WALKTHROUGH FOR LABYRINTH OF TIME by Steven Den Beste (denbeste@world.std.com)
The Labyrinth of Time
By Terra Nova Development
Published by Electronics Arts
If you see letters W, E, N, S without any verb, or strung together, it means
to move in that direction. There are a lot of mazes in this game and even
outside the mazes moving around involves a lot of steps. Thus WNEN means
go West, then go North, then go E, then go North.
There are quite a few objects in this game which you do not need and
which have no purpose in the game. I've labelled many of them here
as "USELESS OBJECTS". They're fun to look at, but they clutter up the
inventory because there's no way to get rid of them once you pick them up.
Also, how you "wear the helmet" or "turn on the lamp" is left as an exercise to
the user. You can figure out how to use the icons...
You begin the game in a subway car.
From the starting position: WWWWWS and enter the elevator and change floors.
Leave the elevator, SSSSWWWSEE, turn south and open the door of the train
car..
Go south, open the station door, go south, open the other station door.
Go South. You are now in the western town.
(USELESS OBJECT: Liquor bottle in the bar)
SS, Turn W and enter the sheriff's office. Open the desk drawer and take the
brass key.
Retrace your path to the hotel and change floors with the elevator.
Leave the elevator, NE, open the door to room 14 and enter the room.
Use the brass key to unlock the wardrobe, open the wardrobe.
Take the Journal and the card key. Read the Journal.
Leave the room, WS. You will now traverse the hall of mirrors. Here's the
path: WWWNWWSESEESWWS, gets you to the control room.
Run the card key through the reader. Press the BLUE button. You're now
on the moon.
EE, turn N. Flip the RED and YELLOW levers. Do NOT flip the PURPLE lever!
(You'll do it later. If you do it now, you can't finish the game!)
(USELESS OBJECT: Alien Belt)
WW, run your card through the reader, press the GREEN button.
SS, up the ladder, press the PURPLE button on the machine. This takes you
to a cave.
EEEEESEE and you've entered the medieval maze.
ESESSEEENES and take the helmet. Wear the helmet.
NWWNNEENNNN, take the paint. You're now in the diner.
By the way: You've changed levels here, and they've crossed you up on the
compass. Having gone "N" on your last step, you'll be told you're looking
South.
WNN. Look at the coin return slot on the juke box, and take the silver key.
It permits you to look closer, but you can't get the key if you're closer.
WWWW, turn S and put the quarter in the phone. Get all the quarters.
Turn N and put a quarter in the pay-toilet door.
N and you're in the hedge maze. NEENENNWNNEESENN takes you to the construction
site. N and get the screwdriver. Turn W and look at the piece of paper on the
wall.
SS and back into the hedge maze. SWNWWSSESSWSWWSS gets you back to the diner.
EEEESSEN - you've changed levels and they tell you you're looking South.
S and you're in the medieval maze. WSWWSSSEESWWWNNWNW and you're out.
(Whew! You won't be visiting either of THOSE mazes again!)
WNWWWW and press the purple button on the machine. You're now in orbit
around the earth.
Go down the ladder, then NN. Use the cardkey on the reader, then press
the ORANGE button. This takes you to the control room.
Through the mirror maze: NEENWWNWNEESEEE which takes you into the elevator.
Change floors and exit the elevator.
Next you enter the movie theater.
WNNEE and look at the panel on the wall. You now get to play "slide the
numbers" until it matches the pattern you saw on the wall at the construction
site. Here's the pattern, in case you didn't write it down:
7 2 9 10
1 11 5 13
8 15 14 12
3 4 6
You're mostly on your own for this. I found it wasn't too hard to start by
getting 7/2/9/10 in place, then 1/8/3, then 11/5/13, and then wrestle with
the remaining ones.
When you get it right, the wall falls down and a new passage appears.
E and you're back in the construction site, but in a part you couldn't reach
before. E and look at the tool box. Get the gold key.
