Luxor: Adventures

John Swift and Jane Graham are two adventurers sponsored by a millionaire called Cain Hisster to search for a powerful lost artifact in the ruins of Ancient Egypt. After they finally discover its location, their sponsor reveals his true intentions: he plans to use the power of the device to rule the world. Cain escapes with the artifact by jumping through a time portal, and the heroes have no alternative but follow him to stop his evil plans and recover any anachronistic object laying around that threatens the order of the universe.

Luxor Adventures is a hidden object spin-off of a series of popular marble-shooter games, where most of the time the objective is to find and click on all the items listed at the bottom of the screen, on historical locations filled with assorted objects scattered through the scenery. The player has 45 minutes to finish each episode, comprised of several locations, with a mini-game to be completed at the end. Besides the list entries, each scene has two Ankhs that can be optionally collected to unlock bonus features, like the endless mode and direct access to the mini-games through the main menu. The hint button is located under the figure of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, holding a swirling blue orb that shows the position of one of the required items, but takes some time to recharge after use.

The mini-games are implementations of classic casual games and other concepts common to the genre. There is Luxor Classic, a version of the original marble popper where the goal is to make matches of three or more spheres of the same color, by shooting orbs from a scarab-shaped device that moves sideways at the bottom of the screen, at a line of marbles moving towards an exit hole. If three or more spheres enter the hole, the game is over. The Match-3 Game is similar to Bejeweled and other tile-matching titles, where the objective is to swap adjacent tiles on a grid to make three-of-a-kind matches. Other challenges include the obligatory find-the-differences game between two similar images, jigsaw and picture puzzles, solitaire, a variation of word search with hieroglyphics, and an obstacle puzzle where crossed wooden beams have to be carefully moved out of the way.