Ankh

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The actual aim of the game isn't so clear. Ankh starts with your father telling you to go and get some green pigment for him, but this isn't the ultimate goal of the game. There isn't really a definite story but rather you must perform the tasks which are set before you as you progress through the game. The tasks include giving hamburgers to Libyan terrorists as the game's advertising proclaims and also seeking an audience for the Pharaoh. As it's typical for such games, the player moves the mouse pointer around the screen to see what can be examined, picked up, opened and so on, and moves from screen to screen solving puzzles. The puzzles stem from checking out what to do with the objects found and, sometimes, to actually finding those objects on the screen in the first place, and in choosing the correct solution when talking to the inhabitants of the game. The puzzles manage to be logical and yet not obvious, and the game does give you hints if you're nearly close to the solution of a puzzle, so you often know what you're supposed to do, even if you don't know exactly how to do it. The game must be installed into a writable disc and requires a fairly large chunk of hard-disc space -the music and the introductory movie are played directly from the CD but everything else must be installed. The game offers high and low-resolution versions, catering for both newer and older Acorn machines; both versions require around 55MB and 20MB respectively.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The high-res version runs in 640x480 pixels while the low-res version halves the vertical resolution. Running in 32.000 colors at 640x480 certainly gives the game ample opportunity for some stunning visuals and I'm pleased to report that Ankh takes advantage of this. The background music plays directly from the CD. There are some incidental sound effects in the game, but it could do with quite a few more, and what there is could have done with a bit more subtlety, too. By the time you've listened to the same few flute notes repeated a hundred times whilst you try to find out what to do on a particular screen, you'll be probably just about ready to throw your speakers out of the window. But mostly what's there is well done and does add to the game a lot.