OH MUMMY
By: Amsoft
Download: ohmummy.zip

Oh Mummy takes you back to the day when Mummies were best known for being wrapped in bandages. You'd think with all the money a blockbuster film has they could afford to buy bandages for the films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, but alas the main villain in those feature films was very decomposed but totally bandage free.

As you can see from the headings above, this is an Amsoft game. Already people familiar with CPC titles should expect little from this game. Sure some Amsoft games were great fun and came free with the computer, but most of their products were extremely basic and some were pretty poor in the gameplay department. Thankfully for anyone who is planning to try this game out I can say that this is one of the better programs to have the letters "Amsoft" printed on the box.

In Oh Mummy you are in charge of an expedition funded by the British museum which has been sent to Egypt. A number of new pyramids have been discovered and it is your job to explore the five levels of each pyramid in search of tombs containing royal mummies and treasure. In order to do so you have a group of five men which pretty much means that you start the game with five lives. If you ask me this game encourages grave robbing... no wonder my generation is so messed up.

Every level you enter will contain twenty boxes. Your job is to find out what each box contains by running around it with the Mario like character you control. Every time you walk around you will leave a trail of footprints and what you want to do to uncover a box is to surround it with footprints. To be able to exit a level you need to find the box which contains a key and the box with the royal mummy tomb. You'll also discover boxes which contain treasure (points) or boxes which contain nothing at all.

Trying to stop you in your mission are the pyramid's guardians. Every level has a guardian who will rob you of one life if he touches you. If your unlucky enough you may uncover an extra guardian when opening a box. To make matters worse the guardians will follow you onto the next stage. After level one for example you could enter a level which will have two or three guardians to avoid. Thankfully for you some of the boxes you open contain a scroll. If you pick one of these up you can kill one guardian by touching him.

That pretty much explains the game. Every level you play is the same as the last which can get repetitive even if the guardians get smarter and quicker. That doesn't mean the game isn't a fun way of killing short periods of time.

One warning I have for players of the game is the music. The Egyptian's tune sounds alright at first but it will drive you insane after a while. Turn it off! I'd pick suffering an Egyptian curse over hearing that melody for more than a few minutes.

Rating: 60%