| Milo
Tricks and Tips by MrLipid
June 2003
For those few who happen to have a copy of Milo, here
is a simple way to get around the "huge design flaw"
mentioned by Orb in her review.
The flaw, for those who've not yet read the review, is this:
Puzzles in Milo are, by default, set on the highest level
of difficulty. Since it makes no sense to have different levels
of difficulty if there is no way to adjust them, the game provides
players with three wildcards for this purpose. Unfortunately,
each wildcard only works once.
Using one wildcard on a puzzle reduces that puzzle's difficulty
from perplexing to moderate. Using another wildcard on the same
puzzle reduces the difficulty from moderate to pushover. Since
there are only three wildcards in the game, adjusting one puzzle
from perplexing to pushover leaves players with the dilemma of
choosing which of the game's eleven other puzzles is most deserving
of the sole remaining wildcard. "Huge design flaw" seems
almost generous.
Fortunately, this flaw can be easily overcome with a bit of careful
editing of a saved game file.
Where Are We?
Here's what a saved game file looks like when the game has been
started and then immediately saved with no attempt to solve any
puzzles. As a .txt file, it can be opened in Notepad.
Save Game File100000000000000003333333333333333
The first number to the right of Save Game File refers to the
world where the game was saved. 1 is the first world, 2 is the
second and so on up to 7.
How Are We Doing?
No puzzles solved:
Save Game File100000000000000003333333333333333
All puzzles solved:
Save Game File111111111111100003333333333333333
The string of zeros to the right of the world number refers to
the state of the puzzles. 0 means a puzzle has not been solved
and 1 means that it has. While there are only twelve puzzles to
solve before one can move to the seventh world and meet Milo,
it's not clear why there are 16 zeroes. My suspicion is that there
were some puzzles planned that didn't make it into the final product.
The presence of a number of "under construction" animations
on the Milo CD would seem to confirm this. Suspicions aside,
changing the first twelve zeroes to ones will effectively solve
all of the puzzles that need to be solved in order to advance
to the seventh world.
How Hard Are These Things?
All puzzles set to Perplexing:
Save Game File100000000000000003333333333333333
All puzzles set to Pushover:
Save Game File100000000000000001111111111113333
Of course, solving the puzzles by changing zeroes to ones is
not very interesting. So let's move on to the second string of
numbers ... the string of 3s. This string determines the level
of difficulty of the puzzles in the first six worlds. A 3 sets
a puzzle to perplexing, a 2 to moderate and a 1 to pushover. In
other words, it is possible to transform the difficulty of all
the puzzles of the first six worlds by simply changing this string
of numbers from 3s to 2s or 3s to 1s. Don't change them to zeroes.
Zeroes do not work.
If It's Puzzle 9, We Must Be on World 5
How do you know which number in the second string ties to which
puzzle? Simply count from the left. The first number in the string
refers to the first puzzle, the second to the second puzzle and
so on. The hints provided are from the TIPS.TXT file found on
the Milo CD. They were written by the Milo Team.
The Hints ... with Thanks to the Milo Team and Sibling Interactive
Puzzle 1
 
This puzzle is all about patterns. Your goal is to move the marbles
into the desired pattern. The rules of movement are: Red may move
only when it jumps a blue, and blue may move only when it jumps
a red. So movement is made up entirely of "jumps," red
over blue, and blue over red. Now, in order to move the marbles
back into position, you typically must "rescue" some
that are stranded. Do this by jumping a pair of marbles, one red
and one blue, over to the stranded one. Now, move the trio back
towards the center. This basic technique can be modified to include
groups of three, four, etc. Once you have rescued all the stranded
marbles, and all are more or less in the center, it gets trickier.
Order of movement becomes more important. At this point, no one
strategy is better than another. Use your imagination! If all
else fails, try having a friend take a look. Sometimes two heads
are better than one ...
Puzzle 2
This puzzle is basically a variant of the ever-popular Solitaire.
The cards are a standard 52-card deck. Your goal is to arrange
them into four piles on top of the four corners of the board.
Each corner is used to house a given suit. In other words, all
the cards of a given suit should end up on one corner pile. These
corner piles must be built from the bottom up. First the Ace,
then the Two, the Three and so forth up to King. You may move
a card to the corner piles if it is "not covered" by
another card. That is, if a card is at the bottom of one of the
stacks, and covered by other cards, it may not be moved to then
corner. The method used to uncover cards so that they may be moved
to the corners is simple, and very much like standard solitaire.
You may pick up any uncovered card and place it on another stack,
or onto one of the "Empty Spaces." Only one card may
be moved at a time. Groups of cards may not be moved. Each Empty
Space may hold exactly one card. To place a card onto a stack,
the last card in the stack must be one rank higher than
the card you are moving there, and it must be the opposite
color. For example, you may place a blue three on top
of a red four. When you pick up a card, you may pick up
from anywhere, as long as the card is "on top." For
example, you could take a card from one of the "Empty Spaces"
and place it back onto the stacks or onto one of the corner piles.
You could just as well take a card from one of the corner piles
and place it onto the stacks.
Puzzle 3
 
