Game:

Repton 3 (1986)

Duration: 2:11

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3

Level 8 (Mayday) of Encore is one of those levels that's fiendishly difficult to solve, but enormously fun to play once you know the solution. (In fact, that really applies to the entire Encore scenario.) The rock puzzle at the top, clearly inspired by the one on Africa 8 but far more intricate, had me stuck for a long time the first time I encountered it, although it's more a case of discovering and following general procedures (clearing as much space as possible, especially at the sides of the rock pile) than learning a tricky sequence of moves.

In this video, my new improvement to the solution is to take the bottom-left transporter first, instead of opening the cages first so as to rescue the crown from the rock-on-safe trap. Once I discovered that it's possible to reach the crown from the final transporter destination at the top of the far right rock puzzle, it was hardly a surprise that this solution is so much faster.

In my walkthrough for this level, I recommend pushing the rock above the central cluster of safes one square at the start of the level, avoiding it falling when the key is taken and letting the lower spirits into the cages (since this will cause rocks to fall and trap Repton in the upper-right). However, once the timing of the rest of the level is learned, Repton can safely take the key and run and stand next to the cages to prevent the rocks falling, as shown. Doing this has the bonus that the first egg can be broken and ignored, as the monster will always stand next to this rock and die when the key is taken!

The music for this video is "Habanera" from Georges Bizet's Carmen.

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