Alida

Walkthrough by Jen
February 2003
Updated April 2003
Updated May 2003

Thanks to Cos Russo for filling me in on the differences between the OS9 and OSX versions of Alida.
Thanks to Mike Weiss for the details regarding one of the puzzle solutions.

When you begin the game, you have three possible choices for doorways, one at either end of the walkway, and one in the middle. Take the end one that's closest to you.

Ruins

Continue down the corridor until you come to a metal cage ball. Get in and pull the handle to take a ride. Turn to the right and get out of the cart. Go out the door, take one step, and turn to the left. Go through the door into the rock. Walk as far as you can, up to the top of a spiral ramp. Walk around the top of the dome until you can get onto the overlook opposite the top of the ramp. Walk out to the end of it and look down to check out the view. Pay attention to the shapes of the five areas down below.

Look up again and head on back down the ramp and outside.

Each of the five areas, three platforms and two buildings, has a post containing a lever on a mechanism with some shapes on its side. When you first step out of the arch from the overlook, do a close-up on the nearest post and you'll see an extra lever on the ground. Pick it up. (This is the only inventory item you will have in the entire game.)

Adjust this post and the rest of the posts so that the shape in front matches the shape of the platform the post is standing on, as seen from above. Use the lever you picked up on the post that doesn't have one, then adjust it to show the correct shape too. In one of the buildings, you will have to click on a timber to reveal the post.

After you have set all five posts, go through the arch nearest the hut that's on three squares, past the post that's on three squares. Continue as far as you can (this is the bridge you just raised by setting those posts). There is still a gap; when you reach the end, turn to the left and pull another lever. Continue down the path until you're inside a round building facing two exit doors.

Sea Domes

From where you come in, go through the rightmost door and follow the path to its end. Look through the glass wall of the vault and see the blinking lamp. Pay attention to the blink pattern: 2, 7, 4. You'll need to know this later. Leave here (in the OS9 version, the door will have some buttons, but you can't open the door; the buttons were removed from the OSX version).

When you return to the central chamber, take the door to the right again. Do a close-up of the strange sculpture, and pull the bar that surrounds the right side.

Pay attention to what's revealed—it shows a switch turning. This is the clue for the plectrum.

Leave here and return to the ruins. As soon as you take one step out of the tunnel, turn to the right and see another arch past the post. Go through it and follow the path until you reach the intersection with the ring path.

The Huts—Information-Gathering

Turn to the right and walk to the hut. Touch the doorknob to go in. Open the contraption on the pedestal and push in the central button. Don't worry about the planets for now.

Examine the desk. On the wall is a map of Alida, and above that is a side view of the island.

Look at everything in the drawers. Not much in the first drawer. In the second drawer you should see an email, a diagram of a musical instrument, a picture of the peghead, a picture of the switch, and a picture of a sphere inside one of the potentiometers. The bottom drawer has a note saying that "All the vault doors respond to the same codes," a picture of some scaffolding, and a newspaper clipping. Most of this won't make any sense right now, but it is helpful in gaining an understanding of what's going on here.

Look at the apparatus in the middle of the table. This will show six birds. If you pull the handle, the bird picture will change; if you push the button in the center, you can hear the sound a particular bird makes. Pay attention to this; there will be a quiz.

Look at the holographic projector on the right side of the desk. Push the play button (the single triangle). After the scene is over, push the fast forward button (the rightmost double triangle) and push the play button again. Keep doing this until you have seen all of the scenes.

Leave the hut and continue around to the right, to the next hut. In this hut, again open the planet display and push the sun button. That's all there is to do in here; leave and go to the third hut.

Push the sun button in here too. This hut has a table with a journal and a device similar to the birdsong thing in the first hut, only this time it's bugs and frogs. Pay attention to the sounds again. Read the journal. In this room there is also a model of the solar system; you can pull the string and watch it go around, just for fun.

Leave here and go to the final hut; push down the sun button again. This hut has an implement sitting on a chair with three buttons topped by a sphere. This is the solution to a puzzle you will encounter later. Push the top button and move the sphere around, paying attention to the numbers shown according to the positioning of the ball. Also note that there is one spot with no number, which I'll call the "zero" spot. Each of the three buttons has different numberings for the sphere positions, so it's helpful to make a diagram of all of them.

Make another circuit of the path around the huts and pay attention to the birdsongs in between each hut, matching them up to the birds on that apparatus in the first hut. Same for the bugs/frogs one, but there is only one sound for this, the one that the moth makes.

Leave this area altogether, go back through the ruins, and return on the cart to the starting area, the "balcony."

