Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy

Sphinx and the Mummy must work together to defeat the evil Set.

NA release: 10th November 2003
EU release: 20th February 2004
JP release: N/A
Developer: Eurocom
Publisher: THQ
NGC Magazine Score: 69%
Mods Used: None

Set in Ancient Egypt, I was expecting this to be a fairly average 3D platformer with nothing that special going on. Instead, I discovered something that was more Zelda-esque just with a bit more focus on jumping and climbing to get around the dungeons. You play as Sphinx, who is rather unremarkable with no backstory or personality – despite his unique design, you know less about him than you do about any version of Link.

But that’s not too bad, as the world around him is more interesting. It’s a fantasy version of Ancient Egypt, with other animal-like humanoids and the Egyptian gods existing. While trying to gather the weapons to stop evil, Sphinx interrupts a mysterious ritual and ends up also having to find pieces of a dead prince’s soul. There are lots of nice locations and, while you only get a limited amount of items, they are quite interesting. The blowpipe gets ice and acid projectiles and the capture beetle is rather fascinating.

When you get an enemy down to one health left, you can release a tiny beetle, guide it with the c-stick (when you aren’t doing this, it controls the camera) and capture the enemy. Unfortunately, this is mostly for a museum side-quest to find one of each creature, but two creatures can be spawned: one that is on fire and one that explodes, both used to solve puzzles and get past blockages. If this was all there was to Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, it would be an enjoyable lite-Zelda style game, but we’ve only governed the Sphinx part.

While Spinks interrupted the ritual of mummifying Prince Tutankhamen, the prince still died and was dumped into a room in the impenetrable dark castle. Sphinx’s master can send some equipment to the prince and each time you recover a part of his soul, you get to play as him. As a mummy, the prince can’t die. In fact, getting hurt is a very important element of his gameplay.

As you trigger traps, the prince will become electrocuted, set on fire, squished and more. Being in these states allow you to solve the puzzles in the castle. These parts I absolutely loved. There’s no enemies or health, it’s purely puzzle-based, but they’re just so fun to solve, especially as you have to hurt yourself to do so. There’s even traps that chop you into pieces, turning you into three mummies you can swap between.

Combined, both sections of the game come together to create something very unique, memorable and entertaining. It does have an issue with a lack of save points, but there are plenty of great moments throughout. I do wish it had voice acting – despite being a Zelda-style game, there’s something about the way they do cutscenes which makes it seem like they were designed to be voiced – but it’s still something I very much enjoyed.

Great

As nice as it is to have sprawling environments, they can all seem rather sparse when you’re just wandering around wondering what the hell you’re supposed to do next. There’s often a lack of focus in certain parts of the game and it’s easy to find yourself stumbling around hoping that a clue will present itself.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #91

Remake or remaster?

A remaster was released, which adds gyro controls on Switch and smooths things up with some nicer graphics. It only adds a couple more save statues, though, and still means some segments (such as the mummy portions) need to be solved in one sitting.

Official Ways to get the game

You can get Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy on PC, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox.