Lifeless Planet: Basic Gameplay Tips

Lifeless Plant falls into a category that is getting rarer and rarer as time goes on – the awkward platformer. Ever since Mario slid just a little bit to the right when you stopped running, there has always been a branch of platformer where the awkward control of the played character is one of the challenges. Just as the original Resident Evil games revelled in their clumsy tank controls to make you holler at the screen when a monster is strolling up behind them, Lifeless Planet‘s hapless, concussed astronaut slips off ledges, can’t make jumps, and falls to a bone crunching death whenever you look at him wrong. While this can pose a fun challenge, eventually everyone wants to actually just play the dang game. Here are some basic tips to help.

The spot at which numerous streamers first get stuck is the first time they have to actually make a difficult jump/jetpack combo (in the Chasm, more on this below). This is because up to that point jumps/jetpack firings have been pretty forgiving. In fact, there’s often multiple ways to jump to locations you want, especially in wide-open levels like the Town. And it’s been so long since you got the instructions on the jetpack you probably forgot what the game told you in tutorial text: To get the greatest height on jumps you have to fire your jetpack at the top of the jump’s arc.

Essentially from two feet flat on the ground (again, more on this below), when you jump, you have three parts to the jump: going up, the top, and going down. If you fire your jetpack going up, you will get a small boost, if you fire it at the top, you will get a medium boost and if you fire it on the way down, you won’t see any boost at all. When you have the “enhanced” jetpack fuel you can do this multiple times – each boost you get will be smaller than the first, but you can chain together seven boosts in a single jump. But you’ll notice that jumping/jetpacking from a standstill doesn’t help you much. You have very little control and don’t get very high.

However, if you’re moving forward and jumping, not only is your horizontal leap extended by the jetpack boosts, but your vertical leap is too. You can get higher when you’re running forward and jumping than when you’re just standing in a single spot and jumping. In almost every situation you can think of, you are going to want to back up and get a running start rather than just try to brute-force vertically jump your way up.

This is especially important when climbing extremely steep surfaces. You may be used to Far Cry or Morrowind hills where, when they get too steep, you just hammer ‘jump’ and blast yourself up to the top. Doesn’t work in Lifeless Planet. When you’re sliding slightly backwards on a steep hill, and jump, your fling yourself away from the slope – and each jetpack boost takes you further away! (Thankfully there is no place I found where you can do a wall jump intentionally in this fashion – speedrunners might be interested in this though…) Instead, you should look for a ledge where you can back up from the steep slope a little bit, move towards it, then jump and jetpack at the top of the arc just as before. (Or look for another way up – there’s usually some rocks/cliffs to use and if you’re scrambling up a super-steep hill it’s probably because you took a wrong turn somewhere.)

Our poor explorer fella has a tough time navigating, especially if you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard, but even controller folks have a hard time with certain sections. The good news is that there’s very few precision movement sections in the game – I’ve talked about the ones that jump out at me below. But if you do end up needing to move precisely, here’s what you need to know about our hero.

First, he can never turn faster than 45 degrees per step. He can turn slower, but never faster. Example: Put him in a flat plain (like the one he finds himself in after crashing) and move forward. Then move the mouse or the camera stick on your controller left or right. You will see he slowly turns left or right to always be walking forward no matter which way the camera points. Now tap left or right on the keyboard or movement stick. You will see him stutter-step 45 degrees in that direction before turning forward again.

Another way to look at it: Stop moving, but move the camera to face our hero’s helmet. The camera is now pointing behind him. Tap ‘forward’. Does he move forward relative to the camera? No, he moves either left or right 135 degrees from the direction you just pushed, one step. Tap ‘forward’ again. He takes another step and turns to face 90 degrees away from that direction. Tap ‘forward’ again. He has taken 3 steps and not one of them has been in the direction you’re indicating – now he is 45 degrees off-center. Tap ‘forward’ again. He will now, at long last, go in the direction the camera is facing.

This means if you’re on a small platform and need to turn him around you have to be sure which direction he will turn. If he’s right at the edge, you can’t just point the camera behind him and press ‘forward’, hoping he will do a quick 180 and step away from the edge. Instead you need to back him up a little from the edge and slowly turn him, 45 degrees at a time, like a truck trying to maneuver into a tight driveway, forward and back.

Lifeless Planet has very little in the way of adjustable graphical settings, especially brightness. Either you boost the brightness or you don’t. If you’re like me, you may need to adjust both the contrast and brightness of your graphics card and/or monitor in order to be able to navigate through certain areas. (Inferno and the Abyss leap to mind). Don’t just sit there squinting at your monitor – they’re not supposed to be impenetrable blackness.

