Chip's Challenge/General hints

This is a database for general hints for the game Chip's Challenge. Although things like hidden items under floor do not apply to the original Chip's Challenge, they are used frequently in custom-made level sets, and are therefore included here.

• Use force floors or ice as much as possible, as long as they move Chip in the correct direction.
• If you are sliding and you hit a force floor, you can step off the force floor in any direction. In the original Lynx version, a more limited version of boosting exists: only sideways steps are allowed and only when using other force floors. The next sliding square, or the first from solid ground, will always take Chip in that direction, but on the next, he can override the floor again.
• Try collecting things on your way to others. This will work for block pushing as well, and is one of Warwick Anderson's most frequently used block magic tricks.
• When you are dealing with random monsters, plan a path through them move-by-move, depending on their more likely positions, and by waiting half a move to watch their next move before committing yourself in cases where danger can occur. This technique, if done correctly, allows Chip to catch right back up to if he did not wait; it is officially known as a spring step. There are many other applications for this, including when there are stacks of blocks sliding on ice and Chip must remove an obstacle.
• Be careful when pushing blocks onto sliding tiles; they can squash you, or any other killable Chip. Blocks can be pushed on random force floors, but caveat emptor!
• Aside from forcing monsters to turn in other directions or to go to a specified place, blocks can force monsters to move away from an undesirable location, or at least to slow them down until something can be done.
• You can wait until a bug or a paramecium is one space diagonally from you, following a Chip-removable tile, and then remove the obstacle to force him to go in circles. Try this on Underground.
• Aside from the patterns of the monsters, the monster order is worth studying. The monster order is the order in which the movable monsters, written in the monster list by the level editor, were created. This same order will also determine which monsters get the priority of movement; for example, if two monsters are trying to step on the same space, or onto each other, the one ahead in the monster list gets first choice, forcing the other to make a different move (which may otherwise have been impossible). Other ways this can be used are if two monsters in separate areas are about to step on a green button and an open toggle wall on the same turn; the second monster will only enter the wall if it is ahead. This concept was not known at the time of CC1's creation, which would lead to a bust in Invincible Champion.
• Teeth are very dumb. They follow you, but they don't have the sense to go around walls. They flank Chip either horizontally or vertically, and vertically if tied, every two turns. On occasion, Chip may be required to know this in order to guide a teeth through an unseen maze (Totally Unfair) or, by using obstacles, to force a teeth to give up the advantage of guarding its vertical side (Morton, center area).
• Many people recommend exiting and restarting the game in order to get the full level bonus and/or full first second, but this is a very cumbersome method, especially for more difficult levels. An easier way is to go to the nearest timed level (make sure you are not in any danger) and let the clock run. As soon as the clock ticks, go to the desired level and you have both! This technique is officially called clock setting, and is required only in MS CC. Tile World fixed this, and a patch called Fullsec will also fix this in MS.
• When Chip reveals something on the lower layer, other than pushing a block, the tile will not produce an effect the first time, and is simply revealed and will work as normal if Chip touches it again. The tile, however, will still affect monsters or even sliding blocks (in the case of tiles which act as a wall to the block; bombs or water do not save Chip) in the normal manner if they try to step on the square. However, clone machines under anything make it a wall, hidden exits or unconnected traps will respond immediately, and hidden teleports or toggle walls will not function. In the case of teleports, they act as ice tiles, and as to toggle walls beginning the level on the lower layer, they will only work if the tile on top was a monster. All tiles on the lower layer will be removed by monsters.
• As an extension of the above, if Chip steps on a space with two tiles on it, and neither is removable by stepping on it, the lower one will be erased. If the top one is collectable, the lower tile will have no effect except in the criteria above. If the bottom tile is the only one collectable, it cannot be collected except in the case that water is the top space, in which case Chip must use a block to reach the item.
• Some monsters do not move. You will only die if you step on them.
• Extra chips don't help you, so don't take them.
• Bugs and walkers, plus everything except fireballs in Lynx, treat fire as a wall; gliders go through water, and fireballs go through fire. All monsters avoid random force floors in MS.
• Because of the way button presses are read, hiding a brown button on the lower layer will cause the trap to be open just as if it were pressed by an object. Removing this object will close the trap. Button presses are read when an object moves the button to the lower layer, and additionally, the object recorded a successful move in this direction. When Chip pushes blocks off wall tiles directly onto buttons, Chip's Challenge reads the block move but not Chip's move, and thus a successful move has not occurred, causing the press to not register in an error known as the Button Smash Glitch. Brown buttons, because of their different coding, will not release already trapped items, but only items that become trapped on future turns.
• There may be multiple Chip characters in a level, and the one which actually moves is the one first in reverse reading order, from [31, 31] west. Any one of them being killed ends the level. Swimming Chip tiles, which look exactly like Chip swimming, are also mortal, but Burned Chip tiles, in the visage of Chip killed by fire, and Drowned Chip tiles, that of Chip drowned in water, cannot be killed and act simply as walls.
• Two blue or green buttons hit at the same time have no effect. Try this on Paranoia and Perfect Match, respectively.
• To get past teeth, or even sometimes blobs, keep track of the simple rhythm they work in.
• Look for chances to perform parts of one block push during a second block push; for example, when getting UL around a block to push it south, it is preferable to have a block in the U position which needs moving north.
