Review: Emily Archer and the Curse of Tutankhamun (Nintendo Switch)

Emily Archer and the Curse of Tutankhamun is Ocean Media’s latest hidden object adventure published on the Switch eShop. They seem to be in the process of porting several old DS games to the hybrid console. Past instances have been in the average-to-fair range. Sadly, this entry is outright poor as a result of too many bugs (and I’m not talking about scarab beetles).

The game is a combination of murder mystery and treasure hunt. The Egyptian setting, one I usually quite enjoy in games, had all kinds of potential. But you don’t actually play as the titular character looking for Tutankhamun’s mask, just her unseen assistant.

The glitches here are, sadly, numerous. Typos certainly lessen the impact the adventure has. Visual glitches with the character portraits annoy. For instance, seeing Emily and Pierre superimposed on each other. However, two bugs, in particular, are especially unfortunate.

Object errors—where hidden items don’t actually appear on-screen—are a fundamental problem for a game built around the concept. For instance, after searching a desk at length, I clicked a hint (solution) to show me where a rubber duck is. The cursor lit up on an empty area of the screen. This wasn’t the only instance of this type of error. D’oh!

Worse is a “puzzle” glitch late in the game. You can gain access to an area without the items needed in your inventory to solve it. I’ve used the word “sloppy” when describing these older ports in the past, and it applies here more than ever, unfortunately.

Emily Archer and the Curse of Tutankhamun could’ve been a solid game for genre fans, even with its age. But with so many bugs, there’s no way I can recommend this Switch version in its current state. It’s a weak port of a game best left on the Nintendo DS.