In the different walkthroughs I found on Lighthouse, after finishing the game spending way to much time on it and more than once thinking I was mad by trying to do it all by myself, nobody ever seemed to mention that there indeed is a use for the bat whistle in the game.

Some even refer to it as 'without apparent use in the game' or advise you to save your game before carrying out some actions that require you to use the bat whistle afterwards, to let you restore your saved game after you tried out that nice sideway. The only situation in which I found it is necessary to start all over is when you forget to take the lighter and the umbrella all in the beginning of the game in your cottage.

Well, during my venture I got convinced of one thing. There is for sure a use for it and you can sometimes really need this thing. All depends on the order in which you visit places and the transportation devices you use. The game isn't linear at all, except maybe for the fact that you have to visit the volcano last.

So, what follows is a rather straightforward explanation of the three situations in which I found a need for the bat whistle. It's perfectly possible that there are more. If so, please let me know. I hereby assume that you already played the game and are wondering by yourself where you could have used the whistle, or otherwise that you are completely stuck, don't know where to go next or can't go anywhere anymore.

All by all, what follows is a spoiler. I won't be subtle and I do assume that you are familiar with the game, its locations and the items found and used in it.

Suppose that you are at the roost (that's where Martin lived), and you saw the birdman steal an item from the desk drawer. You already found out that you need this item to drive the submarine, so it seems that you have no way to leave the roost this way.

Therefore, you decide to fix the remote control, use it on the ladder in the top floor and take off with the mechanical bat straight to the temple. After you start playing with the controls for the huge magnet, you see the birdman enter her premises and start hassling her. Before he does this, he drops the throttle you need. You capture the birdman with the magnet and are able to retrieve the throttle.

Now, since you are there, and Lyril tells you that she trusts you now, you decide to explore the temple. At the end you use the teleporter to return to the roost. Here, you use the submarine to end up in the fortress.

After defeating the monster you decide to return to the lighthouse, in order to solve the puzzle box. You can do this in two ways:

1. Take the submarine back to the roost. To return to the lighthouse you have to get to the temple where you can use the teleporter to transport yourself to the lighthouse. The bat is however at the temple, so to get there you need to call it back. And here you can use the whistle.

   Put it in one of your inventory slots, click on it to get it in a window at the right top of your screen. Then, click on the whistle to stop it turning around. Turn the knob until all lights are on and then click on the white spot just above the lights you've just turned on. The bat will return. Just rewind it and use it to go back to the temple and teleport yourself to the lighthouse from there.

   After solving the puzzle box, you can transport yourself back to the roost by using Dr. Kricks machinery in his lab, take the submarine and venture on.

2. Take the ornithopter, after fixing it, to the temple. Here you use the teleporter to return to the lighthouse. After solving the puzzle box you can only go to the roost, using Dr. Krick's teleporter in his lab. And now you are stuck, no submarine and no way to get to the temple since the bat is overthere. Yes, our second situation in which to use the whistle pops up. Dial it up, click on it, and the bat returns.

   Rewind the bat, use it return to the temple, go to the tower where you landed the ornithopter and use the latter one to return to the fortress. >From here, you can head for the submarine to venture on.

3. Now, depending on what you did before you can be stuck here. The submarine is in the volcano and it's possible that the bat is not in the tower but at the entrance of the temple. This is the case if you used it to get there and returned to another spot by using the teleporter after gaining Lyril's thrust. So here, again you will need the bat whistle to call the bat back to the tower. Once the bat is back, rewind it, and return to the temple.

   Here you can use the teleporter to return to the submarine. You end up where you initially entered the volcano, and don't ask me how, but the train is waiting for you again to continue exploring the Dark Being's home. I think it got bored at the entrance of the lab, and decided to return to its home spot by itself.

This is it. I hope that I rescued some people from burning their brain looking for a use for that, at the first sight, rather useless thing. Or maybe, you're now convinced that the game hasn't that much dead ends as you initially encountered. You can now stop restoring saved games, and replaying whole parts of the game trying to figure out how to get from here to there with only one goal, reaching the end.

So, now just venture on and enjoy a very nice, terribly difficult and intriguing game. I think it's one of the better ones from Sierra, but from what I read on the Internet, not everybody seems to share that point of view with me. Oh yes, I liked Shivers, The Beast Within and even Phantasmagoria, but what's the fun if all games are alike each other?