Ancient Quest of Saqqarah
Publisher: Codeminion
Developer: Codeminion
Ancient Quest of Saqqarah
User Reviews
Post a reply << Go BackTopic: Ancient Quest on Saqqarah-Need your opinions for tips and tricks
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Hey Margie! The tips that I can think of off the top of my head are:1. Use the shuffle option as much as you can. It almost always works to your benefit and gets rid of the frozen pieces on the board. 2. Click on the bug at the bottom of the screen to make him run faster so your magic powers are used more quickly, and therefore have a greater chance at defeating the level.
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MargieB pass the salt and pepper I am eating my words: "I think even our Genius GameGuru Margie could not do a walk through on this one", which I posted on the other discussion of this game, I should have known better SORRY! The most difficult Temple thus far is the Temple of Thot. I am even down to counting the squares against the amount of jewel pieces to try to mathematically figure out what goes where. It is a bugger.
You do get to skip when you have accumulated 3 magic points but I do not want to use them only on the second difficulty level.I wish you the best of luck and if I was more eloquent in explaining things on paper I would offer tips. The only tip I would offer along the same line as carfixer 195 is when you are running out of time and almost have solved it but need magic powers in the levels where you match the jewels, or light four or more in a row, match as many as possible even though you may not light a square up and when you have a lot of jewels on the bottom than get the bug to move fast. If you have him move fast before you load up the bottom with jewels you might run out of time for his next pass.
But carfixer is right when you are not running out of time and want to build up the magic power scale get that bugger to jog across the board.
EI
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Margie, I found the most difficult one to be the Temple of Bast. This is where you have to move the stones to make a match, but new ones appear as you do this. I can't seem to get very far. Most of the others I found not too difficult. I agree with Carfixer195's suggestions. Will post if I can think of anything else.Keri
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Hey EIEIO, I didn't read that post that you are referring to but know I must hunt for it...lol.Thanks to you and Carfixer for the tips you provided.
I think I didn't get my message across on the subject line. I'm not looking for people to send me tips. I wanted to know the areas I should focus on when I write the tips based on the difficulty that some of the players were encountering in certain areas.
Thanks
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The Temple of Sarkot. You have to spin the colors inside the different shapes. At least you get to do the puzzle over until you get all the colors. The Bonus Points help if you find a particular puzzle difficult. You can skip if you have enough Bonus Points. Each temple keeps track of how many you have for that temple. You cannot use them interchangeably.
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The temples of Thot and Bast seem to be the most difficult. In Thot counting seems to be the best stategy so far. There are 72 different puzzle grids and the solutions are random. Scooter and I have been writing back and forth all day about that temple. It's in the forum topic The Temple Of Thot. A tip on the temple of Bast is that you get to move the token you choose to any other space on the grid as long as it is not obstructed by another full grown token. When I first started playing this temple I though you could only move one space at a time but you can move over baby tokens and clear spaces as far as you want to any space on the board, even spaces occupied by baby tokens.
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The only temple where you can skip puzzles is Thot. In the other temples the Bonus points increase the power ups. There's more about that in the topic The Temple of Thot.
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In the temple of Sobek you can rotate both left and right by using your left or right mouse button. Sometimes that saves time when you need to move a token a long way.
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Hey, one of the game's creators here :).
Here's a little secret for the temple of Thot. I've posted in in another topic, but I think it fits here too.When the game creates a token layout for the current level, it starts by arranging the tokens into one of the solutions and them scrambles them a bit. So the initial placement of colors often hints at the right way to arrange tokens.
For example - if there's a lot of green in one place, chances are that other green tokens should go there too.Hope it helps. I'll try to come back later with some tips on the temple of Bast. Let me know if you would need hints on other levels or temples ;).
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Hey TeeGee,
Gosh we appreciate your input so much. I think it's wonderful of you to help our players out.Please feel free to post whatever you want. No information is ever too much! :-)
Margie B (Moderator)
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hi all,
this is really not a tip or hint per se, but i did receive an email from codeminion and they have a new version of the game version 1.13 incorporates the following
minor bug fixes
inital sound volume tweaked
glyph capacity adjusted in bonus round and most important
added more time to the later rotate and path levels.hope this will help all.
good luck. absolutely love this game
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Just to clarify - this version 1.13 is the one that BigFish have ;).
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Hi TeeGee,
Is that version available for people who downloaded it off of your site as well? If not, will it be available in the near future?
Hopefully you can answer a couple of more questions for me. I read at one time that this games has 500 levels is that so? How many levels does the game actually have?
