InvisiClues for Endymion by Daniel M. Stelzer

Click a section heading to show or hide its contents. To show a clue after opening a question, hover your mouse over the gray box. The text should appear on top of it. You can also highlight the boxes or click them to reveal the hints.

Your overall goal in this game is almost always the same: figure out the aliens’ language. A full guide is at the bottom of this page, but reading it will spoil the whole game, so please only use it as a last resort! If you get stuck on the smaller puzzles along the way, that’s what these hints are for.

Also, remember the VOCAB command!

1. Frozen Wastes

   1. What do I do here?

      1. Examine the things around you (your ship, the space junk, the ice).
      2. The only one you can usefully interact with is the black door.
      3. Go in.

2. Airlock

   1. What is this blocky device?

      1. It looks portable. Why not pick it up?
      2. When you examine something with a shiny part, it squawks out words.
      3. It seems to work like an alien text-to-speech device.
      4. Try examining the shiny square on the ceiling, or the broken case, or one of the levers.

   2. Why won’t this lever work?

      1. Well, this is an airlock.
      2. Have you tried the other lever?
      3. Close the black door, then you can open the blue one. (And vice versa.)

   3. What do I do with these strange words?

      1. When the alien device squawks out words, you can try to translate them.
      2. Click one of the words to type in your own translation for it. (Or, if you’re not using links, type “[single alien word] means [human word or words]”.)
      3. For example, the levers say “grazad jedo” at the top and “grazad bralo” at the bottom.
      4. What does the lever control?
      5. What does the lever do when it’s up? What about when it’s down?
      6. A reasonable theory might be that “grazad” means “door”, “jedo” means “open”, and “bralo” means “close”.
      7. You can revise your translations at any time if this turns out to be wrong.

3. Faceted Chamber

   1. How do I open the green door?

      1. Examine the door.
      2. Examine the wheel.
      3. What would you normally do with a wheel?
      4. Turn it.

   2. How do I open the red door?

      1. Examine it.
      2. You’ll need to figure out what this inscription says to open the red door.

   3. What do I do with the grid on the floor?

      1. Examine it.
      2. The VOCAB command will show you where you’ve seen each of these words before.
      3. In particular, you saw “grazad” and “azarogh” in the airlock.
      4. Once you’ve gone through the green door, you’ll find another of these words.
      5. That should give you enough information to take a stab at the others.

   4. What is the strange darkness?

      1. Examine it.
      2. Who knows?
      3. Keep an eye out for more strange darkness in the future.

4. Cargo Hold

   1. What do I do with the crate?

      1. Examine it.
      2. Examine the handle.
      3. You’ve seen all of these words before.
      4. They tell you how to open the crate.

   2. What do I do with the pouch?

      1. Examine it.
      2. The words you’ve learned so far should suggest a general meaning for this inscription.
      3. You’ll need to figure out the rest of the words to know how to open it.

   3. What do I do with the things inside the pouch?

      1. Examine the tile.
      2. When you find another of these spheres, you’ll find out where they can fit.
      3. And when you understand the words on the tile, you’ll know which one to use.
      4. Both of them are useful, but one of them is necessary to finish the game.

      5. What does the green sphere do? That one is never explained anywhere...

         1. Nothing useful for completing the game.
         2. It records data to the ship computer’s memory.
         3. In other words, you don’t have to worry about removing it. The device will keep reading the alien words out loud to you.

5. Command Bridge

   1. What do I do with the narrow console?

      1. By this point, you should understand all the words in this sentence except one.
      2. What can you do with a small object and a cylindrical pedestal?
      3. Put the coil on the console.

   2. What do I do with the tall console?

      1. Nothing, until the darkness is gone.
      2. After that, examine it.
      3. Examine the circle, the dots, and the star.
      4. The artifact you’re exploring was star-shaped before it crashed.
      5. This is a map showing Jupiter, its moons, and the ship’s current position.
      6. The long sequence of syllables is some kind of coordinate system.
      7. There’s no way to figure out exactly what each syllable means. All you have to know is that the sequence of numbers on the star is your current position, in the alien coordinate system.

   3. What do I do with the flat console?

      1. Nothing, until the darkness is gone.
      2. After that, examine it.
      3. Examine the left and right disks.
      4. Put something on one of the disks. (Try them both.)
      5. Stand on one of the disks. (Try them both.)
      6. Now you know!

6. Debris Field

   1. What do I do with the disk?

      1. What did you do with the disks in the command bridge?
      2. Put something on it.
      3. Stand on it.
      4. Examine the lever.
      5. Pull the lever.

   2. What is this metal hoop?

      1. Examine it.
      2. You’ve seen that word before.
      3. Put a certain thing in it.

   3. What are these shiny sheets?

      1. They were probably a book of some kind before the crash.
      2. Take them.
      3. Examine them.
      4. That’s a lot of words, but by now you should be able to figure out all of them.
      5. Do what it says.