Central Room—Big Puzzle Hub

Go through the opening that's in the middle of the wall behind the balcony. As soon as you take one step out of the tunnel, turn left and walk past the crescent moon/organ puzzle. Turn around so that you can see the back of it, and do a close-up on the plaque. It shows the numbers 87523. Go look at the organ puzzle again and push the keys in that order. The black tubes will come down. Pay attention to the symbols on the grey tubes.

Leave here for now and go back to the balcony.

Arin's Vault

Go through the door to the right as you are facing out to sea. Follow the path almost to the outside, until the point where you can see a faint blue button on the railing to the left. Take one more step, turn to the left, and look down. Push the blue button. Look up, then turn left. Take a step toward the purple and look down. Do a close-up of the puzzle. Turn the three wheels until the arrows line up to bring up a ladder. Look up, step through the ladder, turn around, step toward the ladder (funky navigation here), then look up until you're at the top of the ladder. Climb the next ladder, too. It's another vault. Look in through the glass, and Arin will show you his necklace.

Go back down the ladder and continue to the end of the path, to the outside. Follow the path as far as you can, up some stairs, up and down a bunch of ladders, until your way is blocked by a purple grate.

Go back the way you came, and back into the central room, and look at the organ puzzle again. (This sounds pointless, but it triggers Arin's next clue.) Return to Arin's vault and look at the window. He has taped up a note for you. This is what to play on the organ puzzle.

Go back to the organ puzzle and play the notes from the note (haha!). The ones on Arin's note that show two symbols combined mean play the black note in between the two grey ones with the two symbols. The sixth note is a dastardly trick; it's really the second black key, not the seventh grey key. If you do it right, the ball at the end of the hall will turn around and show a new cart. Get in and pull the knob at the top right to take a ride.

Inside the Switch

Climb the stairs to the right and face the giant ball at the bottom of the switch. Note the note (haha, again) that's imprinted.

Go back down the steps, turn around, and go into the room to the right. Around the back of the central cylinder is a keyboard diagram on the wall. Turn around and look at the two triangles. Push the button (the lower triangle) until the bead is in this position:

And turn around and look at the keyboard again. Now it matches the one on the base of the switch. Go back up the stairs to the base of the switch and pull the lever. Go up the stairs that are revealed.

Look out the window. Look to the left of the window and see this:

It's a cryptogram; it solves to read:

code for all vault doors
set numbers to two
press button for six seconds

Turn to the right of the window and see this diagram:

Go back down the stairs. Now, back around on the other side of the switch from the big noise-maker is another room. Go into it and see another ball cart sitting in the middle of the room. Get in. Here's where your newfound knowledge of bird lore comes into play. After you touch the button on the right, the button on the left will show you a diagram of the four huts around the tower, then light up with four bird buttons. Change the buttons to match the bird noises you heard in between each of the huts. You were paying attention, weren't you? Well, if not, do it like this:

Then pull the right knob again to ride to the conservatory.

Conservatory

Step out of the cart and go up the stairs. Turn to your right and go into the first door on the right wall. This is Arin's office. Read the papers on his desk to learn about a secret third setting for the switch. (This paper about the secret setting was removed from the OSX version of the game.)

Leave and go back up the stairs. Continue around to the next door on the right and go in. This is Leval's prison. Turn away from the door and back again and Leval will ask you to let him out. He says the code is 21 or 22. Really, it's 21 and 22. Turn the knobs on the wall like this:

And push the button. Do not go in the room! Or rather, go ahead and save first and then go in.

Do look into the room and note the picture on the floor:

Vault Door Code

Go deeper into the central room, to the second cart puzzle with the eight numbered buttons on it. From the cryptogram, we know we should set all of the numbers to 2 and hold the button down for six seconds, so do that. It will display a sequence of dots:

Make a note of this.

Sphere Locks

In the central hub room are the three hallways with the carts, plus two more smaller hallways that lead to nothing right now. As you are facing the wall, the leftmost hallway is a dead end and the rightmost hallway leads to another building. All you can see is a door with a strange symbol on it and a peephole that you can look through and see ... practically nothing.

If you go to the back of the central hub room and turn around, you should see two levers mounted on the pillars. Go ahead and pull both of these. The left one opens the door at the end of the left corridor, and the right one toggles the door on the right corridor to close the one you just looked at and open a different one on the other side.

The left hallway now leads to the vault with all the money in it and an elevator up to the plectrum switch that we saw on that sculpture in the building across the long bridge near the beginning of the game. No need to go there just yet.

The right hallway now leads to the sphere lock puzzle. Go there.

The object of this puzzle is to roll each ball so that it stops on each number 1 through 5 in order. If you can't go directly from one number to the next, you need to use the "zero" position in between the numbers. The solution to this was on the chair in one of the huts.

