Ankh Interview
Kristophe, 2005-05-16

For those of you who have yet to receive the word, Ankh is one of the hottest upcoming adventure games. Setting its background in the days of ancient Egypt (which, with a title like "Ankh", should come as a surprise to nobody) and under devvelopment by the winning teeam of Deck 13/Rebel Games, Ankh opens to the premise of...

"Maybe Assil shouldn't have stolen the key to the Great Pyramid to celebrate a party with his friends. Then he would have never caught this curse that will erase his life within a few hours. But then he wouldn't have found the magic Ankh either, and he would have never met the woman of his dreams, this rebellious and at the same time mysterious girl, and never would these two have stumbled into the adventure of their life."

I recently had the very good fortune to present some of my questions about Ankh to Deck 13's Project Manager for Ankh, Jan Klose; and I was even more fortunate in that I managed to get this rather exclusive "Developer Interview" in prior to Ankh's public exhibition at E3 2005. With all that being said, let us proceed to listen to what Jan Klose> has to say about the immortal Ankh:

AdventureDot: For starters, Jan, would you be so kind as to give our readers a little background on yourself?

Jan Klose: I am the Creative Director and Ankh Project Manager here at Deck 13. I have been in the gaming business since 1997.

I am managing the development of Ankh together with the guys and girls at our Publisher - Rebel Games. Rebel Games is the fairly new games division of Germany's bhv Software, a company that has been distributing computer products and software for more than 20 years. these people have loads of experience - and the new, young team of Rebel Games is very hungry for innovative games. They also share our love for classic adventures - and so I think we are, all together, the dream team for Ankh!

AdventureDot: Without revealing too much at this time and point, Jan, could you tell us a little about Ankh's storyline?

Jan Klose: Well, it takes place in a fictitious ancient Cairo, a magic place with lots of strange characters around. Assil, son of a rich pyramid architect, stole the key to a new pyramid to have a little party with some friends. This doesn't end well, however, as Assil becomes cursed with a Death Curse, given by an angry mummy. So getting rid of this curse before it's too late is his task in this wild adventure. Along the way, he meets lots of weird characters who either help him or try to steal the "Ankh" - the ancient Egyptian symbol of life - that he has stolen from said pyramid.

AdventureDot: Could you tell us a little about Ankh's interface and/or gaming controls?

Jan Klose: The controls are fairly simple. The game is mouse controlled and follows the rules of classic point-and-click adventure games. Although we're using a 3D engine, we do not break with the classic screen display of the great adventure classics. Objects can be picked up, used, and combined with other objects; conversations with other characters (and there are many of them) are performed via the well known multiple choice system. The puzzles are designed to be quite straightforward and all tied in to the storyline. There are no "puzzles just for the sake of it". Sound and box shifting riddles are avoided. There are no mini-games either; however some of the puzzles appear in situations that are so special that you could possibly talk about a mini-game, but everything can be played using the same point-and-click interface. There are no interruptions in gameplay.

AdventureDot: This may be a bit premature, but could you give us an idea of the minimum computer hardware specifications required to play Ankh?

Jan Klose: We're sorry - it'll take us a little more time to set up the hardware requirements, so we haven't done them yet.

AdventureDot: No problem, Jan. Would it be possible, though, for you to give our readers - in a nutshell - Ankh's most prominent features and/or highlights?

Jan Klose: OK - here you are...

More than 10 extensive 3D areas with tons of small locations (e.g. Cairo, the desert, the Pharaoh's palace)

More than 50 characters to talk or deal with

More than 80 items

Textual content fully spoken - in the German version, for example, we hired real celebrities to give their voices to the Ankh characters

Cinematic cutscenes

Classic cinematic soundtrack

Designed to make you smile, laugh, and crawl on the floor ;)

AdventureDot: Okay. Now, at the risk of sounding redundant, Jan, would you please tell our readers why they should buy Ankh upon it's release?

Jan Klose: Why should you buy the game? If you are bored with watching and playing the same storylines over and over again, and if you'd like to get your hands on an adventure game that does anything to make you smile...then have a go at Ankh. Its only purpose is to let you have a great time with lots of humor and some tricky puzzles in between. If you like movies like Shrek, Ice Age, and Robots - then Ankh might just be your cup of tea...errr, glass of beer, I mean:-)

AdventureDot: You've convinced me, Jan. Now when might I (reasoneably) expect to see Ankh in my local software store?

Jan Klose: As of this moment, you could expect to see Ankh released sometime in September for Europe; sometime in October or November for North America and a lot more territories to follow!

AdventureDot: Jan Klose, Deck 13 Creative Director and Ankh Project Manager, thank you very much for taking this time to share with our readers - whom, I would suspect, are anxiously anticipating Ankh's release as much as I!!