Assil has a big problem.
Seems he has been grounded for a week by his father for ‘borrowing’
pop’s pyramid key and partying like an Egyptian, but that’s
the least of his difficulties. Of a more pressing matter is that Assil
defiled a sacred artifact by using it as a bottle opener and now a
death curse has been put on his life and he only has hours to live
unless he can convince the Pharaoh to remove the curse. Don’t
you just hate when that happens?

What to do, what to do?
Why do as every teenage boy has done throughout the centuries and
sneak out of your room of course!

Ankh:
Curse of the Scarab King is an impressive port from the pc
title of the same name. I’m not sure how they did it, but the
developers have managed to cram not only all of the cut-scenes onto
this tiny DS cartridge, but they have also, more impressively, ported
over all of the spoken dialogue and music (Although about that song
that plays at the opening of the game, may Allah make my head explode
if I ever have to hear it again!)

Ankh is
another gem in a growing list of impressive point-and-click adventures
on the Nintendo DS. The stylus is used to guide Assil; simply tap
where you want him to go. Likewise, highlighted icons – Walk,
View, Take, Talk, Use – allow you to simply tap the screen in
order to perform the required function. It is simplicity at its most
ingenious. Later in the game there are some puzzles that require cooperation
between two characters and they also could not be simpler to perform
thanks to the touch screen.

Unlike the original that
was in 3D, the DS port is presented in a 2D overhead point-of-view
which, unfortunately, often makes it difficult to identify some objects,
much less determine which are interactive. If there is one major improvement
I could suggest, it would be the option to highlight all of the hotspots
on the screen. While some purists may consider this ‘cheating’
– which is ludicrous, just because a hotspot has been identified
doesn’t mean that the player will know how to use that information
– I think it is a necessity for a point-and-click game that
is being played on such a small screen. Opinions on such matters have
improved over the years, not to mention that it would be a boon to
offer such encouragement to first time adventure game players.

Speaking of which, seeing
as how most publishers nowadays won’t even go to the added expense
of including an instruction booklet with their pc game, it’s
nice that the DS version includes a wonderful little booklet that
is a nice introduction to the genre, especially as playing an adventure
game such as Ankh on the DS may be a first time experience
for many.

As
for the puzzles, some of them have lost a few steps during the conversion.
This is not to say that they have been ‘dumbed down’,
just that a solution that my have previously required five or six
steps, now can be solved in only three. Again, while the hardcore
adventure gamer may be dismayed by this, the newbie may find it easier
and less laborious to solve a puzzle.

There is also an obvious
LucasArts influence in both the graphics and the at times silly dialogue.
While that can never be a bad thing, it can be a dangerous thing if
your development team is not talented. Fortunately, the Deck
13 crew has studied well and while the jokes and dialogue don’t
always hit the mark, they do more often than not.

So if you’d like
to have something small and funny to play with (insert Viagra joke
here!), then beg your mummy for a copy of Ankh. And
as a side note, the Ankh cartridge that was used
for this review was supplied to us by the European publisher and it
worked without a hitch in our North American Nintendo D.S. so obviously
there must not be a conflict with country codes.