All balls are set to the "1" position, with the dot facing you.

• Top ball: Starting at the "1" position, pull the ball to the right three times and up three times. If you mess up, return it to the "1" position and start again.
• Middle ball: Starting at the "1" position, pull the ball up once, left three times, and up once.
• Bottom ball: Starting at the "1" position, pull the ball right once, up twice, right once, and up once.

Solving this opens the purple grate blocking the ladder at the end of the guitar neck. Go there now.

Sphere Under the Neck

Inside the sphere, turn your back to the ladder and look up to see this symbol:

Go down the next ladder. It's another vault. Do a close-up of the guitar through the window:

This is the solution to the eight-numbered puzzle in the central chamber.

Continue past the vault and see another ladder. Go down and to the end and touch the switch. This opens that peephole door on the path parallel to the sphere lock puzzle.

There is a vault door in here. In the OS9 version the door has buttons and you can enter the door code but this door will never open. In the OSX version, the buttons on the door were removed.

Leave here and return to the central chamber. (On your way, go back up to Arin's vault and enter the same door code there.)

Go behind the pillars and switch the right lever to access the path that you just opened up. Go down there and take a look. See this symbol on top of the building:

Go all the way into the room and look. It's the "experiment" talked about in that journal back in the huts.

Peghead

Return to the central puzzle, the one with the eight numbered dials, and enter the code from the guitar in the vault (if this doesn't work, enter it in reverse):

The cart will turn around so you can use it. Get in and take a ride.

In this room there are six chambers, three on either side, which are at the bases of the guitar's tuning pegs. There is a button at the center of the room—pushing it changes the side of the room on which you can work the devices in the six chambers. At the back of the room is another chamber. It's kind of tricky navigating in here because the chambers are hard to see.

Go to the chamber at the back of the room. As you first enter the room from the cart, follow the right path to the back of the room, then turn to the left to see the entrance.

Go down the spiral stairs and stop at the platform with the button device. Note the symbol in the middle of this (shown upside down here for clarity):

Pushing each of the eight buttons flips the corresponding shape on the room's floor. Adjust them all so it looks like this:

(I don't know what the clues for this were; I managed to solve it by trial and error and sheer luck.) Then push the button in the middle. A giant phallus rises up from the sea and makes a new elevator for you. Go ahead and use it. Continue to the end of the path and see another one of those sculptures. Using this one reveals all of the settings for the pegs.

May 2003: Unlike me, reader Mike Weiss did figure out the clues to this peghead puzzle. He says:

"The middle peghead room on the right has an up staircase and a down staircase. Using the up staircase, you can look out a window and see an actual peghead, emitting a light. Now, depending on the setting of the arrow key on the lower floor of that room, the peghead light changes color. Each of the ten shapes in the other five peghead chambers corresponds to a color, which can be determined by manipulating the arrow key (Note that the dial in each of the other five peghead chambers has a small triangle marker in a different location—by pointing the "guitar"-shaped end of the arrow to that location on its dial, you can see the corresponding color for that shape).

"Now (you're still there, right?)—see that compass globe in the chamber behind the peghead room? There is another compass globe on Alida, this one on top of the lookout tower. Surrounding the globe in the lookout tower are eight colored poles. Thus, the eight floor shapes in the chamber behind the peghead room are meant to correspond to the eight colors on the lookout tower. Use "north" to orient yourself, and position the floor shapes to the corresponding colors, and you're all set."

In the brown part of the hallway is a sort of hidden branch. If you go that way you will be outside on a platform at the base of the phallus. There is a broken button here; it doesn't mean anything. Maybe in the sequel?

Return to the peghead room. Look at the side-setting switch and see which side is lit up. Do whatever side is lit up first.

Go into each of the six side chambers and set the devices to match what was revealed on the sculpture. After you finish the side that's lit up on the side switch, go push the button to switch to the other side so you can work those ones.

After these are all set, the peghead is solved.

Conservatory Guitar Model

(You don't really have to do this puzzle in the OS9 version; it's just for fun and enlightenment. You do, however, have to do it in the OSX version because the earlier clue has been removed because it made this puzzle redundant.) Return to the conservatory (from the central puzzle hub, ride the cart to the switch, then the other cart from there). In the center of the conservatory is a model of the Alida guitar.

Remember the switch setting noise-maker with the triangle and its moving bead? We learned from that that the positions of the beads correspond to the notes on the keyboard. Remember the pipe organ puzzle we used to access the switch? We learned from that that the notes correspond to certain symbols. Matching up the symbols with the bead positions results in the following:

Okay, now, back to the guitar model. Notice as you set the pointer on the left the lit-up area changes to each of five areas of Alida. In each of those five areas, we noted a particular symbol. Here's where those all come into play.

