BENEATH

Levels by Ian Smith (Marksdad)

Walkthrough by Phil Lambeth, with assistance from the author

HOUSE

You begin with a brief flyby that zooms in on what looks somewhat like the entrance to a bomb shelter, then the scene shifts to a small room with a checkered ceiling and a matching crate nearby. Wash your feet in the dirty tub water, then go into the sparse bedroom where you'll see a sleeping monster on the bed. Your playful attempts to crawl in with it won't stimulate it in the slightest, so go around to the far opening and run downstairs. There's a small library at the end of the adjacent stairway, but there's nothing of interest inside. If you're in a destructive mood you can shoot the two vases on either side of the west doorway, but they hold no goodies.

Enter the west doorway and continue forward past the wall tapestries into another library. Climb up onto the shelf in the middle of the room and pick up the shotgun. There are two closed doors here that you'll come back to shortly. Return to the hallway and turn left. Take a right at the bend and you'll come to a chapel area where you'll find CARTOUCHE PIECE 1 on the altar.

Go back to the hallway and continue straight across into the kitchen. Go around and up the checkered stairs into a corridor with a number of branches. Turn right and locate a timer tile in front of a closed gate overlooking the library. Stepping on the tile opens the lower door in the library where you acquired the shotgun. Reverse roll onto it and run back into the corridor, left and down the stairs and through the kitchen, left and down the hallway, left into the library and left to the open SE doorway where you'll find the revolver and some ammo for it.

Go back the way you came, and up the checkered stairs past the kitchen. When you reach the corridor, turn left, right and left to enter another bedroom. Find the large medi-pack on the other side of the huge bed, then exit the bedroom. Run down the corridor until you come to the stairs veering off to your right. Go up the stairs, and in the next room locate the shotgun ammo in the SW corner next to the crate. Continue up the stairs in the NE corner and wind around until you reach another small room with crates. There's a small medi-pack on one of them, but you have to stoop down to get it. There's nothing else to do up here, so return to the corridor down below.

Make a right at the bottom of the stairs, a left at the end of the corridor, and finally a right, and pull up into a bricked open area. Pick up the flares and two stashes of shotgun ammo, then hop back down into the corridor and turn left, then right, then another immediate right, a left (as you face the bedroom you visited earlier), and run east down the stairs and turn right into a pool room (as in swimming pool, not billiards). Pick up the small medi-pack on the ledge near the SW corner, then jump into the algae-laden water and pick up the shotgun ammo. Note for later the underwater closed door near the north end.

Leave this area and run back up the stairs. Turn right at the end of the corridor, then left at the stairs veering off to your right, and finally right at the intersection, then continue north down the stairs into an outdoor grassy area. Jump into the pool with the icky green water and locate the tunnel going off to the north. Swim along the tunnel until you reach the end where you swim up to pull out into an outdoor courtyard.

Enter the house through the east passage. Don't continue forward up the stairs to the east yet, for there's a closed gate up there that you need to open first. So enter the south passage and use the ladder at the end to climb down to a ledge below. Use the next ladder to descend to an area with waist-deep green water and tall squared columns. Go to the shorter column against the south wall and pull up to stand on top of it. Turn to face north and take a running jump and grab to the next higher column. There's a crack in the column to your right, and you can jump to it if you wish for some shimmying exercise. However, that's all you'll get, so instead take a standing jump toward the north wall and grab the crack there that's much more difficult to detect. Shimmy to your left until you can pull up (look at all those funny bubbles floating around Lara), then turn around to face south. Take a running jump and grab to the next column, and pull up to throw the floor lever. The gate at the top of the stairs is now open.

