The game I played most this week: Valley of the Kings

Back In The Day: Valley of the Kings

When you take a very simple game and trick it out with newer bells and whistles, it often has a way of bringing out the limitations of the original. But that's OK, as long as you enjoyed the original back in the day. Clickgamer's Valley of the Kings (developed by THD2) first caught my eye mostly because of the graphics and the solid (if crude) formula behind the game. We've certainly seen Lode Runner clones before, but the description and screenshot of VoK led me to think that maybe it was a notch or two above other games based on the same old concept.

I feel sorry for people who grew up after the golden age of gaming in the late 70s and early 80s. Playing a particular game well after the fact, especially a recycled version, just isn't the same if you didn't catch it the first time. I know this whenever I play around with systems and emulators I never got to experience the first time around. Sometimes it's hard to really appreciate the concept if you're experiencing it far from its original context. 

In either case, VoK is built around the whole Indiana Jones mythos. The game takes place in ancient Egypt, and the level graphics (which are sharp and very well done), have lots of visual symbols that everyone will recognize. Some are obvious, and some are a little more subtle, such as the "inscriptions" in the level backdrops. The in-game music also evokes the atmosphere of that long-ago time and place, and thankfully isn't too repetitive (some of these games obnoxiously take a very short sample and loop it ad infinitum). Just about everyone knows the basics behind Lode Runner: grabbing gold, climbing ladders, and creating "pits" for your enemies to fall into (in VoK, you can "burn" sand in order to create the pits).

As you might expect, VoK did a bit more than just ramp up the graphics and audio (you really also have to in a Lode Runner clone, since the basic game mechanics are so crude that it almost wouldn't be worth playing otherwise). You'll see a lot of death traps, such as places on the maps where it's possible to get stuck if you haven't collected all the gold first. In keeping with the Indiana Jones atmosphere of the game, some levels also have spaces in the floor that will open up after you walk over them (your mummy pursuers will fall to their death).

The game also includes teleporters, doors requiring special keys, and even a selectable death scream (one of three choices; I prefer the second option), and a few other features. These features, along with the support for VGA-enabled screens, definitely make the game one of the better looking and feature-rich Lode Runner clones out there. The game plays very well and doesn't have the kludgey controls and fidgety graphics I still see sometimes on Pocket PC games.

I'm not sure where to place a game like Valley of the Kings in the overall hierarchy of games. The additional game features are certainly nice, but as I said earlier, sometimes adding features to a game only emphasizes the limitations of the original idea. The underlying idea is just a bit too simple to be modernized. Lode Runner, after all, is just about collecting gold over and over again. I would almost rather play the original, which, even with its crude graphics, does a great job of transporting me back to the early 80s. Valley of the Kings will likely go down as one of those games that has some appeal but didn't really need to be made again. VoK might be of some interest to those who enjoyed playing the original Lode Runner back in the 80s and enjoyed other adventure games such as Jungle Hunt and maybe Thexder.

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Allen Gall's The Week in Games  Copyright © 2007 by Thaddeus Computing Inc.