   4. What is this ceiling fragment?

      1. It looks like the squares on the ceilings of the other rooms, but a different color.
      2. Apparently the aliens made each arm of the star a different color, and they have more primary colors than we do.
      3. The description is based on a mix of dark red and bright ultraviolet light I used in set design, once upon a time.
      4. Unfortunately, this one is too badly damaged to learn any new words from.

7. After exploring every room...

   1. What do I do now?

      1. By this point, you should have visited all six areas, come up with a tentative translation for every word you’ve seen (at least 20 of them), and opened both the pouch and the device. If you haven’t done one of those things, come back once you have.
      2. Your only hope of survival is to be rescued. If you can send a simple distress signal, that will be enough.
      3. But the radio in your ship has been dead for days. There’s no way to repair it.
      4. What if you can use the alien artifact to send a distress signal instead?
      5. Put the blue sphere in the device (in place of the green one), then wait a few turns.
      6. The transmission you’re receiving says: “The artifact [unknown] is located? Transmit!” It’s a reasonable guess that the unknown word means “where”.
      7. If you put the red sphere into the device, it will transmit each word it scans.
      8. You need to transmit a complete sentence. The device only transmits three words at a time, which limits your options.
      9. Something like: “The artifact Europa is located.” How would you say that in the alien language?
      10. The answer is “zoqradozhe zria-rez-ruag-gho-leq-rez-gho o”. If you don’t recognize that second word, look at the tall console in the bridge.
      11. In other words, scan the shiny white square in the faceted chamber, the star in the command bridge, and the broken square in the debris field, in that order.

   2. I finished the game, but what’s up with that strange darkness?

      1. It’s perfectly rigid and unreactive.
      2. It wasn’t there before the collision.
      3. The rest is up to interpretation.

8. Complete Guide to the Alien Language

   1. Pronunciation

      1. Don’t worry about it. Pronounce the words however you like.
      2. All that matters is that you can tell them apart.
      3. If you really want to know, though...
      4. b /b/, d /d/, j /ɟ/, g /g/, q /ɢ/
      5. v /β/, z /z/, zh /ʒ/, gh /ɣ/, r /ʁ/
      6. l /l~ɮ/, i /j/, u /w/
      7. a /ä/, e /e~ɪ/, o /o~ʊ/
      8. Now you know!

   2. Syntax

      1. Subject, then object, then verb (“man apple eats”).
      2. Nouns come before adjectives (“apple red”).
      3. Commas separate conditionals (“X, Y” means “if X, then Y”).
      4. All verbs (and only verbs) end with the letter O.
      5. There is no inflection (words never change their form). “Book” and “books” are represented the same way, as are “write”, “writes”, and “wrote”.
      6. En-dashes (–) aren’t actually part of the language—they just separate different blocks of text.

   3. Nouns

      1. Grazad

         1. Door

      2. Azarogh

         1. Airlock

      3. Zoqradozhe

         1. The name of the ship (or possibly just “ship” in general)
         2. The similarity with “ledozhe” might mean they’re related.

      4. Ezheba

         1. Storage/crate(s)

      5. Rajarual

         1. Control (room)

      6. Baghe

         1. The blocky device (“scanner”)

      7. Lazha

         1. The coil of wire (“key”)

      8. Dajogov

         1. The metal hoop (“degausser”)

      9. Oqria

         1. Sphere

   4. Pronouns

      1. Al

         1. This
         2. In other words, “al” means “the object that this message is printed on”.

      2. Qia

         1. Where
         2. This one only appears once, in an optional message, if you put the blue sphere into the scanner.

   5. Adjectives

      1. Zedre

         1. Red

      2. Eviozha

         1. Green

      3. Ledozhe

         1. Blue
         2. The similarity with “zoqradozhe” might mean they’re related.

   6. Verbs

      1. Jedo

         1. Open

      2. Bralo

         1. Close/seal

      3. O

         1. Is located at
         2. In some languages, like Swahili, this is a single verb: paka imo chumbani means “the cat is located in the room”. Apparently the alien language works the same way.
         3. In other words, “X Y o” means “X is located at Y”.

      4. Davazo

         1. Turn/rotate

      5. Groqo

         1. Touch

      6. Ev-duo

         1. Send/transmit

      7. Aq-duo

         1. Receive

      8. Drezhiagro

         1. Approach

   7. Miscellaneous

      1. Gie-zhag-leq-zhio-leq-rez-gho (and similar sequences)

         1. These are coordinates in a base-eight number system.
         2. There’s no way for you to figure out the exact numbers involved, or how the coordinate system works.
         3. What matters is that someone else can understand them.