FACING THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

Level by Ruediger Abend

Walkthrough by Phil Lambeth

Lara begins in a very dark area facing a closed E gate. An opening flyby pans the vast darkness and ends at a quartet of sleeping skeletons lying in shallow graves. Turn left and explore the perimeter before moving on. You'll find another closed gate in the N wall nearby. You'll next come to an opening in the W wall. Don't go in there yet, as it leads to the skeletons and a couple of sprites. Instead, look for a passage to your left and follow it around until you come to a gate in the S wall. It may be closed; if it is, you may have to invade that area to the W and arouse the sprites by running around a bit. It's not clear what causes the S gate to open, but covering some territory in the W area seems to do the trick.

When you find the S gate open, go inside and push the floor lever to open the door in the E wall. Go back the way you came, through the passage, and turn right toward the open E door. Inside are two large flaming urns and a floor lever. Pick up the flares in the far left corner before pushing the floor lever, which causes blue sparks to shoot out of the crosses adorning the skeletons' graves. Run that way, and the sprites will cease bothering you and eventually blow themselves up on the crosses. The W door beyond the graves is now open, so go inside and step down into a little trench. There's an alcove on the other side, leading to a shaft that you can't access from here. Push the floor lever to summon a couple of fire sprites.

Turn to your left and pull out of the trench, then run back over to the S opening. A trench has appeared beyond the floor lever, revealing a hole in the S wall. Slide down the ramp into the water to douse the sprites. Don't stop to look around, however, as a hammerhead shark is fast closing in on you. Quickly swim down and head south as the shark gives chase. Look to your right for a square opening in the west wall and swim inside the passage. There's another shark in this smaller enclosed room. Locate the opening in the S wall near the SW corner and swim inside. Swim down when you reach the end for SECRET #1 and a small medipack.

Reverse roll and swim past the shark into the previous room. Go around the pillar to an indentation in the N wall and look for the underwater lever to your right. Pull it to open a door elsewhere that allows your escape. You probably need air by now, so exit this room via the E opening, turn left and locate the air hole through which you entered. The first hammerhead is tearing large chunks out of your hide as you refill your lungs, but that can't be helped. Swim back down the shaft and scoot over to the NE corner of this area. You'll see a rectangular opening at floor level. Swim inside, turn to your right, find the shaft leading up and the door you just opened, and pull up into a dark anteroom with a burning urn.

Pick up the flares in the SW corner, then find a TORCH lying on the floor near the S wall next to the burning urn. Light the torch there and head E into the much larger lava room. Run up the ramp against the N wall, but be careful as the ramp narrows about halfway up. When you start heading down the other side, look to your left for an opening leading to a delightful well-lit outside area. Toss the torch aside for the moment and activate the jumpswitch on the wall of the building ahead to lower a rope in the lava room outside. Then run around to the E side of the building and locate the small medipack hidden in the tall grass in the SE corner for SECRET #2.

Pick up the torch, exit this area, turn to the right and run back along the ramp in the lava room until you see the rope dangling down from your left. Toss your torch aside (it seems to have no purpose other than providing some light in this dark area, enabling you to save your valuable flares). Line yourself up with the rope and take a running jump and grab it.  Face squarely a crawl space high up on the S wall. Swing forward, jump off at the top of your swing and grab the edge of the crawl space. Pull inside, crawl forward slowly until you alert a couple of bats, then come up to one knee by hitting the space bar and draw your pistols. Kill the bats, then resume crawling until you reach an open area where you can stand up.

Activate the jumpswitch in the S wall to purify a previously deadly pool in the lava room. Return through the crawl space and lower Lara down the other side. Release and keep the action key depressed so that Lara slides down and grabs the edge of the sloped ledge. Shimmy to your left in the darkness, and when you turn the corner, pull up at the wall ladder you'll be using in a minute. Turn around and hop across the gap, then walk forward until you reach the end of the ledge. Turn around and light a flare. Hop back, grab the ledge and shimmy left and around the corner. Pull up into a crawl space and crawl forward for SECRET #3 and a large medipack. That's it, you've found all the secrets there are to find, and all in the first ten minutes or so.

