you hold it, and are
standing on a special block, use it and you'll get transported to
another block. This way you can reach a large alien chamber from which
Escher spoke in her logs. The block that is very low on the lake also
lets you travel from the screen to another screen, but not further.
Remember this, however.

There is nothing to do here at the moment, you should just remember
how you can teleport with the artifact. Go back to the tunnel
which leads to the ledge with the two airbots. There are two steps
to be seen here, below the ledge. Jump down on them (it's about in the
corner of the ledge). Using the artifact and the blocks, you can get
to a crashed spaceship. Enter it, and inside you'll find a healing
device. Also, in the back, you will run into a marine who appears
from behind steel bars. Defeat him. I found the blaster doesn't work
too well on him, so use kicks instead. He carries a big gun and a
key device. I prefer the blaster to the gun, since the gun can be
fired only a few times before it heats up, and you will need to fire lots
of times later in the game.

The key device is used to open the steel bars, so do that. You find
a small room at the back from where missiles are fired. Enter this
room and use the screen. Arm missile 1 and fire it. Now wait till
the monster has walked towards the pillar where the first missile
struck. Arm the second missile and fire it. This is the end of the
monster.

Go outside, and drop your gun. Go towards the missile head lying
here. Use it, and you'll open the warhead and get the bomb. Take the
alien artifact in your other hand, and run, under the wing, to the
stone that was previously guarded by the monster. Use the artifact,
and you end up near the dead monster. Use its body to reach the standing
blocks, where you've been before. You now need to get to the tunnel
with the blast door. When you step on the ledge, you'll find you only
have 20 seconds left. Don't worry, the game always gives you only 20
seconds at this point. Run past the airbots, enter the tunnel, run to
the blast door, make half a turn, and drop the bomb. Yes, the bomb,
and NOT the artifact, which was the mistake I made about twenty times
(and I ran outside with the bomb ticking in my hand...). The game now
gives you seven seconds. Don't wait for the game to count down to five,
what it will do, but press escape, which gives you a second more. Run
outside and turn left, because, if you turn right, as soon as the bomb
goes off the game will throw you against a pillar (I also got a divide by
zero at that point and the game crashed). There is a tremendous
explosion, and the blast door is open.

Go back to get your firearm, and then return to the blast door. Go
through. You find a platform that'll take your hardsuit away, but
it also places you at the tomb entrance. Here you find Escher who is
attacked by a large insect. When you get near, the insect will attack
you. It is quite tough, and when it's curled up you cannot harm it,
but you still have to kill it. Then go to Escher. She'll talk to you.
After she has finished, use a healing device on her. Then she'll give
you a translator.

Enter the tomb. Here you'll meet the Drogg again. Shoot him a bit,
and kick him a few times. Then let him hit you once. You fall down,
and take some damage (alas), and the Drogg will run. Follow him. You
see him activating the ring door near Escher. After that, return to the
room where you fought the Drogg.

Rip the cover off the sarcophagus that is damaged. Use the blue force
field. You now have a puzzle to solve. You can change the colors by
pressing the six bars in the lower corners. The upper square cannot
be changed. The point is to make the lower square equal to the upper
one. This is the easiest if you first make the left square equal to
the right, both containing three bars in the same color, but one turned
a quarter turn in relation to the other. Then just use the bars in the
lower right corner until it's correct. Now you get an alien talisman.

Return to the ledge, to the blocks and enter the large room with the
ball in the middle. Use the translator on the three large blocks in
the walls. You now get some idea of the history of the Phyxx. Return
to the room with Escher.

Use the talisman on the blue keyhole near the ring door. The door opens.
Use it to enter. You get into a room where lots of doors end up. Note
the figures above the lower three doors (not counting the one you came
in through). Use the block in the middle. Again, a puzzle. What you should
do is use those blocks which when put together, recreate one of the
figures above the doors. Sometimes a block has to be viewed upside down
to get the one you need. When you've got a figure right, it will light up
in the middle and you can press it to open the corresponding door. Take
care not to open one of the doors above, since these are filled with
insects.