Turn the switch to each of the five areas and push the triangle button so that the bead moves to correspond to the symbol that was shown in the area that's lit up.

The giant sphere atop the pinnacle comes down and docks onto the conservatory, and what used to be the conservatory window now becomes a new doorway. Go in and take a look at the sculpture. It shows the secret third switch setting.

Setting the Switch

Return to the switch. Climb the stairs and pull the lever to return the switch to its original position, with the keyboard diagram facing you (if you haven't done this already). Go to the switch setting area and push the button until the bead is in the position shown on Arin's note and/or the sculpture from the conservatory:

Then go back and pull the switch lever. The access hole in the switch should move so that it's pointing toward the floor. You have solved Arin's part of the guitar.

Take the cart near the base of the stairs back to the central puzzle hub room.

Potentiometers

Return to the central puzzle hub chamber. This time go to the cart puzzle at the back of the room, the one with the three buttons that make the balls of light with the planetary symbols.

The clue for this was that flashing lamp in the sea dome way back at the beginning of the game. The pattern was 2, 7, 4.

After you push a button, pass your cursor over the ball and note how many flashes it gives.

Set the first button to the ball that looks like a baseball bat, the second button to the ball that looks like a cloudy day, and the third button to the ball that looks like a sun.

The cart will become available; use it. Here we have a central chamber with four hallways divided by two carts, the open one we just came in on and a new closed one across the room, and two dome switches. Go to both of the switches and use them to turn on the lights in the four hallways.

Go into each of the four hallways and do the following. Ride the elevator up two stops, get out, open the dome switch, and push the button to turn on the light. Ride back down one stop, get out, and approach the planetarium device (like the ones in the huts). Push the button to open the device. Push each planet and push the sun button in the middle each time you change planets. Count the light flashes for each planet. Pay attention to which flashes in each potentiometer are the longer ones; you will need to know this to orient yourself later on.

Here are my diagrams for each of the four devices.

Once you're done with this, go to the new cart on the other side of the central potentiometer chamber and get in. To ride this one you have to solve the bug/frog noise puzzle from the hut area. The only noise I heard was the moth, so set the buttons all to moths.

Then pull the button and take a ride. You end up inside the tower at the center of the huts.

Here there are four holographic projectors, each with a window behind it. On one side of the room is a platform with a lever on it. Using this lever causes the holographs to project, showing the planets that each planetarium in each hut is set to.

Go to each window, look down, and count the number of flashes coming from each hut. If you look out a window and don't see any flashes, it means that you didn't push down the center sun button on the planetarium device in that hut. Next to one of the windows in here is an elevator that takes you to the base of the tower; if you need to, use it and go make sure all of the sun buttons are pushed in all of the huts.

Starting from the window to the right of the lever and working counterclockwise around the room, the numbers of flashes are 7, 2, 6, and 5.

After you're done counting the flashes, take the tower elevator down to the base. Go into each hut and set the planetarium ball to match the number of flashes coming from that hut. Stand where the ring path intersects the path to the tower, and face the tower. Turn to the right and go to the first hut. Push the greenish-grey planet at the right, on the first ring from the center (6). In the next hut, push the big dusky purple button all the way to the left, on the outer ring (5). In the next hut, push the rightmost planet on the second ring, the one that looks kind of like Earth (7). In the last hut, push the topmost planet, the brownish/purplish one on the third ring (2).

Return to the holograph room in the tower and use the lever. Once all of the correct planets are projected, the cart will turn around, and you can now ride it to the top of the tower.

At the top of the tower, among other things, is another one of those sculptures. This one shows the settings for the planet devices in the potentiometers.

Return to the potentiometers and set them according to what was shown by the sculpture. Starting from the original cart (the one you rode in on from the central puzzle hub of the guitar), turn to the right and go up one stop on the elevator. Get out, open the planet device, and push the brown planet all the way to the left, on the outer ring. Continuing counterclockwise around the four potentiometers, set the next one to the white-and-blue speckled planet on the second ring, at the southwest position. Set the third one to the innermost planet, the smallest speckled one at the south position. Set the last one to the bottommost planet, the milky-white one with brown marbling.

That's it. The potentiometers are now solved.

Playing the Guitar

In order to get the good ending, you have to have entered the door code on at least Arin's vault (the one up the ladder) before you play the guitar. You get the bad ending if you don't unlock Arin's vault door and do unlock the money vault door.

Either way, go up the elevator past the money vault, step up to the device, and use the knob to play the guitar. If you get the bad ending, it's game over. After you get the good ending, go out to the balcony, and Arin will wrap things up for you.