Look behind you and to your left, and you'll notice another cracked column with a large medi-pack nestled deep within the opening. Just for fun, jump over there and try to pull into the tiny space and claim your prize. You'll soon discover that it can't be done. I didn't notice the pattern until the author pointed it out, but one of his trademark devices is to insert an inaccessible large medi-pack somewhere in each of his levels, much like the director's cameo appearances in the old Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Safety drop down to the floor and use the ladders in the SE corner to return to the previous room, and now go up the stairs in the east passage. When you reach the end, you find yourself in an upper area overlooking the chapel you visited earlier. There's a series of facing alcoves up here, and I found that the easiest way to navigate them was by first jumping straight across to the next one, and then taking an angled standing jump into the next one across the way, and so on. You'll find the CARTOUCHE PIECE 2 in the next-to-last alcove on the east side, and the receptacle for the combined BA CARTOUCHE in the last one to its right. You hear the distant sound of a door opening, so safety drop to the chapel floor and leave through the west doorway.

Go down to the hallway and take the first left. In the next room with the twin stairways you'll find that the door in the SE corner is now open. Go inside and down the ramp, and you'll be warped to the next level.

THE CAVES

Run down the tunnel without fear, as there are no traps ahead. However, there is a hole at the end, but Lara can simply run into it and fall down atop a huge boulder in an underground area with deadly lava far below. You'll be facing north when you land, so remember that if you decide to roam about a bit before continuing. You'll hear the incongruous sounds of crashing waves and raucous seagulls as you explore about and become resigned to the fact that there's no easy way out here. When you've done all that, walk forward and sidestep to the NE corner, then turn ever so slightly to your right. If you toss a flare, you should be able to tell that you're lined up with a small opening in the wall ahead. Make sure that Lara isn't "frozen" (if she is, she'll fall to her death when you try to jump) by using the arrow keys until her arms are no longer completely rigid. Then take a standing jump in the direction indicated previously, and Lara will hit a slope and start sliding backward. Grab the edge, and Lara will discover a climbable wall and get her feet "set."

Climb down to the crawl space, hang drop and grab its lower ledge, and before Lara can get her feet set again use the up arrow key to bring her into the crawl space. Crawl forward and turn right to find yourself in an opening overlooking a lava pit with scattered slopes. This next part is tricky. I tried for the longest time to use the first slope to your left as a launching pad to the central platform, but I later learned that its sole reason for being there is to make your hair turn gray, or to make your hair turn loose, depending on your personal proclivities. This would be an excellent place to save your game.

Ignore the sloped surface and position Lara slightly left of center and facing slightly to her right to give her a bit of an angle. Take a running jump to the central platform and, without stopping (for a boulder is on its way down from straight overhead to crush you to a bloody pulp), take another running jump in one continuous motion toward the slope in the far right corner. The camera angle changes abruptly here, so you'll need to re-orient yourself while Lara is literally in the air. You'll probably have to use the right arrow key to make Lara swerve over so that she lands on the slope. As soon as she does so, jump off with a roll in midair so that Lara is in a position to grab the edge of the slope ahead. Shimmy to the right as far as possible, then pull up and jump off with a midair curve to the right, and grab the edge of the alcove in the wall. Pull up inside, turn around and face toward the SE. There's an opening in the east wall that you were probably too busy to notice earlier, so take an angled running jump toward it and you'll land safely inside.

Follow the tunnel around two bends to the right, and when you reach the second one and start going down the slight incline to the west, you'll trigger another boulder from above. The way I thwarted it was by turning around to face east at the exact spot where the tunnel starts sloping downward, then hopping back once and then forward once while the boulder rumbles harmlessly down the slope. Strut down the tunnel in its wake and drop into the water below. There are three hungry crocodiles waiting for you there, so quickly swim to the south or west ledge where you can pull up.

Go over to the west opening. More lava. This one's not so bad, however. The left strip of the wall ahead is climbable, so take a running jump and grab to it. Shift left and around the corner, and you can see the opening in the south wall as you make the turn. Without climbing up or down, take a back flip off the wall and land inside the opening. You'll immediately start sliding backward, so use the action key to grab the edge. Lara will again detect a climbable surface, so use the same technique as you did earlier to access the crawl space right above the lava. (In case you haven't tried to orient yourself, you're in the same area where you began this second leg of your adventure, but farther down near the lava's surface.)

