As the last Prideworld mission to be made, this one is all about not having to get caught up in the flow with everybody else. Sometimes by going outside or against that flow; sometimes by influencing it. Perfect for people on the aromantic spectrum and for LGBTQ+ as a whole...
Black objective Look to your left and find a building surrounded by loops of 'test track' made of forcefields and ice. For the moment there are walls blocking the way to this side of it, so you'll have to take the long way round, turning left at a circular area and left again inside the base of the big tower. When you reach the test track at its south side, simply drive down into the forcefield channel and wait! You'll be taken round a few loops which change as you roll over a switch in the track, and eventually up to roof level where you'll pick up the black key before falling back into the track for some more circuits. When you find yourself at the northern part of the test track near where you started the mission, your black key now allows you to burst out through the black walls surrounding this section of track. Once you've escaped, head for the opposite end of the test track building (you'll have to use a tiny jump ramp to get over the track) and use your black key to unlock a section of black wall so you can press the switch. You should see that this has made more track appear in the roof ahead of you. Return to the northern section of the test track and enter the forcefields to pick up speed, aiming carefully at the spiral ice ramp up to the roof. With your black key now instantly destroying any black wall you hit, you won't be guided there automatically this time! If you fail to get enough speed you'll have to slide back down then immediately dodge off to one side before the forcefield gets a chance to push you back towards the spiral ramp, and then get lined up for another go at it. Once you make it up to roof level, continue along the new channel that you put in place by pressing that switch just now, all the way to the first pride colour switch of this mission - the black one. Press that switch to start colouring in the buildings and open up the next part of the mission!
The black switch has also reversed all the forcefields in the test track. Go back down and along the track, being careful again on the northern forcefield section not to drift to one side and miss the way onto the curved ice. Allow yourself to keep being pushed round in the new direction until you fall to a basement floor area below (where you can reduce the risk of falling off the edge by turning to the right a bit immediately on landing). Use your black key to get three extra lives then teleport yourself back up to ground level.
Grey objective Now leave the test track and look a small distance to the north of the big tower, for a small control tower standing on a wide solid base which is now coloured black. You switched on the walkway to the control tower already, so go up there for a look at the switches and the ice maze beyond. When you find a switch in Prideworld you should usually try switching it on and off a few times while looking around you, to see what it does. But some of the ones on this tower make small changes that are quite a long way away, so they're a bit more tricky! The near switch on the left powers up the first two lifts in the big tower - you definitely need those before you can do any more in this game! The two switches on the far side of this control tower can be used together to make it possible to get three extra lives right at the start of the upcoming ice maze, but they also make the rest of the maze a little bit more dangerous. You'll have to guess whether or not you can wait till the very end of that maze before you need more lives! The near switch on the right creates a 'trampoline' in the middle of the circular area to the north. Definitely use this one - it'll be safer getting out of the ice maze, and also possible later on to get the extra lives on the platform above the edge of that area. When you're finished switching, go to the base of the big tower again.
In the big tower you can now use lifts to get up to the second floor, and westwards to a black paved area next to the track with many small enemy robots racing round clockwise. These robots are a bit of a hassle, and for the moment you'll only be able to go round the track in the same direction - clockwise. The black area is a kind of trap. If you position yourself in it, near enough to the passing robots to get their attention, they'll swerve off into it. Once there are several robots in the trap they'll probably start bouncing off each other as they attempt to escape, and this is likely to bounce some of them out of the trap. There's some luck involved, and we've never seen more than 6 of the 7 robots permanently trapped. Anyway, using the trap might help to reduce the enemy presence as you play this section of the game. Unlike the enemies, you can escape from the trap at any time using the teleporter provided. Now look for a much bigger, wide and flat robot that takes its own slow path around a different track and through the second floor of the big tower. This one is important because it's big enough to press the switches on its route - which will help and hinder you in equal measure. This robot is the only one in the aro mission that won't chase you. Go clockwise round the enemy robot circuit, far above the ice maze, to the north side. Don't let the forcefields push you downhill too fast, and turn right as soon as you reach the other side. Find a section of the circuit where there are four switches in a line. As the big robot crosses these it'll make the floor of a nearby walkway down towards the ice maze appear and then disappear. The simplest way to get to the ice maze is to set all four switches to on (or wait for the robot to do it) then go down to the very end of the walkway. Wait for the big robot to complete another lap and then it'll switch off all four walkway sections you just came down on, leaving only the square you're standing on. You can now safely fall onto the bouncy rubber below. An alternative way down to the ice is to switch on the first (northernmost) three switches, leaving the final one set to off. If there are a lot of the tiny enemy robots in your way you might find this tricky and even have to make a few circuits to achieve it - by which time the big robot might have come through and changed all your switch settings anyway! Drive down the three sections of walkway that you've switched on, then slowly fall through the gap where the fourth section would have been, down to the maze below.
