Completing Doppleganger on 99% - How?

[tilkau]

Hi

I recently found that my fancy sound card could record the sound output as it was.. outputting it, so I went off and recorded some CPC tracks like
Anarchy, Croco Magneto, and .. Doppleganger. I never finished Doppleganger before, and I got to playing it.
I eventually got to an ending -- with 68% or 71% completion. Remember how the title screen shows 99% completion when you initially run it?
Well, there are a number of misleading things in the game. I figured some of them out, and got my completion up to 86% (with 5x gold ingots in the starting room).


What about the remaining 13% (or 14%)?

There are a number of puzzling things:
* What is the purpose of the book? It doesn't seem effective against anything, or even have any effect if you
   hold it while finishing the game (= dropping the final ingot as your other persona). Does it take effect only in a specific room?
* Is it possible to escape from the room with the fake green key as well as (earlier) the real green key, without drowning?
   Other than this, I have transferred every object to the start room, in case it effected my completion%. It hasn't.

* There is exactly one room with an accessible fireplace, which is the room containing the gold key (accessed through a red door using your alter ego). Can I do anything with this fireplace?
* Do the non-gold ingots have any use? (most of your score comes from what ingots you finish the game with -- in the start room. 5x gold ingots -> 86%. It seems to be true that you can only drop 5 before the end-game sequence kicks in). Later ingots will not appear
   until you drop the corresponding ingot in the start room (drop a Bronze, a Bronze appears in the dark room with the snake monster. Drop a Silver, a Silver appears in the blue room with a blue ghost.)
* Aside from the initial set of 3 ingots (Bronze, Silver, Gold), the others appear to regenerate (eg. in the 5x gold scenario, 4 of those ingots are gotten by going back to the same room -- the room with the gold ghost.)
* in a certain circumstance -- if you drop the green key in the room containing the green door, ferry a few bronze ingots from the room through that door, and come back and pass remotely near the key -- your ALTER EGO spontaneously picks it up, even though that room is completely inaccessible to them!

[Xyphoe]

I commend you for trying to see a game through to it's full completion!

Unfortunately I've never played this game so cannot help you
Sometimes I look to World Of Spectrum for assistance, as many of the games were identical and there's more maps/solutions posted on that site than say CPC-Power but alas this seems like it's an Amstrad only release (but cool that it is!)

[tilkau]

Thanks for responding, Xyphoe!
In the absence of any suggestion of how to proceed, I'll describe what I do know:

Direction table used here:

Code Select Expand


U  R
\ /
  +
/ \
L  D


* You have two separate drop keys, Space and Copy. One is for dropping keys, the other for dropping objects.
* Book is found by your main self in the room down from the recharge room. No idea what it does. I thought perhaps it enabled recharging, but you can recharge without ever picking it up.
* Candle is used in the dark room through the green door, to distinguish what the room features are. You can drop it on the floor and the features will still be -- more dimly -- visible
    It's found in the recharge room (and looks like part of the scenery!)
* Shield makes you immune to spiders. Mostly it's good for getting away from the recharge room without loss of energy, but I never used it myself.
   Found immediately to the left of the recharge room.
* Mirror is used against the Gorgon (Red-hooded thing in a red room full of turrets). it's accessible by your normal self -- L-U-R-U from the recharge room
* Things you have no normal use for can be used as obstacles (it's particularly helpful to get the monster in the dark room stuck on the candle). Be careful not to drop them near room entrances, or you may have trouble with spiders.
* A new ingot is generated in the silver and gold ghost rooms, and in the red room with the snake monster, each time you take the current one and drop it in the start room
* You can't pick up ingots once you drop them in the start room

* Keys:
* Blue requires the mirror, it's in the room right of the Gorgon
* Fake-Green is immediately accessible by your alter ego (go right then up twice from the recharge room.). It's treated as an object, which is the hint that it's fake.
* Open the blue door with the key. Then grab the fake green key, enter the room you just unlocked, drop the fake, and pick up the real.
   AFAICS you can pick up either of the two without drowning, but picking up all the objects in the room dooms you.
* Red is found through the green door (which opens into the dark room). Remember to initially exit immediately, so you can drop the green key. You need the candle.
   It opens two red doors -- one which is directly opposite the dark room, head down all the way and be prepared to pick up an ingot and evade the ghost.
   The other red door (immediately right of the recharge room) opens into a room with a fireplace and a gold key.
* Gold key is used in the room 2 rooms left of the recharge room. Aim to get through without being touched by the skull-helmet. Usually you need to accept some minor zapping by the walls or bullets, in order to do that. Be ready to evade the ghost and grab the ingot. These are probably the most difficult 2 rooms in the game

More questions:
* The dark room has a large cross pattern on the two back walls. Does this mean anything? (I already considered that the book could be a bible, but it appears to have no effect in this room.

[Xyphoe]

Great work, hopefully someone will update the CPC Power page with these 'Solution' tips -

http://cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=746

[Border 7]

Hey - good to see you have tried to conquer this game. I tried in vain when I was young and even tried again last year! Any more progress?

Any extra info you want to add here:

http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Doppleganger

Is appreciated!!

[Border_7]

Any chance of creating and/or uploading a map?