A point-and-click adventure game set in Egypt's 18th Dynasty
The Story
The 18th Dynasty of Egypt is one of the most eventful. Tuthmoses IV had a dream as a boy that if he uncovered the Sphinx he would become Pharoah. Later in the dynasty, Akhenaten rejected the traditional polytheistic religion of Egypt and turned to workship Aten. He built a new capital at Amarna and the period of him and his two successors is known as "The Amarna period". Many, however, were angry at this blasphemy against the old gods and seceretly fought against it.
The game starts as our character, General Horemheb, a lowly born man who has worked his way up through the army, talks with Ay, Lord Vizier to the Pharoah, but secretly against his new religion. They discuss their feelings and Ay mentions that if the Pharoah was got rid of, he would become regent of the heir, Tutankhaten (Tutankhamun's name at the time) and could make Horemheb more powerful and grant him nobility if he helped him.
So, with this in mind, he returns to the army camp near the Sphinx and goes to sleep. In his dream, he has a vision of getting up and the Sphinx talking to him, just as happened with Tuthmosis before him. The Sphinx tells him that the power of the Great Pharoah Khafre, a great magician and builder of the second pyramid of Giza, will be his to command if he does as the Sphinx says. The Sphinx says that it is angry at the blasphemy of the Pharoahg and wishes to destroy him. It tells of a secret chamber in the second pyramid, never found by any thief who long since stripped the main chamber bare. So the adventure begins as Horemheb sets off to find the secret chamber and the secrets of power that lie within..
The Game
The game has a point-and-click interface like such classic games as Broken Sword. In general, a right-click looks at something and a left-click performs some action on something. The cursor changes as you move over things that you can interact with and gives an indication of the action that a left-click will give.
Clicking on another character in the game will bring up the icon-based dialog system. In this, clicking on the icons at the bottom of the screen will discuss those things with the person to whom you are talking. Also, you can click on any object in your inventory (at the top of the screen) or anything in your current location to discuss that. Some things will reveal more information if you talk about them more, or if you come back and talk about them again after having performed some action.
The Author
Andrew MacCormack, known as "SSH" on the AGS Forums wrote this game, with help from others as can be seen in the game's credits. Most help comes from Chris Jones's excellent Adventure Game Studio without which this would not be possible. The Demo version of the game has not been fully tested, so if you spot some bugs, please report them to SSH on the forums, and all such beta-testers will get a credit in the fixed version of the Demo and the eventual full game.