Once you're in the ice maze, if you pressed all the switches on the control tower earlier then look east to see three extra lives on a slightly raised area with ramps on all sides. You'll have to get all the way round it on slippery ice to reach those lives though. Once you arrive at the ramp up to the corner of that area, get a reasonable runup speed for the ramp or you'll likely slide right off one of the other sides! And on your way back down, use some reverse thrust to prevent the ramp pushing you ahead too fast. Extra lives or not, you now need to head westwards, along the southern side of the ice. Soon enough you'll have to turn right to go over a little ramp, which is steeper if you switched on access to the lives we mentioned just now. Aim dead straight across the ramp and move back as far as you safely can without falling backwards off the ice. Go full steam ahead, and once you're over the ramp, let go of all controls and allow your robot to come safely to a halt. Now turn left and head for a pair of forcefields pointing in opposite directions. Line yourself up with the far forcefield, closer to its right edge than its left so that you're also pointing towards a small piece of wall along the very edge of the ice. Go forward slowly, allowing the forcefield to push you into the wall, and after a few bounces you'll settle down safely. Turn right and head for the very north edge of the ice maze (avoiding the many gaps in the ice as you go) where you can take two left turns and find the bottom end of a sloping walkway. Take the walkway up to another control tower (looking out for missing walls as you go - you wouldn't die from falling onto the ice at this height, but you could easily slip through one of the holes) to press both switches and collect the grey key.
On the way out you can now collect any of the extra lives just above ice level, that you didn't get already - the control tower switches have allowed access to all of them. Go back down the walkway for the nearest ones. Although they don't look it, the grey walls in the ice maze are different from normal walls - you can drive straight through them now you have the grey key. This makes it faster to get back across the ice if you want to go that way, but there are new dangers because none of the walls will stop you from falling off the edges! When you've picked up the remaining lives, make your way towards the northeast by walkway or by crossing the ice itself, to a forcefield ramp leading up and out. Steer very carefully up the ramp as there are no walls to keep you on it, and don't use any forward thrust as you'd jump too far at the end. You'll land on the trampoline but not with any proper bounce this time round... It's not far from here to the first control tower which you visited quite some time ago. If you didn't set all four of its switches to on, go back and do that now - this will build an additional ramp section you're about to need to get more lives. Use the lifts in the big tower to return to the second floor, and from the northwest corner of that tower, find the circuit that the big robot travels round. Only just out of the tower you should find a left turn which is now accessible to you as the owner of the grey key. Press the switch at the end of the walkway there, and just ahead you should see a forcefield appear. Wait for the big robot to cross the forcefield and get pushed into the trap, then switch it back off so the forcefield won't be in your way later. Now set all six of the switches on the big robot's circuit to on (three on the path from the northwest corner of the big tower; three from the southwest; don't worry about the ones from getting down to the ice maze earlier) and find one of the two routes from the big tower to a place directly below the robot trap, where you'll find the grey and white pride colour switches. Now that the big robot is trapped, it can't press any of the switches that would make walkways disappear and temporarily strand you in this part of the game! Use the grey key to reach the grey switch and press it to add the grey colour to some of the buildings.