• Although sliding monsters, even the slower teeth and blobs, move at Chip's sliding speed, they cannot boost. Use this to get ahead of monsters in circles, and be careful if you are following behind a monster when sliding!
• Sometimes it may be a better idea to not have suction boots or ice skates, for the sake of speed. A classic example is Elementary, but only in one section.
• If an item steps off a brown button it is holding down, the trap is still open on the turn where it leaves the button, but not on the next turn. You can experiment with this on Firetrap, although it does not increase your time.
• Be suspect of an exit that appears open to you: Secret traps or obstacles may guard it, and you may have to use some sort of abnormal solution to remove them in order to get to the exit.
• Be familiar with what an exit looks like. There are three fake exit tiles, one with Chip inside an exit, and two exits with a different border. These act as walls, as do exits on top of clone machines, which are unfortunately indistinguishable.
• If there are extra chips, get the nearest chips required until you are finished. Don't forget there may be chips on the way to the exit.
• You can go through more than one socket.
• You can skate through ice corners, provided you are on the ice that you are skating off of, and that this is a legal move. Blocks can also be inadvertently pushed over ice corners when Chip is sliding one space behind a block and a turn is reached.
• Teleports read from right to left, and from bottom to up. If the object is blocked at its exit, the next one is tried, wrapping back to the southeast, until the original teleport is reached. In this case, the teleport works as a regular ice tile - the object slides across it, bouncing back if the other side is blocked. In Lynx, however, monsters will stick on the teleport in the latter case.
• You move faster when you override force floors than when you are simply riding on a force floor path, particularly when you are stepping sideways; this moves Chip 4 spaces per turn!
• The entire monster order moves before Chip; note this when working in close contact with monsters. A monster one space away from Chip will kill him before Chip can move; two spaces away is safe. Boosting, however, will allow Chip to use his extra move to get away from the monster in the half-move window before it pounces on him.
• While you must step on dirt created by a block pushing into water to allow anything else into the square, you do not need to do so when a bomb detonates. In Lynx, however, you must wait one move before continuing when water is bogged down or a bomb blows up. The block must sink, and the bomb debris must clear.
• While only one clone machine or trap can be triggered by a specific button, multiple buttons may trigger the same machine or trap.
• Be suspicious of large amounts of a seemingly harmless element, such as a green button, in a level. There may be a system where pressing the button will cause some type of deadly effect, either directly or by destroying a vital item required to complete the level. It is not always this way, but people do make levels based on avoiding whatever.
• If something is missing, it might be under floor.
• Don't always trust the level designers, as some levels, noted earlier, are busted and do not require the chips requested. Tossed Salad and Three Doors are such examples from CC1. In fact, some levels have even requested chips when there are none, and you must find the way around the socket, or there may be no chips or sockets to begin with.
• Levels that are based on block pushing are called Sokoban levels, or unofficially Pocoman levels. Both of said games are pushing games in which certain items have to be put on specific spots. A characteristic of a Sokoban level is a lot of blocks in a level (or a few blocks in a section of a level) which have to be put in specific spots, such as brown buttons, water squares, bombs, or elaborately, to block a specific mechanism that stops you from completing the level otherwise. Most sections of Mix Up are such examples, where you have to blow up the bombs to get the green key in the northeast, and push the blocks into the water in the northwest and southwest. Sokoban levels are not common, but they are usually very difficult to optimize due to the intricacies of block pushing.
• Sometimes levels are based on a particular aspect, or the level's solution has something to do with what the level is named after. Southpole is such a level, as the generally accepted though not fastest solution, as specified by the hint, requires Chip to simply hold the south key.
• Some levels require a specific sequence of events to complete the level. Taking Mix Up again, if you unlock the blocks at the lower left first before releasing the teeth, you will not be able to get to the last block guarded by the teeth, since you no longer have a blue key. Generally, in situations like this, if you can trade any item for a duplicate, it usually pays off, and is correct if there is an extra item collected (in this case, the remaining block required).
• Spies, dirt, fake walls, chips, and the wall sides of ice corners block the passage of blocks. However, a block with anything under it will not be blocked by the tile, even if it would stop the block from moving, except in the case of a thin wall blocking the direction of the block's move, which will cause no effect, or an unreleased trap, which will stop the block from moving entirely until released. Instead, Chip will move onto the tile and be subject to its effects. If there is an object which blocks Chip on this side underneath, the block will move but Chip will not. However, clicking the mouse on any space which would take Chip first onto such square will cause Chip to move in the lateral direction of the mouse click and push the block. As mouse clicks work concurrently with keystrokes, the failed attempt to move onto the block's square and Chip's actual move are read on the same turn, which is known as the Mouse Panel Glitch.
• Be attentive to a configuration of tiles that surrounds a blank tile(s) or other tiles that you can enter, such as a lock. There may be hidden goodies under that space. Some of these tiles that stand alone, out in the open, can also contain goodies.
• Chips and blocks can even be under each other, but keys and boots are unofficially allowed only under chips and blocks, not under each other, as the Transparency Glitch will occur if you step on them. In the case of two keys or a key and a boot, however, you can remove the lower layer with a monster or a block. While this glitch does not exist in Tile World, and they will work as normal, the general difficulty of playing such levels makes this not advisable.