Crawl through the tunnel until you emerge in an area where you can stand up. As soon as you do so, a boulder rolls out from the south to cross your path, so wait patiently where you are until it comes to rest. Then go around it and run forward to trigger two more boulders from the north and south openings, and allow them to roll back and forth and finally come to rest before moving on. Step forward and trigger a fourth boulder. Try not to fall asleep as it too ceases its rumbling journeys after a spell. There's one more opening in the south wall, and you now know exactly what to do. When the fifth boulder comes to rest, go on through the west opening.

In the next room you'll get a refresher course in Tomb Raider 101. (It's revealing that this walkthrough writer actually felt a twinge of misdirected pride when he mastered the following sequence on the first try.) Go to the sloped block in the SE corner and press your nose against it. Pull up and take a back flip to the ledge behind you. Turn left and take a standing jump and grab to the next higher ledge. Pull up and turn around, then take another standing jump and grab to the next higher ledge. Pull up, turn around and jump up to grab the ceiling. Monkey swing across to the opening in the north wall, release and immediately grab the edge, and pull up into the crawl space.

Oops, looks like Tomb Raider 101 wasn't sufficiently advanced. You stand up in a small opening with hieroglyphics on the walls, a closed trap door in the floor, and nowhere to go. So we need to go back and see what we missed. Sheepishly we crawl back through the opening and safety drop down to the floor with what's left of our dignity. We return to the boulder area and explore the openings from which they came. Voila! In the very first north opening we find a crawl space where we can access another lava room.

When you can stand up, take a running jump across to the platform in the middle of the lava. Turn to your right and take a standing jump into the darkness onto a safe ledge. Step forward onto a hieroglyphic tile in the NE corner, and you'll hear something suspiciously like a trap door opening off in the distance. Turn around and take a standing jump back to the central platform, a running jump back to the entrance, and return to the west room for a repeat of Tomb Raider 101.

When you get back to the upper crawl space you'll find that the trap door is indeed open now. Safety drop to the passage below and step forward into a flyby that doesn't reveal much more than you can see from where you're now standing. Stepping on the hieroglyphic tile just ahead opens the door up on your left, but only for a little while. Run to the back side of the column to your right (east), take a back flip to the slope behind you and jump off to grab the top of the facing column. Pull up and take a running jump ahead to grab the side of the column to the north. Climb up to the top, pull up and take an angled running jump to your left to the ledge running along the north wall. Continue left along the ledge and drop down on the other side to enter the next room just before the door closes in your face. Dash around the welcoming committee of two skeletons and continue to the north end of this area where a third skeleton awaits you. Quickly locate the ladder at the NE corner and climb up to the crawl space.

Crawl through the short tunnel and stand up to face the poised boulder. Sprint forward and duck into either the right or the left intersecting passage as the first boulder rolls by and the camera angle changes. Then quickly reverse roll and scoot into the east passage from whence came the first boulder, before the two boulders in the north-south passages have a chance to crush you. You can pause if you wish to explore the upper regions in the passage area, but there are no goodies for you to get there.

Run up the east passage, slide down the slope beyond and jump over two lava pits, and you'll be warped to the next level.

THE BARRACKS

As you slide down the slope into this new area, a remote camera shot draws back to reveal two SAS patrolling the rooftops of two structures inside. When camera control is restored you see a third SAS approaching you on foot, so draw your shotgun and take out all three of them. The present threat removed, take a little exploratory stroll. The first thing you notice is a bunch of closed doors here and there, together with an opening with a jump switch high up in the north wall.

There's an opening in the middle barracks located against the east wall. If you run down the stairs and bend to the right, you'll alert two more SAS who need to be eliminated. There's nothing to do in the next room with four columns, so continue forward until you reach the south opening. On the floor below are open fires scattered here and there, a sure sign of danger. Look up, and you'll see that the ceiling tiles all bear the image of a woman's face. Most are oriented in the same direction, that is, with the top of the woman's head to your right. However, there are four ceiling tiles where the reverse is true, and the spots on the floor directly beneath those four tiles are the only ones that are safe for you to stand on.