(USELESS OBJECT: Tire pump)
WWWWSSE, Turn North. Use the silver key and unlock the offices of Slade and
Barcher. (Where's Humphrey Bogart, when we need him most?)
Enter the office, look at the table on the right and get the iron key.
(USELESS OBJECT: Falcon statue)
(Sort of useless object: The notes contain a clue about the game, but
you don't need it since you've got this walkthrough.)
Now go S and change floors with the elevator.
Leave the elevator, then NEEE and turn S.
Unlock the door with the gold key, and open the door.
SW and turn S. You're in the broom closet. Get the paper.
(USELESS OBJECTS: Broom, Bucket, Teapot)
ENWWWS, Change floors with the elevator and leave it.
Go to the western town and enter the sheriff's office, and unlock the jail
door with the iron key.
ES takes you into the mine. Turn E and shove the car. Then go E.
Shove the car again. It breaks in the door.
Go East and turn W and close the door.
(USELESS OBJECT: Sword)
Get the lantern and turn it on. Open the door again.
WWN, turn E and open the door. Go east.
Place the paper on the printing press and run it.
Get the old west newspaper.
Return to the hotel, enter the elevator and change floors and leave the
elevator. Now we need to go to the subway car where we originally
began the game.
NEEEEES, look at the iron door and use the screwdriver to remove a screw.
Take the screw, then open the door.
SSS (ouch!)
You are now at the entrance to the surreal maze. Save your game here, then
spend some time wandering around and looking at things. This place is
stunning. (MYST - eat your heart out!)
FROM THE ENTRANCE: SEEE then go North, then go South (this ISN'T
redundant!) and you're "East of the Ziggurat". WWW and turn South.
BUG ALERT! Save your game here. The next thing that you need to do is turn
the pillar in the center.
Turning South before turning the pillar seems to prevent the bug. If you're
looking West when you do it, it seems to lock up.
If you didn't turn the lamp on before now, you have to or you won't be able to
enter the Ziggurat.
ESWWW. Get the shirt. Throw the yellow lever. You get transported elsewhere.
Note that the first section of the bridge is in place.
SSSWWWWW, press the purple button on the machine. This takes you to earth
orbit.
Go down the ladder, NN and pass the card key through the reader. Press the
ORANGE button. This takes you to the control room.
NEENWWNWNEESEEE and you're back in the hotel. SSSS, turn E and put the
shirt in the laundry. Also you've got a good view from here.
Return to the broom closet and put the old west newspaper next to the now
clean shirt.
Go E and read the Journal again. It has changed! Enter Cornelius Lyon's
date of birth into the combination of the iron door (040872) then open it.
ESSSS, turn W. Open the sarcophagus and look inside. Get the Cretan
Ornament.
(USELESS OBJECT: Pith Helmet)
Go back through the subway car and the city street (ZORCH!) and back to the
entrance of the surreal maze.
SEEENS and you are east of the ziggurat again. WWNW and throw the
red lever. You get transported elsewhere.
Hey! The bridge is even longer now!
SSSSSW and look inside the thing on the floor. Get the Labrys.
W and put the Cretan Ornament into the lock on the door
W and move the throne. Get the Acme Cretan Fresco Paint.
(Boy, the Acme company sure gets around, doesn't it?)
EEENNWWWWW and press the purple button on the machine.
Go down the ladder, NN and pass the cardkey through the reader. Press the
ORANGE button. This takes you to the control room.
NEENWWNWNEESEEE and you're back in the hotel.
Back through the subway car and get ZORCHed for the last time, to the surreal
maze.
SEEENS, west of the Ziggurat. WWSW and throw the purple lever. (Before you do,
however, go up top of the ziggurat and look around!)
The purple lever transports you elsewhere.
SSSWWWWW and press the purple button. Down the ladder, NN and pass the card
key through the reader. Press the BLUE button.
EE, turn N and throw the purple lever.