What is the saq pack and is that a way of getting extra levels in the game? If you could clarify this for me I would be grateful. I apologze if this information is written somewhere since I haven't had the time to check on updates.Thanks
Margie B
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I really enjoyed the game. I found there was a lot of strategy in all the temples. Thot is the most different (its game play is very similar to one of the Da Vinci games that came out about the same time as the movie, Da Vinci's Secret), but I didn't find it especially hard--just different.Here are a few tips I've found that helped me. Some are mentioned in tips provided with the game.1. Plan when to use the Shuffle. It's very powerful, because it WILL get rid of a lot of the obstacles, particularly the black square Seth tokens. However, if you're in one of the temples where you need to do careful placement of stones, like you have 3 green stones on a four corner square and you're trying to get a green stone for the 4th, it can set you back. Also--the crosses that lock the links in place are NOT destroyed by the shuffle. They are destroyed by making matches near them, especially matches with explosive stones. So make the easy matches to destroy any crosses before hitting shuffle. 2. Get Khufu's Help.In addition to the Shuffle, there will be times when you really need Khufu's help (he's the blue ape) to deal with a difficult portion of the board. His fireballs can illuminate distant areas or even destroy coloured padlocks (more on those later). Khufu's magic is charged by your making matches of more than 4 stones. Then these stones are collected by the scarab at the bottom of the screen. As the scarab collects these stones, you will see the weight on the far left rise. When it gets all the way to the top, Khufu will unleash some magic that will help you.So, you have two ways to get Khufu to release magic faster. One is to make longer chains, or more chains involving exploding stones (which will then knock down some extra stones around them). More stones means the weight will rise faster. The other way is to click on Scarab, who will then move across the bottom faster, so the stones will get to Khufu faster. If you still have quite a bit of time but you really need Khufu's help, quickly make a number of long matches to put extra stones in Scarab's collection. If you are short of time, you may want to speed up Scarab.3. Know What Direction You want to Make Matches. This sounds obvious, but until I picked up this idea I made a lot of errors. Say there is a triangle area with two links already lit. All 3 corners have red stones, so you're ready to illuminate the triangle. The thing is--to illuminate it, you must make a connection over the link that is still dark. And you cannot "close the circle" by linking back to your stone of origin. So say the stones are A, B, and C. Link AB is already lit. Link BC is already lit. If you put your cursor on and go A-B-C in the chain temple (I think that's Anubis), then you won't light up the triangle even though you touched all 3 stones on the triangle, because you're just covering links you already had. You need to move your cursor A-C-B so you get the AC link lit. This same principle applies in other temples with other gameplay, although the mechanism is a little different. The main point is always notice just which LINKS you have to cover, not just which shapes need another stone.4. Padlocks. As you get to higher levels, coloured padlocks will appear on some links. When these are in place, you cannot illuminate that link until you have removed the padlock, which requires making a coloured match of the same colour as the padlock directly across that link. (Or being lucky and having one of Khufu's blasts take out the padlock.) So the very first thing to do when you are on a level with a padlock is to notice each time if you happen to be in a position to clear a padlock, or can eaisly move to such a position. The padlocks are probably going to be the hardest part of the level, so take advantage and clear them whenever possible.Also--say you have a yellow padlock on a link that happens to have yellow stones in position beneath it, but nothing of the right colour above it. If you can, make matches above it, hoping a yellow stone will fall into place. Don't make matches below it, or you'll lose the yellow stones beneath and basically have to start from scratch. If there is a yellow stone in place above it but nothing of the right colour beneah, you might be able to find a few matches off to the right or left on the diagonal that will move just the bottom stones but not the ones at the top, but that's often trickier.
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5. Rotating Field . (Forgive me, I've forgotten just which God this is. It's not Osiris, Anubis, or Bast. So it's probably Horus or Sobe. But it's the one where you have to rotate stones into position to complete a field.)The gameplay for this one is completely different than any of the others, so it can throw you off until you get the rhythm of it. This is the only temple where you click on the center of a shape, NOT on a stone. Imagine you have two triangles next to each other, ABC and CBD. Corners B and C are in both triangles, and and the side BC is a side of both triangles. So one triangle has sides AB, BC, and CA. The other has sides DB, BC, and CD.OK, if you try to move the stones into place by clicking on individual stones, you're going to get very confused. You may not even be able to figure out what the movement is. Instead, click right in the center of each triangle to turn that triangle. As you turn the triangle, the stones on its corners will move with it, so you're moving 3 stones at once, not just one. Once you get the hang of this, it's a very pleasant and enjoyable puzzle. The critical thing is to realize that you will often rotate shapes on the side of the shape you're actually trying to fill in, so you move just one stone from the target shape at a time. Say I have a square ABCD next to a triangle CDE. I'm trying to fill in the square with green stones. I already have green stones in positions B and C. My triangle happens to have a green stone on E that I want to add to the square. If I rotate the triangle, though, the green stone in position C is going to move with the triangle! So I'll be pulling one green stone out of the square, which isn't what I want to do.So what I need to do is rotate the square until a nongreen stone is in position C and D. Now I can rotate the triangle and put the green stone from E into the square.This sounds harder than it is (MargieB, you might want to use a screen shot, because it's obvious once you see it). The tip is, when you're adding colours to a shape from another shape, you generally want to first position the target shape so that the intersection of the two shapes is NOT a target colour. Then rotate the "donor" shape so it puts its target colour stone onto the target shape. Again, once you see this once or twice it will be obvious, and it's a very helpful technique.