Don't safety drop to the floor below, or you'll land under one of the deadly tiles and burn to a crisp. Instead, simply run forward into the opening and allow Lara's momentum to carry her down to the first safe area. You have a better viewing angle from down here, so look up and note the other three safe ceiling tiles, against the wall ahead and to your right, in the middle a little further down, and in the far left corner. Save your game here and take the necessary jumps to bring you over to the SE corner, where you fall down a short distance onto the tops of some stairs. Turn and descend the stairs, and at the bottom take a standing jump over the first flame. (The camera angle changes, but just hit the look key to restore your first-person view.) Make similar jumps over the next two flames, then pull up onto the pink block.

Your next objective is the floor lever over on the far right corner of the room. However, to get there you have to monkey swing over, but the monkey bars in the ceiling are invisible. Their pattern, however, is mirrored in the brown floor stripe below, so either memorize it or draw a picture of it (since you can't refer to it easily while you're busy monkey swinging). Release when you reach the ledge in the NW corner and throw the floor lever to open one of the doors in the barracks room above. Use the ladder to the left of the floor lever to access a passage. Run up the stairs, and at the end a door into the barracks area opens automatically for you. Draw your shotgun and kill two more SAS who are there waiting for you, one right there at the doorway and the other on the roof of the barracks to your left.

The door to that barracks is now open, so go inside and hear the sound of a door opening elsewhere as you enter. Throw the floor switch to your right, then reverse roll and climb up into the dark alcove behind you for the CROWBAR. Exit this barracks and turn left. The door you heard opening was one of two at the bottom of the block stairs between the two stone formations near the east wall. The author says that this is the door that the floor lever was to open, and that the sound you heard when you entered the barracks was due to an errant trigger. To begin the process of opening the second door, locate the crowbar door in the adjacent NE barracks and open it. Go inside and throw the floor lever, then reverse roll and enter the now-open doorway in the west wall. Vault over the block inside and locate the motorbike. As you approach it you'll alert an SAS inside and to your right, so wait for him to appear and then kill him.

Mount the bike and ride it up the ramp ahead. You'll smash through a barrier at the top as action music starts playing. Wait here until an SAS appears from the passage to your right, then run him over and dismount. Explore this maze-like area on foot. If you cover it thoroughly, you'll alert and kill three more SAS. (The camera angle shifts rather constantly in this area. Sometimes you can hit the look key and restore camera control, but sometimes you can't.) Then return to the motorbike near the entrance to this area and take the passage to your right (as you face the maze, with your back to the entrance). Make a hairpin turn to your left so you're headed south, then make another hairpin turn to the right into a dark area. Now make a hairpin turn to your left and turn right to reach a dead end against the west wall. Turn left and climb up onto the short stable surface and jump forward into the well-hidden enclosure. Throw the floor lever, then pull out of the enclosure and retrace your steps to the motorbike.

You don't need the motorbike any more, so slide down the ramp and return to the barracks area. The left door in the north wall is now open, so go inside. Just for fun, turn to the right once you're inside and make the other door open as you approach it. Now climb up onto the stacked blocks in the NW corner and turn to face south. Completely ignore the next sloped ledge to the east, as it has been placed there for the sole purpose of tormenting you and causing you to lose what remains of your hair. Take a running jump and grab the ledge. Shimmy to the left as far as you can go, then pull up and back flip to the sloped ledge behind you. Keep the jump key depressed and swerve to the left when Lara jumps off, so she'll land on the stable surface of the platform in the SE corner. Step forward and activate the jump switch.

Safety drop down to the previous room (which costs you less health than if you dropped down the other side to the barracks area) and return to the barracks area. Go down the block steps between the stone formations near the east wall, and you'll find that both doors allowing access to the next area are now open. As you approach the second doorway you'll alert a wraith. What's worse, a sentry machine gun (mercifully facing away from you) awaits at the bottom of the ramp into the next room. If you've previously used the DOZY cheat for whatever reason, you have both the revolver and the lasersight in your inventory, in which case it's an easy matter to combine the two and destroy the machine gun. If, however, you're a rootin' tootin' true blue raider and would never dream of resorting to such dastardly tactics, you need to find a way to get past the sentry gun alive. Good luck, because this walkthrough writer never did find it. The author claims that there's an area in the far left corner that the sentry gun's flames can't reach, but by the time I reached that corner I would invariably have already been set aflame.