If you fall off any of the walkways around here and land on a Y-shaped dark grey floor area at the bottom of this part of the game world, there's only one way to escape. Find a switch that's slightly recessed below the level of the rest of the floor. Press it to reveal the escape teleporter (which takes you to near the robot trap) and make three more lives appear on top of the big tower for use later.
White objective Ahead of the grey switch you just pressed, you'll see that a black floor panel with the white key on it, has just been connected to the first floor of the big tower. Go there to get the key and return to this switch area to press the white pride colour switch.
Light green objective If you want to, you can now return to the northern part of the test track building with your white key, to collect more extra lives. The white switch you've just pressed has powered up the next lift. So return to the big tower and go up to the 3rd floor, where you can access a narrow walkway out to a switch with a good view of the robot track. Press the switch, which reverses the direction of all the small robots (by exploding them and replacing them with new ones that are programmed for the opposite route, and reversing the forcefields) and removes the big robot entirely. It also creates a gentle escape ramp along the edge of the trap - making it now useless for trapping robots! On the robot track just to the north of the west end of the trap, there's an area with the light and dark green keys in it. Remember what we said at the start about overcoming or changing the flow? Now you've changed it to anticlockwise you can go round the track that way (being careful again on the downhill forcefield not to pick up too much speed and fail to slow down to take the next turn safely) and when the keys are ahead of you, start to make a left turn before reaching them. This should divert you onto the correct branch of the track, through a locked white wall and to the light green key. Alternatively, it is at last possible to go against the flow of the robots into the key area, as long as you pick a moment when the track is clear of robots coming towards you. Once you've got the light green key you can teleport out to near the trap. You might also want go back again to the test track building for a final set of extra lives. With all the keys you now have, head beyond the extreme north of the robot track, for a maze where nearly all the floors are sloping and have no walls to hold you in! To avoid rolling off, whenever the floor slopes down to your left you'll have to aim to the right of where you want to go, and vice versa. The ice on the upward slope is a bit tricky as you'll need to approach it with the correct aim and enough speed to roll all the way to the top - you won't have proper steering while you're on it. The section just after the green locked wall is the hardest as you'll have to turn right just before you reach the end of the slope, to get up to the next flat bit. Eventually you'll get to press the light green pride colour switch - and at last bring some actual colour to this part of the Prideworld!
Dark green objective Do a u-turn on the spot, and head back up the walkway to a square floor panel, from where you can safely fall back down into the robot track part of the game. Head back to the green key area to pick up the very last key of this mission. This time you can drive right over and past the teleporter (making sure you don't stop on it by accident) to the dark green key which now has a solid floor under it enabling you to get there. Teleport back as you did last time, and return to the big tower where you'll now find all the lifts working. Once you reach the roof, you might get more lives (if you pressed the switch in the 'basement' below the robot trap) and all four sections of a walkway to the top of a narrower nearby tower should be in place. By far the most reliable way to descend this tower to the final switch, is to position yourself on the first flickery sloping roof panel you get to, and use a small amount of forward thrust (pressing and letting go of forwards key/button) to avoid rolling off backwards. Once you fall through, be ready to do the same again on the next level of flickeryness before making one final drop onto the square of safe floor where the switch is located. If you lose lives trying, and the flickery floor gets destroyed in the process, that's OK - it is actually just safe enough to fall the whole distance from the top walkway to the switch level on one go. Finally, press the dark green switch to complete the mission!
Mission info
Pride flag colour switches: 5
Keys: 5
Extra lives: 21
Friendly robots: 0
Enemy robots: 8 (or 15 if you count the ones controlled by the 'robot reverser' switch as a separate robot for each direction)
Switches: 26 (total including pride flag colour switches)
Lifts: 4
Teleporters: 6
Hazards: high altitude, forcefields, too many enemies in one place, ice (including sloping ice), rubber, flickery floor
Secret areas: well... only one set of extra lives is actually hidden - with the others it's just a matter of working out how to get to them!
Complexity: 1419 polygons, average 3.94 vertices per polygon, 565 walls, 2 vertices per wall
Published: 14-02-2022 (Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week)