Once you’ve made it through the research complex, through the fan and into the mining tunnels, it’s easy to get turned around. There is a triangle formed by a pipe which cuts through the corner of a tunnel. The way forward is near the cave-in. As you face the cave-in (as if you were the mysterious green path), back up and look up the cave wall to your left. You should see some green glow up there. If you can’t see it, try getting elevation in and around the area with the cave-in and searching further.

This is the part where I see people get mad at walkthroughs. Once you have the jetpack booster fuel there’s two options for how to progress, as the astronaut says. One is you climb back down to the path and make the jump without a chasm underneath you. Another is you jump across the chasm twice. You have to take the dangerous routes if you’re a cheevo person (I’m not). But both sets of jumps can be difficult if you haven’t figured out how to use the jetpack effectively. Remember, you almost always use the jetpack to get higher. Farther comes with higher, but not on its own.

So, from the jetpack booster, walk towards the overhang and turn left. You will see a rock platform below you across the chasm. This part of the jump is pretty easy because even if you don’t get hardly any extra height at all you’ll probably make it across. Explore around over on this side of the map if you want, but you can’t go far. Return to the rock platform where you landed and look back across at the path you took to climb to the building with the jetpack booster. To the far right of this path you will see a large rock platform with a path continuing to the right after the platform. That’s where you need to go. From where you landed, you can make it pretty easily if and only if you boost at the TOP of your jump arc. If you just boost a bunch of times thinking you can get distance without height, you will die a thousand times here and curse all those walkthrough people who seem to be able to do it flawlessly. I know I did.

Alternately, if you want to practice the jetpack boost in a ‘safer’ environment, retrace the steps you took when getting to the jetpack booster. You will go down on a switchback, further down the chasm, and then begin to ascend again on another switchback. On the first switchback you will see a big boulder to your right as you ascend. Turn around (so you’re facing down the path again) and climb up on that boulder. You are facing the big rock platform that you need to get on top of – on the other side of it is the rest of the path. Again, you can easily make this jump if and only if you boost at the TOP of your jump arc. If you just boost a bunch of times you will run into the rock wall and fail (though safely given the path will be beneath you).

Remember, to go farther with the jetpack boost you also must go higher, and to go higher you must have room to go farther.

After you pick up the power stone, and the way back collapses, you can still use the rocks that used to form the platforms for the way back to descend a bit, and get what you need down below.

If you get stuck, look for moving plants that are angled upwards (rather than outstretched like fingers) and walk around near them. They’ll often form a bridge to where you need to go, one of my favorite examples of the life on this planet being dangerous but not necessarily hostile.

If you’ve found the power stones but aren’t sure what to do with them, first, think about what you know powers the power stones. Second, think about why the hostile life on this planet seems hostile. Third, think about why the green path is safe for you to walk on (other than…it’s a video game.)

Here’s a spoiler:
From where you found the power stones, slowly retrace your steps. Very close to where the green path goes into the impenetrable woods you will see a path that is blocked by a hostile plant. Put the power stone on the plant, wait for it to be consumed, then go through and continue to follow the green path.

The platform plants are the prime example of what I was talking about above with respect to your jump being unlike a lot of other platformer jumps. They’re probably the second smallest precision jump you’ll have to make in the game. The frustration of them is that if you mis-click your jump you can’t fix it in midair. For example, if you boost twice when you should have only boosted once, there’s no third boost you can make to reset your course – it will only carry you further over the platform. Similarly, if you boosted once, but see that you’re about to fall short, boosting a second time really doesn’t do anything because you’re probably already on your way down. The only tip I have is to, when you are standing on a cliff about to make a dangerous jump to the platform plants, make a good estimate, tilting your camera up and down to make sure you have a good idea of the distance before you jump. You can very easily make all these jumps (and plenty of them are quite easy to overshoot) but as always, if you need a boost, boost at the top of the jump, not on your way down.

The wind is probably the first place you start to really notice how hard it is to turn our big bulky boy. Especially if you’re playing with mouse and keyboard, you can’t just keep dragging your mouse to one side to offset the wind – it’ll fall off your desk before you get to the end of the wind. Instead, you need to constantly “jog” slightly with the left and right turn keys, while trying to keep the mouse as close to forward as possible. Controller players have it a lot easier here because they can just move the camera stick when it needs moving.

Also, when you’re jumping in the wind, virtually none of the jumps you need to make need the jetpack.

