Deck 13 Interactive GmbH, 2005
Ankh is an enjoyable point-and-click adventure game based on ancient Egyptian mythology with unrestrained graphics… oh yeah; the game is a real eye candy. As for the game play, it seems like a concocted result of some later adventure releases of LucasArts, which is quite obvious, because a bunch of those brilliant ex-employees of LucasArts' adventure game developers, who brought us Grim Fandango and the last Monkey Island game, are flaunting their expertise here. As for the storyline, I read somewhere that this game is a remake of an old adventure game called, Ankh: The Tales of Mystery, but unfortunately I never had a chance to play that game for it was a non-PC release.
The game revolves around our young hero Assil, son of an ancient Egyptian architect, who accidentally knocks over some ancient urns while plundering the treasure chamber of the great pyramid with his friends. Since the mummy's eternal sleep gets disturbed with this interruption he castes a death curse upon Assil, but fortunately Assil gets hold of a magical Ankh in this whole introduction process. Although the curse is not time dependent, but mystical tattoos start appearing magically on Assil's body as the effect of the death curse gets stronger later in the game and progressively takes control of his body.
Now, the only person who can help you in lifting this death curse is the Pharaoh himself, but entering his palace is not an easy task, especially for a street rat such as yourself, so you need to successfully complete many other mini-tasks before you find a way to sneak into his palace to meet him and also the woman of your dreams.
Later in the game you get to control multiple game characters in order to exchange items to solve certain puzzles or to do something, which the one cannot do in his or her current situation. The puzzles are very challenging while they are quite logical and mostly inventory based. A quest log is also available, which shows you what quests are left to be solved and what are already solved in a particular Act. Inventory is huge and visible at the top of the screen, where you can easily select items or combine two or more items to make a required item. The game control is point and click, where you have look, talk, use, and walk cursor and good thing is that double clicking on a point with walk cursor makes your character run to that point. The game uses a 3D engine with fixed camera angles, which most frequently changes to give the player a better display of the scene. Finally, I would say that for those who have never played an adventure game then this is a game to start with and for those whose life depends on playing adventure games then they are most certainly in for a fine ride into this Pharaonic extravaganza.