When you have activated the three doors below, you find that one of them
doesn't work right. In fact it's blocked at the other end (guess by what).
No problem for now. The other two can be used to travel to other places.
The one behind you, when you're solving the puzzle, leads to an early death
(at least for now). So take the other. You end up in a no-gravity room,
with a pulsing star in the middle. You have to reach the opening opposite
the door you came in. Your blaster gives you some extra speed, if you fire
it in the right direction at the right time. The right direction is away
from the direction you are moving in. The right time is when you are about
in the middle of the room.

When you succeed, you end up in a room where you meet the Drogg for the
last time. The Drogg is wearing a reflect suit now, so your blaster isn't
much use. Kick him until he's dead. Get his reflect cube, and use it. You
can now enter the force field in the back, and you find a large room,
with yet another puzzle. Before you start working on it, turn off your
reflect suit because it drains energy.

This time, you have to completely fill up the field that contains the
lighter hexagons. You fill up new hexagons by pressing one of the colors
at the lower right corner. A new hexagon is filled near the last one.
Every uneven move, the hexagon is filled that is in the direction of the
color you pressed. Every even move, it's just the opposite direction.
It's really very easy. To fill the first one, just press the color in
the upper right corner; to fill the second one, press the one in the
lower left corner; etcetera. When the field is filled up, you meet Gen.
Gen gives you some instructions and an alien battery. Use your own
battery to heal any remaining wounds, and then exchange the two batteries.
Return to the room with the ring doors, and don't wear your reflect suit
longer than necessary.

Enter the ring door opposite. This leads to the gravity ring. You have
to stay clear of the asteroids, while moving the rings by stepping on
the triangles on the floor. Some of the triangles move more than one
ring. The best thing to do is to first try and find out which triangle
moves which rings, then note the starting position of the ring and
solve the puzzle on paper at leisure. You don't need more than four
steps to solve it. For the impatient: counting from the ring door you
entered through, step on the fourth, first, sixth and fourth triangle
to solve the puzzle.

Go back to the central room. You may return to Escher, but you'll find
she's gone and the hardsuit door is destroyed. She has left her log,
however, which you can take after you've killed the insect. Read it.
It looks exactly the same as the text in the room where you found the
forklift, but there is a small difference: her access code is mentioned
somewhere in the text. Note it.

Return to Ring Door Central. It's time for the remaining door. Use the
red depression on the right of it. Press the upper symbol. The ball
lifts. As soon as one of the marines stares into the hole, lower the
ball again by pressing the lower symbol. One down and one more to go.
The second marine throws a grenade in the hole. Drop your gun, and when
the grenade arrives, take it. Position yourself before the ring door
and use your fire key to throw it back. That takes out the second marine.

Wear your reflect suit, and enter the hole. Run back towards the base.
Don't bother with the marines you encounter along the way, since they
cannot harm you (at least not with their blasters). Just evade the
gun blasts from the landing platform, since they can throw you off the
ledge. If you stay near the wall, that won't be a problem. The first
marine you have to beat is the one on the landing platform.

Kick him until he's dead. Get his log and read it. Drop the log and
use the pad besides the door. The new code is two horizontal bars,
but they are more difficult to get that the O-ring you did before.
Enter the base. Enter the elevator and go to the third floor. Wear
your reflect suit. Beat the marine. He's tough, but he's the last
one. You may get his blaster, but you don't need it anymore. Enter
the Medical Lab. Use the database, and punch in Escher's code. You
can now read the secure part of the database, which will tell you who
you are.

Go to the Icarus ship. Exchange your battery with the battery in the
ship. The endgame plays, unless you had not enough energy left.

That's it. I'm not completely statisfied, however. Where has Mastaba
gone? What will happen to dr. Escher? The scriptfiles suggest that the
above ending is the right one, and you cannot defeat Mastaba or rescue
Escher. A bit disappointing, since more than 50 per cent of the CD-ROM
is empty. I could have used some more hours of Bioforge. I think they
leave it to the sequel...

