The Mystery of the Mummy

aka: Sherlock Holmes DS: Das Geheimnis der Mumie, Sherlock Holmes DS: The Mystery of the Mummy, Sherlock Holmes: Curse of the Mummy, Sherlock Holmes: Das Geheimnis der Mumie, Sherlock Holmes: Il Mistero della Mummia, Sherlock Holmes: Le mystère de la momie, Sherlock Holmes: Tajemnica Mumii, Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy, Sherlock Holmes: el misterio de la momia
Moby ID: 7910
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

The Mystery of the Mummy was inspired by The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The player is Sherlock Holmes in this point-and-click first-person adventure game.

Lord Montcalfe, a well-known Egyptologist, is missing and is believed by the police to have committed suicide. His daughter, Elisabeth, insists that he is still alive and calls upon her fiancé's cousin, Sherlock Holmes, to prove her theories. Arriving at the manor, Holmes finds that Lord Montcalfe was suffering from a deep paranoia. It seems he had made a terrible mistake and triggered what he believed to be a mummy's curse. Trying to shield himself and others from that curse, he had booby trapped his own home with elaborate locks, some of which were designed to kill anyone who tried to tamper with them.

Holmes investigates mostly in solitary fashion without the aid of his normal sidekick, Watson. Other people in the game appear only in the cut-scenes. Puzzles become more difficult as the story progresses. Find illusive inventory objects and read many documents for clues as you search the secret passages and elaborately decorated rooms of the Montcalfe Manor.

Spellings

  • Шерлок Холмс: 5 египетских статуэток - Russian spelling
  • 木乃伊的秘密 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (Windows version)

80 People (54 developers, 26 thanks) · View all

President
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Product Manager
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PR/Marketing Coordinator
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Senior Vice President Production
Localization Manager
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International Product Manager
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 59% (based on 21 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.3 out of 5 (based on 27 ratings with 1 reviews)

Without A Clue

The Good
When a famous Egyptologist goes missing it’s up to Sherlock Holmes (minus Watson) to uncover the mystery of his presumed death. Does Holmes collect clues and talk to suspects? No, he explores a mansion and solves puzzles for a few hours.

The Mystery of the Mummy plays like a first generation Myst clone. Holmes’ exploration of the mansion is broken into five Acts and takes him into such varied locations as the library, the hallway and the wine cellar. Navigation through the mansion is accomplished by pointing-and-clicking on hotspots. The cursor changes to allow you to investigate certain areas closer or to indicate if something from your inventory is required.

The best element of the interface is that you can look all around the room from where you are standing. This alleviates the pains of having to click just to turn around and means that it’s important to pay attention to features of the floor and ceiling.

Most of the puzzles are pretty good. Within the context of a paranoid person protecting his house, the use of sliders to open doors makes sense. Other puzzles don’t work that well.

Holmes occasionally makes comments about rooms or specific items and these comments are stored in a journal. He also keeps a scrapbook containing useful news items, letters and other documents you might stumble across.

The Bad
While reports of the demise of the adventure genre are highly exaggerated, this game is DOA. As I said, this game is a first generation Myst clone. It plays almost exactly like Shivers, except Shivers had a more interesting story.

Graphically, this game isn’t just dated, it’s carbon dated: 1993 not 2003. Just try to make out the item on the stairs from the screen shots. To successfully complete the game, you’ll need to wave the mouse over every single pixel. Also the color palette is so limited it’s nearly impossible to see a brown paintbrush on a brown barrel or a gray rag on a gray floor.

While some puzzles are well incorporated into the game, some are absolutely terrible. The solution of one puzzle reveals Holmes’ profile. Where’s the logic in that? A sphinx I could understand, but a consulting detective? Other puzzles involve combining inventory items with each other. This usually doesn’t make sense, so you’ll have to try combining everything until for some reason you can tie rope around an axe. Likewise, you’ll have to try every inventory item on everything puzzle in the house. What do I stick this fork in? What should I attach to the fan? If you come across a Rube Goldberg bomb, you’ll have to construct another Rube Goldberg device to disarm it.

Holmes is little to no help and keeps reminding the player that it is a game: “We should do this…” Thanks for killing any suspension of disbelief. He makes comments that are either extremely obvious or ones that display some level of precognition. Standing in a library Holmes says, “He has a lot of books. He must have had a lot of time to read.” No sh*t Sherlock. Then Holmes will tell you when you click on a door, “We won’t find anything useful in there.” We won’t?

This game is a complete mess. I cannot recommend this game on any level.

The Case of the Rose Tattoo, The Riddle of the Crown Jewels, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective or 221b Baker Street are all superior to this title.



The Bottom Line
The only mystery here is how this title got published.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2004

Trivia

Anachronism

The nonogram (grid puzzle off the library) in Act V is an anachronism. This type of puzzle was created in 1987 by Non Ishida.

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  • MobyGames ID: 7910
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Jeanne.

Nintendo DS added by Charly2.0.

Additional contributors: Terrence Bosky, Unicorn Lynx, lobo rojo, Sciere, Alaka, Evil Ryu, Ghost Pirate, Havoc Crow, formercontrib, Stratege, Cantillon.

Game added December 6, 2002. Last modified February 5, 2024.