In any event, when you reach the next room to the east you encounter a phenomenon whereby the lights flicker on and off, which can be distracting to say the least. You can use the south crate and the platform in the SW corner to access the opening in the SE corner, or you can simply jump up and grab the ledge in front of the SE opening and pull up. Jump into the pool in the next room to douse the following wraith (the flickering light phenomenon is still present here), then use the crawl space in the SE corner to stand in front of a long ramp. Turn around and slide down the ramp backwards to be warped to the next level.

THE TOMB

At the end of the slide, grab the edge and safety drop into the room below. You hear the flapping wings and the raucous cries of a harpy as you look around at a plethora of jump switches. However, you need only pull the left one on the south wall to open the door over in the west wall. Go through the connecting room, around the huge box in the middle, and inside the next room you find the harpy attacking a Lara simulacrum, sapping your own health in the process. Kill the harpy without shooting at your better half (as you'll target both, depending on which way you're facing), then return to the previous connecting room to examine the designs on the huge block at your leisure. Make a note of the color themes (yellow, green, blue and red) on the four walls, as well as the design that's associated with each color. These are your clues for a forthcoming puzzle.

Now go past the Lara simulacrum, ignoring the annoying slicer-dicer sound effects, to the opening into the next room west. Save your game here, as there are no stopping points where you can stand and rest until you complete the following sequence. Take a running jump to the sloped pillar in the middle of the room, and keep the jump key depressed to bounce off and grab the ivy on the ceiling. Angle Lara to the right (as she refuses to monkey swing straight ahead for some reason) and follow the ivy through the opening in the NW corner and into the next room. When you can go no further, turn Lara to the right, release to the sloped surface below and jump off to the sloped ledge along the north wall. Grab the edge and shimmy to the left. When you reach the next-to-last section (you can tell by the vertical lines in the ledge), pull up near the right side of that section and back flip to the sloped pillar behind you. Keep the jump key depressed and jump off facing forward. You'll hit a slope leading down into the next room. Slide down a bit and then jump off with a fierce curve to the right in midair to land on the flat portion of the column against the north wall. If you happen to miss and land on the floor, you'll catch fire and die.

Don't try a running jump to the next column, as you don't have enough room. Simply face the north wall and sidestep to the left as far as you can, then turn Lara slightly to her left and take a side flip to the column against the west wall. Pull up into the opening. Remember those patterns on the colored walls back in the connecting room? Refer to them now, as you're now facing the first of four rooms guarded by deadly fire tiles. The safe tile here is the bird face in the first row to your right. Take a standing jump there, then side step into the NE corner. Turn and take a running jump to the opening to the next room.

The safe tile here is the bird face in the front row, but not the one directly in front of you. You can take an angled standing jump to the right to it without undue difficulty. Once there, turn and take a standing jump to the opening to the next room. Your goal here is the Pharaoh face in the far left corner. You need to be positioned to well-nigh perfection in order to make the standing jump there safely, but it can be done. Then turn and take a standing jump to the opening to the final room.

The safe tile in this room is the bird face tile in the near right corner. Take a standing jump to it from the right corner of the opening, then side step to the NE corner. From there take a running jump to the west opening, and you'll be treated to a strand of "you done good" music. Don't rest on your laurels, though, as you'll awaken a skeleton as soon as you step into the next room. Go to the pedestal in the far corner and take the HORSEMAN'S GEM, then run into the south corridor with the skeleton right behind you. Uh oh, there's its buddy rising from the ashes at the other end of the corridor, so ready your shotgun and blast it over the edge before it can join forces with the first one. Mete out the same fate to the other one after you maneuver it into the proper position.