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6. Temple of Thot--group size The game tip tells you to first figure out where to put the colour that has the most stones. I actually do this temple the other way around. Say the field has 4 red stones, 12 purple stones, 7 yellow stones. I notice that there is a stand along shape of 4 stones. I'll go ahead and put the red stones there, to get them out of the way. There's no rule that says that all the purple stones have to go next to each other--you can use them as a group of 8 plus a group of 4, a group of 3 plus a group of 9, etc. So for me, I looked at the smallest set first.7. Temple of Thot--last stone If you get very close, so there is only one stone left dark and one move will give you the solution, Khufu will give you a tip that tells you one will solve it. At this point, if you have no clue to do, just remember where the one dark stone is. Now start trading it, one at a time, with any other likely stone. If that's not the solution, put them back and try again with the dark stone and a different partner. The point is--don't start randomly swapping things around. If you're one move away, the only thing that needs to be traded is that original dark stone. Again, obvious once you're used to it, but I wasted some time until I realized that.8. Temple of Thot--it's stones that matter, not total shapes. This is a different rule than most of the temples. Here, you don't clear the board by filling in every individual shape like you do in the other temples. Instead, the rule is that each stone must be in an illuminated shape. You can actually have a square that has two green stones and two red stones--as long as each of those four stones is part of another shape that is a full set of one colour. So while in most temples you keep an eye on the links to see which ones are still dark, in Thot you keep an eye on the stones to see which ones are in full sets.I found quite often that the only way to solve a puzzle in Thot was to have one of these shapes that would not have lit up in another temple because it was a mix of colours--but that worked in Thot because the individual stones were all in complete sets. 9. Temple of Thot--count the stones at the beginning You're not going to get any new stones in this Temple. So if you have 4 blue stones, you have 4 blue stones. There will never be any more blue ones. So that tells you that those 4 must go on a rectangle someplace. If you use 3 of them on a triangle, the 4th one will never have a home. I start each level on Thot by writing down the number of stones for each colour, so I know what I'm aiming for. Then whenever I see a standalone shape and I have an exact match (like a standalone pentagon and I have 5 red stones) I fill those in, just so it's one less colour to worry about.
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Well, I don't call you Rockin' Robin for nothing :-)
WOW, Thanks Robin this is a lot of great info here. I just glanced at it because it will make more sense to me once I resume the game. I'm sure these tips will help a lot of people out. Thanks for taking the time to write these. Kudos your way :-)
Margie B
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Thanks to Lizzie and tmonster as well for your contributions. kudos your way too :-)
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10. Temple of Bast--move stones when the path is clear--and cover obstacles before they "blossom". This is the one where you can move a stone anywhere on the board--as long as there is a clear path to get to it. On each turn, you may see tiny "seed" stones, which haven't blossomed yet. Until they blossom (which will happen on the next turn where you don't make a match) you can travel over them. Once they do blossom, they will block your path. (Again, same game play as the game Da Vinci's Secret)So...study the paths before you make your move each turn. First, look for seeds that you want to prevent from blossing. If there's a square that you have 2 green stones in and there's a red seed on one corner, you may want to go ahead and put a green stone on top of it right away, so you don't have to move the red one off later. Also, if there are any black seeds, you may want to land a stone on top of them, as the only way to get rid of them is with Khufu's magic once they do blossom.If you have a triangle where you've already put two yellow stones and there's a yellow seed on the third corner, don't bother moving a stone in--the very next turn without a match will cause the seed to blossom and you'll get the triangle automatically.You may need to make some matches over areas you've already cleared just to open up more paths.In some cases, you may want to make a "two jump" move. Say you have a square in the upper right with two green stones. You have two more green stones in the lower left you want to move to that square. But...there's a yellow seed on the path you need to take. If you just move green stone 3 straight to the square, the yellow seed will blossom, and the path for green stone 4 will be blocked. So you may want to move green stone 3 on top of the yellow seed on the first move. That will kill the seed. Then move green stone 3 on to the square. Then you can move green stone 4 on to the square. Obviously this all depends on the exact seeds that appear each turn, but it's an important technique for this temple.
