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Shadow of Aten for PC/X360

Walk (and hit) like an Egyptian.

Dark blue icons of video game controllers on a light blue background
Image credit: Eurogamer

It's not often that developers trust us press types to figure out what words like "monotheism" mean, so it's with some degree of respect that we can report Silicon Garage Arts latest, The Shadow of Aten, is on its way to PC and Xbox 360.

The game concerns 1930s Egypt and an elaborate plot based on "real facts" about the worship of the God Aten, apparently the first monotheism of mankind. You play as Allan Scott, who journeys through Egypt - visiting Cairo, Luxor, the valley of the Kings, Fayum oasis and other landmarks - unravelling a mystery with its roots deep in ancient Egypt.

The developer says we can expect a mix of stealth, action, platforming and puzzling as well as mini-games based around car chases with trucks and camels and the like. Camel-chases sounds awesome to us, but then that probably is just us. The combat will be pretty freeform too, allowing you to make use of anything that's lying around in movie-style hand-to-hand combat - sticks, chairs, bottles, camels, etc. The game'll take as long as 50 hours to get everything out of; that's if you want to resolve all the primary and secondary and camel objectives. You can go about it in either way. (Actual camel content may vary.)

Unrelated.

Beyond that, The Shadow of Aten will have a multimedia library detailing the ancient Egyptian culture and ways of life and camels [stop it - Ed], and not just "according to the game" either, but real historical stuff both endorsed and sponsored by the History Channel and the Louvre and camels. Elsewhere on what's (brilliantly) described as a "documental DVD" you'll find info about how it all relates to the game too.

Early screenshots don't exactly fill us with the utmost excitement, but we've always been fascinated with this sort of stuff so we'll try and let you know what comes of it. After all, it's not often we can use the words monotheism AND documental in the same story without somebody declaring us servants of Word of the Day. In this case, we're servants of Anubis. (And camels. And giraffes - we saw a giraffe with a CROWN ON in Japan. Brilliant.)

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