I finally got a chance to test what happens if you lose all of your lives in Tomba! You die and it’s game over, pretty much. After a reload, I decided to be more careful and went on to fight my first boss.

All of this happened on a train ride, May 26th of 2013.

The Game Over

I had five lives on me and I lost two very soon, while exploring Phoenix Mountain, hoping to find some way to continue through the Lava Caves. I also did the foolish thing of saving after losing those two lives, so they’re gone forever.

I guess there’s more than one way to do some things in Tomba!, because Charles gave me another parasol.

It wasn’t all for nothing, though. It was just mostly for nothing. I found Charles, who was stuck in a ledge with his parasol. He needed his pants back, which I already found, so I gave them to him. For this, I got his parasol, which I already had from some other place, so it was completely useless.

After that, I tried some more exploring and managed to die three more times. It’s game over when you die. There are no continues, no “start at the beginning”, you just end up at the title screen and have the option of reloading. From now on, I’ll have to be extremely careful with my lives.

Miscelaneous Events

After that, I went back and forth between all the areas, trying to find things I missed. I gave a baked yam to the lady dwarf in the old village, the one who “lost something in the woods”. She ate it, farted and then gave me a Vitality Up. Again, this is great, but what I need are lives.

Giving away the yam gave me +1 Vitality.

I also gave the herbs to Baron, but no I need the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, wherever that is. Baron is one annoying puppy.

After I got the medicine, I needed to get fruit for Baron.

After that, I went to Charity Square, where I figured the dwarf guarding the way to Leaf Slide wants me to cry in front of him. I didn’t feel like going all the way back to the Mushroom Forest, but it looked like I’ll have to. Then something clicked.

Crying made the dwarf let me pass.

Various characters in the game where hinting at mushrooms you can carry with you and use them wherever. It just so happened that I had a mysterious and an ordinary mushroom in my inventory. I played with those for a while and I figured it out:

The mysterious mushroom turns you side and happy, back and forth, whenever you use it.
The ordinary mushroom makes you ordinary again.

I made myself cry and the dwarf let me pass. Behind him was a health fruit, the last of the three crystal balls, and the Leaf Slide. This was basically a 3D tunnel which served as a shortcut to mushroom forest and nothing else. Still, I had the three balls and the shortcut now, so that was great.

The slide is just a cool shortcut to Mushroom Forest.

The Evil Green Pig

After that, I started thinking it was time to fight one of the pigs. The way I understood it, you need to use the correct bag in the correct place in order to get to the pig. I didn’t understand it at all.

I finally found the green evil pig.

I walked between the Forest of 100 Flowers, the Haunted Mansion, Baccus Village and the Phoenix Mountain, trying to use all the bags I had in various spots, but none of it worked. Eventually, I stumbled back into the laughing room at haunted mansion, and it turns out there was a green portal there. It took me to the fight with the evil green pig.

I had to use both of my lunch boxes to beat the pig, because I couldn’t figure out the mechanics of it. What I actually needed to do was…

How to Kill the Evil Green Pig?

… dodge the evil green pig’s attacks and hit it until it appeared at a convenient spot to be thrown in the bag, then jump on its back and throw it. The idea behind it is simple, but the problem is, the bag keeps rotating and the pig likes to appear and really bad spots.

Eventually, it appeared at level with the bag and the bag was at the proper angle, so I threw in. There was a sequence where it started raining at the Lava Caves and the fire went out, so I was able to go there now.

Lava Caves

This is where I got another game over at first. The Lava Caves are a huge chasm where you need to jump from platform to platform and get across. It was very easy to die.

With the green pig defeated, I could explore the Lava Caves. The parasol and the grapple are a must here.

After a while and after some reloading, with the help of the Grapple and the Parasol, I managed to get across, gather a bunch of weird flowers and even stock up on a few lives from the various chests scattered throughout the area. I got to the other side and I was in another area of Phoenix Mountain again.

The current state of the status screen. I’m not sure what the monster levels are for.

I climbed to the top, where the phoenix’s nest was. There was either a dead phoenix in the nest, or the nest was empty. I’m not really sure, because there was something in the nest, but it didn’t seem very clear what it was. I bumped into various obstacles aimlessly, tried to use a few items and tried finding a secret passage or something, but nothing worked. It’s possible I’ll have to go back and return here later.