The Curse of the Scarab

by Nils Fagerburg profile

2020

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A surprisingly rich and complex but difficult optimization games, November 7, 2020
by MathBrush
Related reviews: about 1 hour

I beta tested this game briefly.

I usually think of Ectocomp games as being quick and simple, but the Grand Guignol games have been pretty intense the last few years.

This game has several innovative/amazing features:
1. It's in a custom parser that's brand new but so good that it felt like Dialog or Inform for me
2. It has excellent javascript integration with smooth scrolling image sidebars
3. It has an optimization puzzle that requires in-depth strategy and a lot of spatial thinking.

So it's pretty cool. You're breaking into a tomb (like Infidel) and need to grab a scarab amulet as well as as much treasure as you can carry (which is rough, given you can only carry 4 things at a time in your hands).

The puzzles are harder than most optimization games I've seen. Just getting a successful ending at all will likely take several tries. There's enough complexity here that I probably saw <1/2 of the game when I beta tested it and still there are things I don't understand (like the purpose of the (Spoiler - click to show)map and cursed disk).

The only drawback I found is, like the other optimization games, the puzzle itself detracted somewhat from the emotional impact of the story, as the story is mostly a frame for the puzzles and is repeated over and over each time. Otherwise, for fans of optimised treasure runs, this is a great game.

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nf, November 7, 2020 - Reply
Thank you for your kind review. :)

(Spoiler - click to show)The map is mostly just junk to clutter your inventory at the beginning, its side purpose is to hint that A entering the desert is dangerous and B there are rumors of BURIED treasure.

The disk is just some (quite valuable) loot. The mummy will curse your inventory if you spend too much time in the same room together, and cursed items cannot be sold at the end.
MathBrush, November 7, 2020 - Reply
Thank you, that's great to know!
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