At the end of the corridor, pause and survey the situation in the deep room ahead. Don't save your game while in this room; explanation to follow. There are ledges and columns and closed doors scattered here and there with no seeming pattern. However, there's a method to the author's madness. Side step to the left corner, then turn Lara about 135 degrees to the left so she's facing to the NW. Then take a side flip to the right toward the tall sloped column and keep the jump key depressed so that Lara jumps off toward the north wall. Grab the strip of ivy growing on the wall and climb up. Shift left when you clear the ledge and drop down onto it.

Turn around and take a long running jump to the ledge directly across the room. Grab the edge and pull up. Take a standing jump over to the next ledge and look down. You see two closed doors far below in the north wall. Those are your next objectives. Hang from the west edge and drop down to the ledge below. Turn around and take a running jump with grab to land inside the opening in the west wall. Landing on the Pharaoh face tile causes the upper door in the north wall to open. Turn around and run off the edge of the opening to land on the top of the column below. Step forward and turn slightly left to do the same thing, bringing you down to the next column below. Walk out to the NE corner, take a standing jump to the slope ahead and jump off into the open doorway in the north wall to land on the Pharaoh face tile. This causes the door below to open, but only for a few seconds. Immediately upon landing, reverse roll so that Lara falls to the floor facing forward, then make a hairpin turn to the right to enter the north doorway before the face tile slams down.

NOTE: As the author warns in his readme file included with the level download, you'll discover that if you save your game after jumping into the alcove with the first Pharaoh face tile, this upper opening is barred as if by an invisible force field, even though the door is open. If you've chosen to ignore the warnings presented there and here, just to see firsthand what we're talking about, simply restore from a previous savegame and try again.

Jump into the water hole at the end of the short tunnel and swim down. Then swim forward a short distance and you'll be carried to the final leg of your adventure.

THE END

Continue swimming along the passage and make a couple of left turns. You'll be greeted by a hungry crocodile, but you can do little but swim past it. As you approach the end of the passage you'll encounter its mate, so implement the same evasive tactics and swim up to the surface. When you pull up to the nearest ledge you find that you've returned to Lara's domicile via the now-open door in the algae-laden swimming pool. Take the time if you wish to dispatch the crocs, then exit through the NE opening. Run up the stairs, whereupon all hell breaks loose, or so it sounds. Draw your weapons and deal with the assassin who meets you at the top of the stairs, then turn right into the side corridor (the passages in the north-south corridor ahead are now closed off at both ends) and flush out a second one. The gate at the end of the corridor from which the second assassin emerged is now open, and as you look down into the library you can see that changes have taken place in your absence. The floor is now a deadly fire trap, so don't jump down there. Just for fun, take a running jump over to the top of the bookcase for some more hellacious sound effects. You also alert a third assassin to kill when you run down to the north end.

Jump back into the corridor, make two left turns and run down the checkered stairs toward the kitchen area. But here too the floor is deadly, so don't venture inside. Turn around and go back to the library. Jump over to the bookcase, run down to the north end where you shot the third ninja, and take a standing jump into the NE corridor. The floor here is safe, so run forward past the side corridor into the foyer area with the twin stairways. Take a hairpin turn to the left and up the stairs into what used to be Lara's bedroom. Shoot the assassin and trigger the flyby that provides a view of the outside area.

Run around the bed (that monster is gone; seems that the heat was too much for it) and into the bathroom to trigger more chaotic noise. At least that nasty green water in the shower stall has evaporated without leaving any residue. Go back down the stairs and you'll find that even more devastation has taken place in the last few seconds. Run down the stairs, go over to the other side where the other stairs used to be, and climb up onto the block. Amazingly, the fire won't hurt you. Run over the flames into the small library, and you'll disturb a crocodile that's looking for some reading material. After dealing with it, use the south crawl space (you may need to light a flare to see it) to trigger yet more noise and another flyby. As you continue to crawl forward, the camera angle shifts and you encounter the exit trigger.