Back up and lower Lara over the edge. Shimmy back the way you came, pull up and walk forward and hop over to the ladder, then climb down the ladder to the floor of the lava room. Turn to your left and pick up some more flares in front of the flaming urn in the short passage. Reverse roll, turn right at the ladder and approach the E wall. The ramp at the opening, contrary to appearances, is stable, so simply take a running jump there and step forward into the water.

Swim up, surface and pull out of the water. Pick up the KEYS and go back the way you came. Pull out and angle Lara to the left, then take a running jump to the S walkway. Run back to the ladder, climb up and pull up into the stable corner to the right.  Turn to face the S wall, side flip right to land on the slope, slide down and grab the edge, shimmy right until you can pull up.  Walk down the ramped ledge to the west. When you reach the end, stand in the NW corner and take a long standing jump down to a jutting corner of the N walkway. Run back up the ramped ledge along the N wall and turn left at the other end into the well-lit outside area that you visited earlier.

Use one of your keys in the keyhole to the left of the jumpswitch to open the door to this building. Go down the steps before the giant seated statute and drop down into a passage. Follow it down it to a dimly-lit room with a glassed-in central structure and closed doors in the N, W and S walls. The door in the S wall opens upon your approach, so enter and follow the ramp down to an opening overlooking a deep room. Safety drop to the pillar below, then turn around and investigate the mechanics of this room. Ahead are three more tall pillars, with a crawl space high up in the S wall across the room. To your right and left are shorter pillars. If you step on the one in the NE corner a block rises on the far pillar under the crawl space, but it lowers in only a few seconds. If you step on the one in the NW corner a block rises in the next pillar but also lowers in a few seconds. If you'd like to engage in a exercise of futility you can try to run and jump and pull up in an effort to reach the far pillar before the block lowers, so you can pull up into the crawl space. However, all of this is a red herring, and you'll never be able to make it in time.

Instead, take a running jump S to grab the next tall pillar and pull up onto a trigger tile.  Jump back, pull up into the opening in the N wall and return to the previous room. You'll find that the door in the W wall is now open (courtesy of the trigger tile). Enter the passage and you'll shortly come to a crawl space. Soon after you crawl inside you'll find yourself beset by a trio of Pillsbury doughboys. Sure, they're cute, but like the bats they can inflict a lot of damage. Moreover, they make rude noises. So draw your pistols and kill them one by one. Then crawl to either of the back corners to an area where you can stand up. Jump into the water hole and swim W along the psychedelic passage into a larger underwater room. Surface for some air and note the opening high above. Obviously you need to get some more water in here, so locate the underwater lever in the S wall and pull it. You get a cut scene of some other area. The water level hasn't changed, however, so swim back E to the air hole and pull up. Crawl back to the blue-tinged central room and go back down the S passage.

The blocks on the two pillars at the far end have been permanently raised, so safety drop to the first pillar, turn around and take a running jump and grab to the second, then the third, then the fourth pillar, and finally pull up into the crawl space in the S wall. Lower Lara into the next room and throw the floor lever. The N door in the central room is now open, so go back there and enter the passage.

You wanna kill one of those hammerhead sharks, since you were helpless against the pair you met earlier? Jump into the water to bring it out of hiding, then quickly pull up to the ledge in the SE corner. Stay away from the edge, because the shark has a big bite, and draw your pistols to fill it full of lead. Your immediate objective now is to get to the other side of the pool, but unfortunately there's no corresponding ledge over there where you can pull out. However, there's a convenient monkey strip along the ceiling. Jump up to grab it, and monkey swing your way over, following the twists and turns.

Drop down onto the far ledge and run into the next room to your right. There are so many moveable blocks in the central square that it's seemingly difficult to know where to start. However, there's only one place you can start, and that's in the NE corner. Step down and pull the W block once toward you. Run around to the other side and push that same block into the NE corner. Turn around and pull the block that's in the NW corner once. Go around to the other side of it and push it against the first block. Turn to your right and pull the S block back once. Run around to the other side of it and push it N once. Hop back twice, side step to the left and push that block N once. Now turn to your right and pull each of the E blocks back once. Then run around to the right to the alley you've created, and step on the revealed symbol on the floor. There are other ways to do this, but what you've just read works fine. A cut scene shows you that the area you needed to flood has now been flooded.

