Cursed Egyptian necropolis promises mummies, nightmares, and puzzles.
Some might argue that mummies are simply zombies with a greater jerky flavour and a tad more class, what with the standardised dress code, but they can shut the hell up. Mummies are different enough to be considered variety in the ‘hordes of walking undead to rekill’ category.
Known as Curse, it’s a free, upcoming total-conversion Half-Life 2 mod that’s almost entirely developed by one Gabor Dosa, and just landed the Best Upcoming Mod award at Mod DB. He aims to have you explore a cursed Egyptian necropolis, and summarises the story of the game as “You suddenly find yourself in Egypt, then all hell breaks loose!” The necropolis is lined with mummies and other pyramidal evils – such as a wriggling, nightmarish hulk of doom, aptly named the Wormdemon – and, naturally, you’re going to kill them all. You’re also equipped with telekinetic abilities which will have you working through various physics-based puzzles.
A clever mechanic in the game is how one alters difficulty levels. Rather than implement a typical difficulty option in the menu, Dosa chose to use the game world as a means of enabling them. “In order to change the level of difficulty – from the default ‘easy’ – the player must do various tasks which enables a harder difficulty level,” writes Dosa on Mod DB. “For example: On the first level, the player must break all the health crates, and push all the secret buttons, to turn the level into ‘hard’ mode.”
The indicator of game difficulty is a ‘Hand of Aken’ which appears at the end of each area, letting you know how much you managed to unlock. It goes from a thumbs-down for when it’s a breeze to throwing the horns when you’re in nightmare mode (or, presumably, just completed it as such). “When you see the Hand of Aken at the end of the level, you can decide to go to the next level, or to go back and try to unlock the difficulty levels,” Dosa explains, adding it’s “more like finding all the secrets, which, in turn will give you more rooms to explore and more monsters to kill.” The sky also becomes red while you’re in one of the harder areas, which is a handy sign outside of comparably swift death.
The total conversion goes so far as to affect how you control your single melee weapon – a big morning star. It doesn’t have any preset animations, as you just move the mouse in order to swing it around, laying the smack down however you see fit on whatever creepies come in your path. Crawlies such as mummies, of course, which Dosa kindly gave readable facial expressions. He says that when you “beat the mummies to a pulp, they’ll be able to express their feelings about the situation.” Pure brilliance.
Curiously enough, Dosa plans to release the free mod in episodes, the first of which should be available on the 9th of March.
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