In this puzzle, you attempt to pick all of the fruits from the
tree. As you begin plucking the fruits, you will notice that each
pick causes some of the other fruits to disappear and some to
reappear. Actually, each fruit "controls" some of the
other fruits. When you pick a given fruit, the fruits that are
"controlled" by that fruit will change state. In other
words, if they are "picked" they will become "unpicked"
and if they are "unpicked" they will become "picked."
The set of "controlled" fruits is fixed for the duration
of play. That is, each time you pick a particular fruit, the same
group of other fruits will change. For example, if you pick the
lower-leftmost fruit, a certain group of other fruits will change.
This group will be the same the next time you pluck the lower-left
fruit, and will remain fixed until you quit and restart the puzzle.
So there are patterns to be seen! Just pluck fruits for a while,
and you will soon get a "feel" for which fruits are
controlled by which ... When you are very close to solving
the puzzle, MILO will let you know!
Puzzle 4
In the game, you are playing against MILO. The object is to win
three rounds. In each round, players alternate turns until no
more pieces can be played. The player with the most pieces at
that point is the winner of the round. Pieces may be played from
the sides of the board. They will slide until they hit the other
side of the board or until they hit another piece. When a piece
stops, it will cause a "domino effect" and "flip"
or "capture" other, adjacent pieces. Play for a while
and you will quickly see how this works. As far as strategy is
concerned, study what MILO does. You may discover that MILO has
a one-track mind! Once you have a good idea what MILO is doing,
try to use this knowledge to your advantage. Be careful as the
game gets near the end; the last few moves usually are very
important! You can go from "very ahead" to "very
behind" in one move!
Puzzle 5
 
This puzzle is about connections. You must move and rotate the
pieces until there is one unbroken pipeline from the input (the
upper left) to the output (the lower right). Each of the pieces,
including blank spots, may be moved and/or rotated. To move a
piece, first click on it, then click where you want it to go.
The two pieces will trade places! Remember, this can be done with
"blank spots" as well. To rotate a piece, click on it,
then click on it a second time. It will rotate 90 degrees clockwise.
Using these two basic plays, you must rearrange the board so that
the input is connected to the output and so that there are no
open connections. This means that you may not leave an uncapped
end floating free. Imagine that the circuit were filled with high-pressure
water or, in this case, fusion plasma! Now, if the plasma can
escape the circuit at any point, the puzzle is not solved.
The circuit must be completely closed. Another way to think about
it is that all "open ends" must be matched up with other
"open ends." None may be left hanging free, and none
may be going straight into one of the sides of the board; they
must all match up somehow ...
Puzzle 6
In this game, you are playing against MILO. It is a strategy
game of universal conquest. Players take turns moving their pieces
until one side has: (a) no more stars, or (b) no more galaxies.
The rules of movement are simple and are explained in a diagram
that can be seen when the help button is clicked. As far as strategy
is concerned, well, there are many! My favorite is the "gang
up" strategy. While always being careful to watch my home
field (MILO is particularly aggressive ...) I move a group of
galaxies out in a little pack, usually three or four. I position
them in such a way as to "scare" one of MILO's stars
out of position. Then I drive the wayward star into a corner or
someplace where it will have no choice of movement, and when I
can capture it without risking one of my own pieces, I pounce!
You will doubtless come up with your own strategy. In general,
watch MILO's moves carefully. He will sneak up and get you if
you don't ...
Puzzle 7
 