Exit this room. You can use the ceiling to monkey swing across the water, but it's much faster simply to swim across and pull up on the other side. Return to the central room and enter the W passage to your right. Crawl to the other side as you did earlier and jump into the water hole. Swim to the other end and exit through the other water hole. Pull up into a new area protected by giant cigar cutters. A flyby takes you ahead through a lava room guarded by a demigod who makes worse noises than the doughboys did. It's easy to get past the cigar cutters without sustaining any damage. Simply get up as close to them as you can, turn either to your right or left, and side flip past them when the blades open. Now for the fun part. You're looking a long way down at a lava pool. You can see some openings on your way down, so you're tempted to slide down backwards and make your way to the bottom in stages. Don't do that, because there are hidden flames on the first ledge below that you could avoid if you were to jump to the left or right and then slide down. Unfortunately, there are spike traps on the second ledge that you can't avoid, so let's do it the way the builder obviously intended.

Slide down, jump over the flame-protected ledge and then the spike-protected ledge, jump off the ramp at the end onto the sloped block, slide down ever so slightly and jump off to grab the crawl space in the wall. Pull up and crawl forward frantically as the demigod opens fire on you. Turn the corner to the right to escape the deadly bolts, then keep crawling until you reach a hole in the floor. Turn around and save your game here. Climb down the ladder very carefully, as there's a spike trap underneath. When you near the bottom, wait for the spikes to retract, release and drop to the floor, back flip immediately and side flip to the right in one continuous motion to avoid the boulder rolling toward you from behind.

Loop around the corner to your left to face a ramp leading upward. If you hit the look key before dashing forward you'll see two more boulders poised above, the nearer one being on your right. So run up the left side to trigger them both, and be prepared to veer sharply to your right as the first one goes by. When you reach the ledges ahead you'll trigger a blade trap which then seems to go dormant. However, it's still active, so be careful. Pull up on either the right or left side and quickly move over to the safe dark strip. Take a standing jump up the slope to the next ledge, being mindful of the central spikes. Angle Lara so that, when the spikes retract, you can take a standing jump up to the ledge with the swinging chains.

Run past the chains to the W wall. You have two jumpswitches to choose from. Activate them both, because each one awakens a pair of skeletons in the beginning cave and opens one of the two closed doors to your left. Go through the S passage, but carefully, as there are two hidden blade traps along the way. You next enter a spooky green-tinted room with four blocks. Three of the blocks, including the one with the large medipack on top, are guarded by spikes that pop down from the ceiling. Take the medipack at your own risk. You can so without taking much if any damage by pulling up onto the NW block, standing still until the spikes retract, then ducking down and crawling forward to pick up the medipack. When the spikes retract again, stand up and quickly hop to the floor.

Go into the S lava room, loop around and exit through the other opening.  Doing this activates a trigger tile on the SE block in the block room.  Pull up onto it, hop down and return to the S room.  Jump into the now-safe water. The giant cigar cutter ahead is underwater, of course, so the side flip trick won't work here. You'll just have to gird up your loins and swim through the opening as quickly as you can when the blades open. Swim upward and onward, taking the first left fork to go through another giant cigar cutter. Take a right just past it, then a quick left and another right to enter a smaller passage. Follow it up and pull out into a small room. Use the crawl space in the corner to spook a couple of bats, then draw your pistols and kill them as quickly as you can. Continue crawling until you can stand up.

Run up the stairs toward the hole in the SW corner. A burst of action music heralds an upcoming fight (or, more accurately, flight), so safety drop down the hole and prepare to meet the skeletons you awakened earlier. Now all you've got to do is find the exit while trying to avoid a quartet of thoroughly agitated skeletons. Light a flare and jump over the trench into the dark cave with the now-empty skeleton graves. Run to the gate in the N wall, which is now open. Enter the passage, turn left at the bend and run up the stairs, and pull up onto the block ahead. The skeletons can't follow, so you may want to turn around and thumb your nose at them or do something a bit more obscene.

After you get tired of taunting the skeletons, turn around and enter a colorful room. Or at least try to enter it, as the level ends when you cross the threshold.