Spoilers (use sparingly)

• Spider Realm
• Fire Balcony
• Air Balcony
• Metal Balcony
• Oil Balcony
• Bismuth
• The Statue
• The Piazza
• The Church of the Machine
• The Frame in the Sky
• Conductor Realm
• Max's Prison
• Control Room
  
• The Alternate Ending (don't read this until you've finished the game!)
  
• If all else fails... try this.

Spider Realm

Fire Balcony

• The lightning from the sun will strike all five rods in sequence. You must adjust the timing of the limbs so that they touch the rods at the same time the lightning bolt does. You've got to get all five in a row in order to proceed.

Air Balcony

• Arrange the balls so they form a square, leaving the center space on the grid open. You'll need to shoot accurately to imprison the tornado.

Metal Balcony

• Start with an empty machine. Combine "one red" and "five yellow". The resulting compound will mix with green to form orange.
• Do NOT mix this combination with green. The green test tube is only there for you to verify your formula.
• Take the beaker back out and put it in the conveyor's access panel. Re-start the conveyor belt.

Oil Balcony

• Arrange the waves so that they all flow evenly together. A huge cube of land will rise up.

Note: getting the waves aligned is tricky! You've got to be precise. The goal is to have the waves flowing smoothly, so that it is impossible to tell that there are 9 sections.

NEW! The best tip for this comes from reader Rachel Lipson, who puts it this way:

"If you stop each of the waves when they are only half into a section (and are still showing a sharp edge. You might have to try it to see what I mean), it is much easier to line up the next section because you can match the edges to form one wave smoothly going between the sections. Only took me a minute to solve this way."

• The pattern puzzle in the tower is OPTIONAL! In case you missed it (I did), there is a variant of a slider puzzle on the central column inside the tower. Arranging the pattern to match the one on the face of the cube will provide a clue in the form of a nifty animated sequence, but it's not strictly necessary to finish the Oil Balcony.
• Go back to the survey map and scroll the coordinates to 133, 5 which is on the newly revealed cube of land.
• Set the collector to these coordinates and you'll have plenty of oil.

Bismuth

• You must arrange the photographs of the bird in the correct order. Once the bird is seen smoothly "flying", your plane will fly as well.
• Still stumped? Ace screen-grabber Tom Pancoast has provided us with this set of before and after shots of the zoetrope pictures! Man, and I was willing to pay 95 cents a minute for information like this! Luckily, the line was busy and I did it by myself...

The Statue

• Arrange the shapes so that the tray appears empty. Bismuth will create a painting and hang it in the huge empty frame.
• Turn on the switch to the left of the big frame to project your painting into the frame in the sky.

The Piazza

• Your goal is to trap the elusiveBismuth in the top right-hand square, the one with the spout-shaped thing with a rod holding up the skinny end.
• Like you, he can only move one square at a time, but cannot move to: (a) the same square you're on, or (b) a square that doesn't have anything for him to hide behind.
• Keep inching forward, taking objects away to limit his options.

The Church of the Machine

• Starting from the beginning, here is the sequence of moves that will achieve the result:
• Left, forward, U-turn, forward, right, forward, left, left, left, right.
• Take the programmed chip and install it in the space in the Plane. This is the long-sought-after crossover chip which will allow you to fly to the Frame.

The Frame in the Sky

• In order to fly to the Frame, you must have completed the three previous sections: The Piazza, The Church of The Machine, and The Statue.
• You must have placed the crossover chip from the Church into the socket behind your pilot's chair in the Plane.
• Sit in the pilot's seat.
• Pull the crossover control lever to send the controls to Bismuth. He will begin the pre-flight sequence.
• You are shown the switch panel, Bismuth instructs you to flip switch D1. Do it.
• You're told to flip switch B2. Flip D2 instead. You will be told that this sequence initiates the non-standard pre-flight check. The lamp cover of D2 should pop open, showing a green light.
• Try and open the cover on A3 - you should get a red light for a second, then the cover shuts itself again.
• Here are the remaining steps - you must do these in the precise order listed, or you will have start the sequence over again.
• Open the cover at A2.
• Flip switch C2.
• Open the cover at A3.
• Flip switch C3.
• Open the cover at C4.
• Flip switch B3.
• Open the cover at B4.
• Flip switch A3.
• The Plane should now be prepared for non-standard flight and you're on your way!

Conductor Realm

Max's Prison

• NEW! Brian Almond obviously takes very good notes and was able to supply the shortest possible list of moves for the bridge puzzle:
• Up
• Down
• Left twice
• Up three times
• Left
• Up
• Right three times
• Down four times

(I apologize to anyone who pulled out any hair trying to solve this puzzle when it turns out I had an incorrect moves list. Sorry!)

• What are you waiting for? Get over there and free Max!

Control Room

NEW! From the Bureau of Clever Solutions to Tricky Problems, crafty reader John Lloyd suggests a unique and effective way of solving this problem:

"If one has a [screen] capture program, solving the puzzle becomes doable. Just press the capture hotkeys at the same time as you put the cursor on one of the 16 keys. Voila! You can look at the capture screen and see which keys are beginning to be camoflaged."

For the record, I was able to capture all the screens used in this website by simply pressing Alt-PrintScreen and then Alt-Tab'ing into PaintShopPro. I simply chose the "Paste as new image" option and I was in business. FYI: This also works great for making Windows wallpaper.

If All Else Fails You...

If you've:

• tried everything you can think of
• tried everything else, no matter how dopey it may have sounded
• read all the hints
• read all the spoilers
• asked others (including myself) for guidance
• pleaded for help on the message board
• honestly been able to say you've done your best and still can't figure it out...

...surf on over to BC's Obsidian Page, where he has a fine collection of saved games to carry you along.