In this puzzle you want to eliminate all the tiles. Each tile
has four symbols on it, one at each edge. The tiles may be eliminated
in pairs according to this simple rule: The two tiles must be
adjacent and the symbols at the shared edge must be the same.
In other words, if two tiles are adjacent, either right to left,
or top to bottom, and they both show the same symbol at
the touching edge, they may be "collapsed" or "deleted."
To do this, just click on one of the tiles, then click on the
other. If you click on two tiles that are not adjacent or that
do not share a common symbol, you will hear a "dink"
sound that indicates the two tiles cannot be collapsed. If they
can be collapsed, they will disappear, and any tiles above them
will "fall" downward to fill the void. Continue to do
this until you have eliminated all the tiles! One important
point: The right and left edges of the board are considered
to be adjacent. That is, the edges of the board "wrap around."
For example, a tile on the left edge of the board is considered
to be adjacent to a tile on the same row on the far right edge
of the board! This is an important aspect to the game, and many
boards cannot be solved without using this feature! (Some can;
it's random.) Strategy is "plan ahead." When considering
collapsing two tiles, think about what will be possible next.
Think as far ahead as you can. Try different opening moves. Use
the reset button when you get stuck. You get the same board again
when you reset, unless you quit the puzzle and restart it, at
which point you get a new random board.
Puzzle 8
This puzzle involves moving the pink pieces from the upper left
to the lower right and moving the blue pieces from the lower right
to the upper left. Basically, you must create the mirror-image
of the board. The pieces may move only in certain directions,
based on the current difficulty level. In "perplexing"
mode, the blue pieces may only move left and up, but not right
or down. The pink pieces may move down and right, but not left
or up. The pink and blue pieces may jump each other. This
is important and necessary to solve the puzzle. Strategy: Use
the "undo" button to backtrack if you think you have
made a wrong move. There is only one solution to "perplexing."
The other difficulties have more than one solution.
Puzzle 9
 
In this puzzle you turn all of the disks to one color. It doesn't
matter which color, as long as they are all the same. To change
the disks, click on one. It will flip over, along with some nearby
disks. Which nearby disks are flipped is determined by the "current
pattern." There are only two choices for the "current
pattern." They are "cross" and "X." The
cross pattern flips the disks directly above, below, left and
right. The "X" pattern flips the disks diagonally adjacent.
The current pattern is indicated by the cursor and is changed
by clicking on the appropriate bowl. Strategies: There are many.
One is to work from top to bottom, changing disks to a single
color row-by-row. Then work right to left in the same fashion.
If you end up with one or two disks that seem like they will never
change over correctly, do not despair! Try this: introduce some
new disks of the opposite color by clicking somewhere else in
the board. Then, "move" this group of wrong colored
disks over to where your "stranded group" are and mix
them in! This may change the essential configuration to where
you can win ...
Puzzle 10
In this puzzle you must move the "star" disk from the
upper left corner to the lower right corner. The rules are simple.
Tiles may swap places only if they share two attributes
in common. The attributes are: (a) solid or hollow, (b) green
or gold, (c) triangle, square or circle. For example, two solid
green pieces may be swapped: A solid green circle and a solid
green square because they share two attributes in common, they
are both solid, and they are both green. The star disk is considered
to be solid and green. The basic strategy is to create a path
for the star disk that allows you to "swap" it down
and right, toward the goal. If I wanted to move the star disk
down, for example, I might move a solid green triangle into the
space below the star disk. Then I could swap them and move the
star disk down! Now, in order to bring that solid green triangle
into the right place I might have to move some other pieces around
a little, etc. So look around nearby. There are useful pieces;
you just need to figure out how to bring them into position so
that you can swap the star disk with them ...
Puzzle 11
 
