You're given a visual list of Egyptian symbols and must track them down on a wall of symbols. When you aren't connecting colored blocks together, there are bonus Find the Glyphs of Magic missions that play out like simplified Where's Waldo books. By turning on hints, certain movable pieces will highlight for about half a second. Luckily, the game allows you to use hints if you get stuck. Problem is, for every move you make, random pieces emerge from the map to obstruct your path. This mode gives you a handful of colored pieces at the start and allows you to move them to any node on the map, provided there is an unblocked pathway the piece can slide to. The Temple of Bast, one of the later temples, is arguably the hardest. Rainbow blocks appear as much as the stone faces and can act as any color.Īs you progress through the game and face new modes, things start to get more challenging and your head may start to spin. Luckily, there are also pieces that help you. Unfortunately, you can only use this move once in a while, because it needs to charge up. Luckily, if you're stuck, there's a 'shuffle' button that allows you to randomly rearrange all the pieces on the map, which also tosses out the stone faces. Sometimes the game will throw an immovable stone face at you that will block your path.

To mix it up even more, there are random items that can help and hurt you. This adds a challenging layer to the gameplay. You'll have to connect similar pieces across lines that bend in all sorts of angles. However, unlike Bejeweled, the levels in Ancient Quest of Saqqarah do not take place in symmetrical vertical and horizontal grids. Like Bejeweled, there is a time limit to each level. Once you break an outline's perimeter, it gets check-marked and you move on to the next one until the whole map is cleared. While each mode has its unique quirks, every level has many different geometric outlines that you must surround with similar colored blocks of three or more to destroy. Another temple let's you pick up any colored piece and swap it out with any other block on the level, provided your placement will do damage. One mode has similar colored pieces already grouped together in families of three or more and you simply need to click on one of them to destroy the entire adjacent group. As you make headway through this mode, you will eventually unlock the temples of Thot, Horus, Anubis, Bast, Osiris, and Sobek in sequential order. The first temple, Isis, most closely resembles the gameplay mechanic found in Bejeweled and simply forces you to group three or more similar colored pieces together. Each temple offers a unique spin on Bejeweled's gameplay. In the story of Ancient Quest of Saqqarah (yes, there's a story to this puzzle game) a blue, talking gorilla will narrate your journey as you go through seven different temples. A wall is covered with hieroglyphics and you have to locate a number of certain glyphs.Do you like Bejeweled, but wish it offered more varied gameplay mechanics and took place in ancient Egypt? If so, I must say that is a very unusual request, but Ancient Quest of Saqqarah might be the 2D puzzle game to scratch that itch. One minigame is just clicking on 6 scurrying scarab beetles. By my calculations, this base game offers 336 unique levels without counting the simple minigames that are thrown in from time to time. Not only is this game completely non-standard in it's approach to the Match-3 idea, but they give you 7 different ways to clear the boards. Once the meter is full, he casts all of his available spells, breaking pieces and helping you clear the board. As you collect power (every time you make matches of 4 or more), Khufu's magic meter goes up. To offset the difficulty, Khufu, your magical aid, also gains power-ups periodically.

Within each temple, there are difficulties added every 6 levels so that, as you proceed, gameplay becomes more challenging. While the level boards are always set up in the same way - a series of points connected by threads - the mechanics for clearing the board change with each temple, and each board is arranged differently. To polish off the audio presentation, the game boasts excellent professional voice work for Khufu and each of the deity statues. You are always accompanied by pleasant and memorable Egyptian music, which is likely to remain in your mind throughout the day (beware!). This atmosphere alone made the game enjoyable to play. Then, inside each temple, it's dark, but the dim lighting shines from somewhere onto the stonework framing the level. This idyllic and mysterious scene is very attractive. There are animated torches and waterfalls, with bridges, palm trees, and undergrowth. They first put you in the oasis scene, where you choose a temple to play in. The thing that immediately drew my attention was the uncommonly high level of quality that the developers built into this game.

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