After all that about learning how to maneuver our awkward hero, this is probably the only section of the game which doesn’t really pull it off. You’ll find that getting through the hot springs by firing yourself up on the steaming hot water is nearly impossible with the skills you’ve learned so far. Here’s what I suggest:

• Observe the direction of the steam.
• Jump into the steam while heading in that same direction. Do not use your jetpack. Try to enter the steam on your way UP. In other words, jump close to the steam, not far away.

Unfortunately even this only works about 80 percent of the time.

The Inferno has one of the only genuine dead-end mazes in the game and of course it’s one of the least visible maps. The only tip I have is that if your guy says he’s “medium-rare”, you’ve gone the wrong way. Double-back to a location where the lava flow forms an upside down U and look for another route. You will also respawn at the upside-down U if you die in the area.

Also, when you’re climbing out of the map with your new friend, you’re looking for cliffs and rocks that form switchbacks. If you see a boulder that is jutting out of the wall but you can’t see any way past it, look around where you’re standing to see if there’s something above you that you can climb up on.

Finally, once you’ve gotten to the top, there’s an artifact building and sealed gateway of a type you’ve seen before. In order to get to the center of the artifact and power it up you will need to get to a wooden walkway that’s half-falling apart. To do that, you’ll have to go behind the artifact building and power on a device back there. When you do, there are several stones that will begin floating. This is the most precision jumping you’ll have to do in the game. It’s complicated by the fact that you can actually move these floating stones around, sometimes getting them trapped underneath each other. Here’s my tips:

• The pointy rock next to the floating stones doesn’t move and can be used to get to the middle-height floating stones pretty easily. Remember, to get height you also need distance in your jumps, so starting a little farther away helps.
• The floating stones move when you run into them on your way back down. They do move from time to time when you intentionally push them but it’s rare that it’s in the exact direction you want them to go. However, they can’t float off their little 3×3 green-stone pad, so if there’s a stone you want to move, think about where it can go on the edges of that pad and jump next to it so that it’s forced to that spot and no farther.
• The metal bars on the wooden walkway are not real and you can pass right through them if you jump too far. My final jump was only a single jump, no boost, for exactly this reason.
• There’s more power stones at the top of the walkway so don’t worry about bringing one from behind the artifact (although you can if you want, it works.)

First, just because you power something up doesn’t mean it’s turned on. You should still be able to use the mechanical arm to do this – just think of how you’ve gotten through other gates on this planet.

Second, you need to make a golden circle.

Third, when you’re in an area with a communications error, your last jump should be to a platform with crooked roots hanging out of the bottom, and the person you’ve been looking for on it. It’s a very long jump, just remember the rule that in order to go farther you also have to go higher, so boost at the absolute top of each jump.

When you’ve absolutely reached the very end of the green path, you will have to take a leap of faith to your right. As you know by now, you absolutely need to go as far as possible which means you will also need to go as high as possible, boosting at the peak of each jump.

When you’re clambering along the vines, you’re looking for an exit that’s near a set of vines that are spraying greenish gas. It won’t hurt you (really!), it’s mostly there to help you orient yourself. Get up there and then look for a way down to a cliffside path that leads up to an exit at the top of the chamber.

I don’t read Steam comments and you shouldn’t either, there are no good Steam comments. Instead, just write the answers to any of the below questions which interest you down in a letter and mail it to the game developers! If you think critically about a video game, it will always help.

• Does the subplot about the astronaut’s wife add to or detract from the experience? In what way?
• Would you be more or less interested in Aelita if her changes came about as a result of a “natural” process on the planet rather than experimentation?
• Why do you think Aelita decides to help the astronaut?
• If the gender presentation of Aelita and the astronaut were reversed – in other words, if it was a woman astronaut arriving and a male survivor remaining on the planet – how would that affect the arc of their relationship? would you change the plot of the game in any way? if so, how?
• did the explanation of the “safe” green pathways work for you? why or why not?
• were there musical cues that particularly helped or hindered the emotional impact of the piece? which ones?
• the levels in this game are extremely large compared to the speed at which the player can traverse them – were there times when the scale of the game levels or other visual elements were emotionally effective on you? when?
• What really happened to the portal-creators, in your opinion? Why is Aelita responsive to their technologies?
• Given that Aelita melded with one “monster” in the Green Land, who is the second “monster” you see at the end off to the left? Are there more?
• Does the astronaut’s last monologue about his decision to keep his wife alive on life support make thematic sense with the rest of the game? Why or why not?

Written by “Cactus Jack” Gamer