In this puzzle you are trying to rearrange the gems. You must
line them up in the lower row of boxes. When you place the last
gem in the lower row, you will hear a tone. This tone is telling
you how "correct" the ordering is. A higher tone indicates
a "more correct" order. So if you switch the order of
the gems around and the new tone is lower, it is worse than before.
If, on the other hand, the new tone is higher, then you are moving
in the right direction. One strategy is to systematically move
one gem right and left in the order until you get the highest
possible tone. Then repeat this process for all gems. Note: you
may need to do this more than a few times for each gem ...
There are other strategies too ...
Puzzle 12
In this puzzle, you are trying to establish "camps"
along the lower edge of the board. You take a turn by clicking
on one of the disks along the upper edge of the board. This launches
an "explorer." This explorer will travel through the
board by following the arrows. If it moves into a space where
the arrow is pointing down, then it will move down on the next
step. In this way it will wind its way through the board until
it hits something, like a rock or the edge of the board. If an
explorer hits something, it explodes and is lost. If, on the other
hand, it makes its way to the bottom edge of the board without
hitting anything, it will set up a "camp." Pretty simple,
but here's the tricky part: Every time an explorer steps away
from a spot on the board, the arrow in that spot changes. The
arrows change from right to down to left to down to right, etc.
Knowing this, you can predict the path of the explorer! Even trickier,
if an explorer hits and established camp, it will detonate and
destroy the camp! So be careful not to let an explorer make its
way to one of your camps. Only let it reach an empty space at
the bottom. How do I prevent the explorer from destroying one
of my camps, you ask? Well, that's what the "Premature Detonation"
button is for! (It's the button with a little "explosion"
icon on it.) Pressing this button while an explorer is underway
will cause the explorer to self-destruct on the next step! This
is an important feature and can be critical to solving the puzzle!
One strategy is to more or less randomly launch explorers until
you have a couple of camps established, and then be more careful,
as you don't want to lose one of them. Also, sending an explorer
down one path and detonating it at the right time can allow you
to selectively change certain arrows! Using this technique you
can "build" a path to the last few (and difficult) camps.
(Notice that while Worlds 1 through 4 follow clockwise order
on the in-game world symbol screen, Worlds 5 and 6 are reversed.
That is, moving clockwise around the screen from the top produces
this order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 5. The order of the puzzles is the
same as in the Status Menu. In other words, the puzzle that appears
in the far left box in the Status Menu is puzzle 1, then puzzle
2, etc.)
Everything's Wild!
Three Wildcards:
Save Game File100000000000000003333333333333333
Nine Wildcards:
Save Game File100000000000000003333333333333339
Suppose, however, you want to take a run at each puzzle at the
perplexing level without worrying about running out of wildcards.
No problem. The last number in the saved game file sets the number
of wildcards. The default is 3. However, you can bump that number
all the way up to 9. And if 9 turns out to be too few, you can
edit the saved game file back to 9 as needed.
Welcome to the Last World
 
Editing the saved game file will enable you to adjust the level
of difficulty and the number of available wildcards. It will not,
however, enable you to get past the puzzle that guards the way
to the plasma beam elevator that leads to Milo's lair. That puzzle
must be solved for you to meet Milo. Unfortunately, it is not
possible to solve the puzzle that guards the elevator and then
save the game once you are in Milo's lair. You can save, but when
you load that saved game, you'll discover that the only thing
the game saved was your location—World 7—and there is,
once more, an unsolved elevator puzzle between you and Milo.
Then again, the elevator puzzle appears to be the last working
puzzle in the game. Once you are in Milo's lair, the changing
of the cursor will give every impression that there is something
worth clicking on under Milo's head. Perhaps the last puzzle.
Alas, no. Nothing happens when this hotspot is clicked. And there
are no other hotspots to click. (You can click on a tight shot
of the wall, but that will simply produce a "Script error:
Frame not defined" message. If you click on "continue"
once this message appears, you'll find yourself back at the beginning
of the seventh world. If this happens, you can simply climb the
stairs again and ride the beam back up. No need to re-solve the
elevator puzzle. Think of the script error as a worm hole.)
The game is over once you come face to face with Milo, even though
it appears there should be more. If you want to see what you would
have seen had the puzzle been solvable, you can go to the TITLE\VIDEO
directory on the CD and click on FINAL.AVI. You'll find Milo quite
pleased with the way everything has worked out. Whew! 
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