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11. Different kinds of obstacles need different soutions. As you move up in levels, the difficulty will increase, in part because there will be more obstacles. In the first level, there are 4 main kinds of obstacles.Black stones cannot be clearly by a match. However (and this is something it took me a few levels to figure out), they can be moved. You can rotate them in the temple of Bast, they will fall down like any other stone in temples that have matches, and they can be traded for other stones in temples that have trading play. To get rid of them all together, use Shuffle. Khufu's magic will also get rid of some of them, I'm not sure if it gets rid of all of them. But before you use a Shuffle, you may just want to move them out of the way on to squares that have already been illuminated.Crosses and Double Crosses.Crosses (and Double Crosses, which are just like Crosses but have to be destroyed twice) cover an existing stone and lock the links to that stone in place. That's really frustrating if you've been building up, say, a 6 stone shape and you were just about to put the last stone in place. Also locking the links means it's harder to move stones around in the rotation temple. And it's harder to get long chains. So they can be quite annoying.Shuffle does not get rid of crosses. Instead, you have to make a match "near" them. How near depends on whether the match includes an explosive stone. Crosses can absolutely kill you in the rotation puzzle once you get to the levels where you have some large shapes that require 6 or 8 stones of one colour to clear. So personally I try to fill these large shapes as soon as possible on these levels, because the later it is in the level, the more crosses appear. ChainsChains are pretty straightforward, just like most match three games except instead of the chain being on a stone, it's on a link. You have to break the chain with one match along the link. Then the next match will illuminate the link. Khufu's magic will clear some chains, but they're pretty easy to clear on your own.Coloured padlocks I discussed these earlier. Once you get to the higher levels where there may be 3 or 4 of these, they can be very challenging. You clear these by making a match of that exact colour over the padlock (so remember to make your connections in the right direction!) Khufu's magic can clear a padlock, but it has to hit exactly that link to do so. Shuffles don't clear them. So when I have a level with padlocks, I always look at the start of each move to see if there are padlocks I can clear. At least during the first difficulty new padlocks don't appear midlevel, so once you clear them, they're gone.
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13. There is a "How to Play" tip available from the pause menu in each temple. I will admit that sometimes after the glyph minigame I've hit the play button--and then forgotten how to play in that particular temple! Not that this would ever happen to anyone else...but one of the options when you hit Pause is "How to Play"--it will show you the gameplay for the specific temple you're in.14. Check out the Trophies!One of the best things about the game is the number of different goals it offers as you play, which keep things interesting. You'll be automatically reminded of your "rank " and how many levels you have to the next one, and you'll be automatically told when you earn a trophy.But you can also choose for yourself which trophies you want to work for. Go to the main map, where you see all the temples at once. There will be a row of trophy spaces down at the bottom of the screen. If you hover your cursor over each space, it will tell you what trophy is there and how you earn the next level. It looks like most trophies have a Bronze, Silver, and Gold level.For example,d id you know that there is a trophy to be earned if you get to level 10 in each temple? And another trophy to be earned if you play 25 levels in one session?I'm sure some people will prefer to play all 24 levels of one temple straight through, but I had fun earning the trophies by working on one level for awhile, then switching to another.
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15. Glyph minigame The glyph minigame is a hidden object game where you will have to click on different glyphs. The total you need to find is in the info bar at the bottom of the screen. As you find glyphs, the total counts down, so the info bar always tells you how many of each glyph you still have left to find. If you have found all the glyphs of one type, a check mark will appear next to it.
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Ancient Quest on Saqqarah-Need your opinions for tips and tricks
Report as InappropriatePosted on 06/29/08, 06:53pm
I see that this game seems to be difficult so it gave me an idea to ask the players some opinions. I'm going to be writing the tips and tricks for this game but it will not be until sometime next week since I have about 3 or 4 games ahead of this one.
I normally don't do this but I wanted to hear from you which areas or temples are you finding most difficult?
Is there a particular temple that is most difficult or is it something you don't understand strategy wise how to do?
I played the first stages of several temples when the game came out and I absolutely love this game.
I was thinking of doing some screenshots with the solutions of some of the temples, particularly the one that has the puzzle mode (I can't remember the name) but I do remember it being difficult at first.What do you guys think?
Thanks in adavance for your opinions.
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