Rediscover the Lost Temple complex…

Perhaps the most breathtaking area to explore in Riddle of the Sphinx is the Lost Temple complex.

Compare the old jewel with the new…

Below are newly enhanced scenes compared with the original ROTS Classic scenes. As you can see, with the enhancements in ROTS Awakening, this jewel on the Nile has renewed life!

New jewels to be discovered…

For you seasoned ROTSters, you know that, maybe second to the Sphinx and Great Pyramid, the Lost Temple area has many secrets waiting to be discovered. But now even you experienced ROTS archaeologists will discover new mysteries in this and other areas.

So, the big question is, “where are we?”

Well, the game is looking and playing great! To say we are excited about releasing Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening is an understatement.

The team is working around the clock to release before Christmas. But this process has not been without some pretty major hurdles and even obstacles, at times, that delayed the release. This area was by far the most challenging and time-consuming, but with the help of Strata and dogged perseverance by the Old World Studios team, we were able to complete this vast ROTS Awakening scene!

And while someday we hope to share the epic journey and untold challenges of resurrecting this epic archaeological adventure,  we think the results have been worth the effort. Let us know what you think of the new scenes.

What can you do while we wrap-up excavating ROTS and crate-up the remaining artifacts?

Please tell others about the ROTS Awakening, share our Kickstarter, and get ready for the largest archaeological event of the millennia!

Thank you for making this possible and for your patience as we take the necessary time to make Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening better than before!

Stargazing an Ancient Observatory

Perhaps the most integral area to solving the Riddle of the Sphinx is the Astrological Chamber, in the Great Pyramid.

Here is a look at this newly HD enhanced chamber featuring stunning lighting, new atmospheric effects, and added elements planned in the classic version but never before seen.

Stargazers who explore this ancient observatory will discover an enchanting chamber revealing historically, geographically, and astronomically accurate clues.

Decoding this information will lead you closer to revealing the Riddle kept under guard by the Great Sphinx for millennia!

Charting Development Progress

All aspects of development are full-time and the team is working all hours to get ROTS released and in the hands of archaeological adventurers (or adventuring archaeologists) everywhere. Those who have played Riddle of the Sphinx know how HUGE this game is. But even to us, the original game designers, the exploratory scope and level of detail is still surprising and, at times, overwhelming.

While the conversion process for the original models has been very time-intensive, we continue to make great strides. However, we recently hit a frightening snag in converting the last few models from the original game. Every archive of those particular models either refused to open or opened with severe file corruption. But after much work, thankfully we found a solution, brought in the remaining models in, and are in the process of completing the final assets. We have a few issues we are working on in the largest area, but it is coming along nicely!

We’ve also been optimizing load times, memory management (especially for mobile devices – we were running into limits on some devices), and increasing the speed of our already fast proprietary adventure game engine built on top of Unity. Our adventure game engine should help other games of this genre make it to market, although we won’t be releasing the development engine until after ROTS Awakening is released.

And programming gameplay, exploration navigation, and puzzle integration is also very time-consuming but going very well! We continue to streamline the process as we go.

But we are most excited to have you experience ROTS exploration with the new engine, especially on mobile. The swipe and tap navigation is very intuitive and fast! It’s been a joy to explore the vastness of the Great Pyramid and its many hidden corridors, and to discover secret chambers on the dev team’s mobile devices. And the desktop version offers even great detail at a higher resolution!

The enhanced graphics, fast engine, new effects, and even enhanced puzzles truly make Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening an ancient Egyptian adventure of epic proportions!

To give you a glimpse of the added resolution and detail in Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening, here’s a scene from the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid. This view is looking down toward the opening of the Ascending Passageway.

The ancient Egyptians build this as a bit of a mousetrap serving many practical and, in their mind, spiritual functions. Turning around, this walk way leads to the King’s Chamber, believed to have housed Khufu’s (Cheop’s) mummified body. The metal braces on the telescoping stone walls now features more accurately the degradation of those edges as it currently exists.

Compare with the legacy screen shot, below…

The conversion process is humming along nicely but requiring a lot of attention to detail. So we are working around the clock to get you The Awakening and think you’ll appreciate the attention to detail and enhanced gameplay!

More scenes to come…

Good morning, anxious adventuring archaeologists!

We are hard at work on the game and getting very close to a playable demo! We are hoping to have that done in a week or so if possible, depending on how hard it is to work out these last few kinks. However, once the demo is done, progress on the rest of the game will be much faster due to existing infrastructure.

We know you have all been waiting for a while for this game, so we appreciate your patience while we make Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening the best we can!

New Enhanced Settings

Today we have a few new screenshots and exciting features to show you! For veterans of the ROTS franchise, you will see that we have added a number of new features. One of the first things you might have noticed is that there are more settings sliders than in the original game. Specifically, you can enable/disable Environmental FX, such as millennia-old dust subtly billowing in suspension as you explore these ancient hidden chambers, etc. Plus you can switch between new immersive scarab-themed cursors and ROTS’ classic cursors, and switch between windowed mode and fullscreen.

Screenshot of additional settings: Cloud Save/Load, Environmental FX, new  Scarab Cursors or Original “Hand” Cursors. The new scarab cursors are very immersive, but we’ve redesigned the original cursors at a higher resolution for the original experience.

Enhanced Save States: Autosave, Local Save, and Cloud Save.

Another major overhaul from the original is saving. We now have three save methods: Autosave, Local save, and Cloud save.

•  Autosave is meant to be the main way to save game progress, so you can just hit the quit button and all of your progress will have been saved.
•  Local Save is meant as a bookmark of sorts if you wish to go back to a particular time and place in the game.
•  And for the pièce de résistance… Cloud Save. Start on desktop, continue on mobile. Cloud save allows you to transition between devices and platforms seamlessly. Here’s how it works: at the top, under settings, there is a bar that currently says: “Hi, Scarabhunter” (this will show your name). If you click on it, it will dropdown as you can see from the screenshots. When you create an account, you will be able to save your data to the cloud, simply by clicking the cloud save button. When you want to load to a new device, all you have to do is login and click cloud load.

 The Winged Things!

As we previously mentioned, ROTS: Awakening features enhanced, animated scarabs on the settings screen and as a new set of immersive scarab-themed cursors. You will be able to experience these fully in the upcoming demo. Until then, enjoy the scarab-esque indulgence.

New, Enhanced Scarab-themed Cursors!

Here’s a look at the ROTS: Awakening new scarab-themed cursors for a much more immersive experience.

What do you think of the new features and images? Let us know in the comments, and keep an eye out for the demo which will be released shortly!

Charlie and Jeff Tobler