The Wrath of Anubis

This is the first of Garry Francis's BDB parser games I've played, though I have played the related (and excellent) A Taste Of Terror.

The Wrath of Anubis treads some of the wellest-worn of adventure game turf, the exploration of an Egyptian tomb. It's solid, but perhaps felt a little short to me, especially in light of the length of the blurb and introduction. The backstory involving Anubis, ancient history, curses and village traditions is (relatively) elaborate, but doesn't really inform the action, or add anything to the goal of finding a single important treasure, except that it casts the quest in a positive light - not one of those bad old lights! The original game is from 1987, a lot closer to the time of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982) whose tomb-raiding influence on some of the situations is obvious.

The Wrath of Anubis can definitely be commended for delivering accessible versions of traditionally 'Argh!' challenges found in old (read: past forty years as I type this) Egypt-set adventures. Its desert maze is samey and semi-illogical, but still designed to be a doddle compared to the incarnation of this kind of thing found in, say, The Sands of Egypt (1982), or even a non-Egyptian game like Wizard and the Princess (1980). There are oases, a thirst timer, and a checklist demanding you find food, but each of these things is paid off in the least inconvenient way possible. This speaks to one of the BDB Project's stated goals of updating the games for modern players, while obviously retaining that core style of pretty pure text adventuring.

So the game has most of the major features of the tradition, executed well, but perhaps unspectacularly and not at length. I probably expect a lot when it comes to the Egyptian aesthetic nowadays, and Wrath didn't raise my excitement levels enough. It's still a good piece of work.