Go W, turn S. Get the Mayan Talisman from the broken display case.
(By the way, it used to be empty.)
OOOPS! You set off the security system! Go W, run the card key through
the reader and press either button. It doesn't matter which, because...
You're in jail. (Good thing you unlocked it earlier!)
(USELESS OBJECT: Pistol)
EENNNNN. Turn E and open the door and go through. (This is one of several
places where you can see the bridge, and it is probably the best one.)
All we gotta do now is get back there.
Return to the hotel. Enter the elevator and change floors, then leave it.
We have to go through the mirror maze one last time.
WWWNWWSESEESWWS takes us to the control room. Run the card through the reader,
then press the GREEN button.
SS, up the ladder, and press the PURPLE button.
EEEEENNNNNNN. There's the minotaur!
I recommend saving your game here, too.
Turn South. Paint one of the mirrors with the Acme Fresco Paint. (I wonder
how they make it do that!) Now turn North and look at the minotaur again!
Turn South. Paint over the other mirror with the other can of paint.
Turn North. Put the Labrys into the hole.
Blast the keystone with the Mayan Talisman. Sometimes it locks up here.
If everything goes properly, you should get a final sequence with Daedalus
thanking you for a job well done.
-----------------------------
Notes:
You begin the game with a single quarter. There is only one essential place
you MUST use a quarter - the pay toilet door - but I've included the
step which gives you 13 quarters. In addition, you can put a quarter in
the jukebox (but it doesn't do anything - I conjecture that this was supposed
to be how you got the key from it). You can use one on the street scene
to get a normal newspaper from a newspaper box, and you can feed them all
to the fortune teller. If you do this, several of the things he says
are clues to the game.
On the moon, in the room with the strange machine with three levers, is
a view of a large black monolith out the window. The device below the
window describes it, then tosses off something about the scene being
particularly beautiful when the Earth rises. Unfortunately, this is
impossible. The moon is tide-locked - from the surface of the Moon the
Earth is always in the same position. It neither rises nor sets.
There are doors in the game which you CANNOT open. One is the locked
door in the train car. Another is the strange door inside the Ziggurat.
There is also no way to go to the end of the city street without getting
zorched. You cannot open any of the hotel rooms except the ones I describe, and
the bathroom across from the broom closet. (That's fun, but not necessary for
the game, so I didn't show it.)
The machine on the Moon performs multiple functions. One of the levers
gets rid of the big metal barrier in the mine in the Western Town. The
purple lever crushes the subway car, making it so you can't go through
it. (That's why you have to throw it last.) Does the third lever perform
some similar function? I don't know, because I found it and threw both
the red and yellow levers immediately. In addition, when both a lever
on the moon and the same colored lever inside the Ziggurat have been
thrown, a section of the bridge appears. It does not matter which is
done first.
This game was actually originally designed for a mutant form of the
Commodore Amiga and was translated for the PC (and rerendered, since that
Amiga didn't have any equivalent of 640*480*256 graphics). As such,
there are a lot of Amiga in-jokes in it. Many of the names given for
people, such as Leo Schwab, were members of an SF-area Amiga
user's group in the late 80's. I don't know who specifically "Fred Daniels"
is, but I assume he is another.
There's a LOT of stuff in this that I didn't show in this walkthrough.
Some of the mazes have interesting things to see in them. In the hedge
maze, there's a sundial. There's a shield on the wall in the medieval
maze which looks pretty neat. (It's also one of the Amiga in-jokes.)
The surreal maze is probably a source of considerable confusion. There are
nine images, so it is easy to assume that there are only 9 cells in the
maze. In fact, this maze is 6*6 just like all the other mazes. Each graphic
image is repeated four times in the 6*6 maze. This is further complicated
by the fact that it wraps around. Therefore, you can go in one direction
forever - except that in one column you can't go south forever, and in one
column you can't go north forever. The path through it I use
takes advantage of the wraparound to get the shortest number of steps
to the ziggurat.
