Purple objective This time we're starting on the ground floor of a building in the shape of a labrys axe, and filling in the flag colours from bottom to top as we go. The purple pride colour switch just in front of you is the one to sort out first, but you'll need the key of the same colour to reach it. You might be able to see that key in the distance ahead, so go to the right of the switch and along the axe handle... You'll have to go past the key and find the route through the maze that comes back to it. When you find a small jump ramp ahead of you, you'll have to go over it to get to the key beyond. Go quickly - don't hang around on the flickery floor at the top of the ramp or you'll fall through. If that happens while you're still on the key side of the ramp, there is a way to escape - simply aim off the left side of the ramp on your way up it, and you'll jump over a wall into a part of the maze that's connected back to where you came from. Now find and press that purple switch you saw earlier. You'll see the pillars of the building start to light up in pride flag colours!
Pink objective Time to switch direction again - and make your way along the handle all the way to the head of the axe. The maze is more of a maze here because it's harder to see the walls against the darker, slightly bouncy floor. Turn right and you'll see the last key on this floor; the pink one. You'll have to go right to the axe edge and through locked purple walls to get to it. Once you have it, visit the opposite side of the axe head and work your way round the maze, using both keys this time. Find the pink pride switch and press it, which removes many obstructing walls all around this level of the building, and powers up a lift to the next.
White & orange objectives Take the lift up to the next floor. The white and orange keys are right out on the opposite axe blade edges and they present exactly the same challenge: to remove walls that block your path to the key you must press a switch, but that brings in an enemy robot between you and the key! Each robot has a seemingly random patrol pattern, and the one guarding the orange key moves a bit faster, but even so it is possible to reduce the chance of getting followed... Once you've pressed the switch, the robot will beam in and try to chase you, but the wall keeps it away from you for the moment. Move back and away from it till it gives up the chase. Allow the enemy to patrol its area behind the wall. When it's some way towards the right of that area, move forward and left, across a little bridge over the river of lava, then immediately turn right onto the flat ground at the very tip of the axe. If you did it quickly enough, the robot didn't get a chance to follow you over the bridge, so now every time it comes after you it'll destroy itself in the lava - leaving you safe as long as you're out here on the edge! Now collect the key and extra life, and return by bridge to the middle part of the axe head. Set that switch back to off to wipe out the enemy before it gets a chance to follow you anywhere else. Get the white and orange keys this way, and use them to access two more switches on the way back into the axe handle. Press both, to take some walls out of your way, start up the next lift and fill in more of the pride colours.
Red objective There are a total of four extra lives on the ice ahead, but they're all on little islands surrounded by walls that can only be removed by the switches leading up to them. And with the forcefields pushing you across it won't be easy to go at the kind of cautious speed that's normally appropriate on ice! There are three tracks to choose from, all pointing perfectly along the axe handle: one lining up with the tips of the left forcefield arrows, one exactly down the middle of the ice and one at the right forcefield arrows. The right hand track gives you two extra lives; the others one each. When you let the forcefield push you down a track, the switches will automatically open up any obstructing walls as you go, thus allowing you to collect the life or lives. Once you reach the far end another forcefield stops you going back onto the ice, and there's a switch that opens a small gap in the wall to the next lift - this is your way up to the next section. If you want to collect more lives on the ice first though, pick a moment when the lift is above you and fall through the hole to the ground floor where you started this mission. You can now fly through the ground floor of the building with fewer maze walls in your way, and find that very first lift near the top of the axe head. Use it to return to the first floor and you're now free to have another go at the ice - as many times as you like. Don't switch off any of the pride colours by accident on your way through though. If you pick an extra life track that you've used already, then this time you'll set its switches back to off and start bouncing off walls, which should eventually bring you to a halt on the ice. You're now free to work slowly, setting all the switches of the other tracks to on, to get all the remaining lives in a single trip along the ice.
Once you've gone by lift up to the roof of the building, everything revolves around the jump ramp ahead of you. You'll need the red key, and some minus size tokens to make your robot light and fast enough for the jump. Go all the way along the handle to the axe head (not missing the extra life on the opposite side of the ramp). The sloped ground around the middle of the axe head is dangerous because you'll tend to roll off the edge, so get used to steering slightly more uphill than the direction you actually want to go in! If you do fall off, you might be lucky and land on a lower level from which you can return to the roof by lift. Go slowly and carefully across the ice here too - it's easy to pick up too much speed on the normal floor and then be unable to stop on the ice before flying over the edge. Collect the red key and as many minus tokens as you can (while we've seen it done with only two, that really is pushing your luck). Return to the big jump ramp near the far end of the axe handle. If you got all the size reduction available then position yourself between the lift and the ramp, facing along the handle towards the axe head, then move backwards until the wall around the lift shaft stops you going any further back. Now go forwards on full power. The forcefields will give you some extra speed and the black floor ahead is a more bouncy rubber than the dark grey floors elsewhere in the building. After a few bounces you should make it over the wall into the pale floor area in the middle of the axe head - you might even manage to resize your robot back to normal and press the final pride colour switch to complete the mission, all in the same manoeuvre! It could take a few attempts though, and the difficulty of getting the right speed will depend on the size of your robot. Faster is not always better - you're trying to jump over the wall so you don't want a bounce (the lowest part of your trajectory) to be too close to that wall. Just try running up to the jump from different distances until you hit it at the right speed for your current size of robot...
Mission info
Pride flag colour switches: 5
Keys: 5
Extra lives: 7
Friendly robots: 0
Enemy robots: 2
Switches: 14 (total including pride flag colour switches)
Lifts: 2
Teleporters: 0
Hazards: flickery floor, rubber, lava, forcefields, ice, jumps
Secret areas: 0
Complexity: 740 polygons, average 4.03 vertices per polygon, 297 walls, 2 vertices per wall
Published: 26-04-2021 (Lesbian Visibility Day)