Thanks to 8-Bit Legit for the review code
Title: Dead Tomb
System: Xbox One/Series X
Price: $4.99
Release Date: 01/26/2024
Story
In this adventure game for the NES, you take control of a traveler who ends up stranded in Egypt, has their ship stolen, and are now trapped within a pyramid! Thus, it’s up to you to escape the pyramid and every trap within…
Presentation
Similar to the prior 8-Bit Legit ports, you have a scan of the real life instruction manual and some basic border options. Still no screen size or save state options sadly. Still, the game itself looks pretty darn nice for a modern NES title, with bright colors, well shaded stills to illustrate the room transitions, and even a moment late in the game where an eerie pair of eyes show up, looking almost as if a Game Boy Camera scanned them in.
While the interface is very basic, it gets the job done, and despite the backgrounds being relatively identical, Dead Tomb doesn’t look ugly by any means and still ends up looking more refined than a lot of the adventure games the NES/Famicom did get back in the day. The music is a set of repetitive songs that are catchy, but not much else to write home about, though I did like the ending theme a bit more.
Gameplay
Dead Tomb is an adventure game, but unlike a lot of the NES’s more notable ones such as Portopia, Tombs & Treasure and Maniac Mansion, this one is entirely controlled with your character moving around each screen and interacting with objects via button presses. You walk up to something that your character shows interest in, hit the A button, and can choose from a ton of different options. Usually you just want to look at or try to move something, but occasionally you’ll end up using other commands such as tying an object together or cutting something with a knife. These other commands are rarely used though, with some only needing to be used once or twice during the entire adventure.
You also have an inventory you build up over time, with the various items collected in the pyramid. However, you seldom need to go into this menu to actually use any of them, as usually a command will just trigger the item when you have it in your possession, making the game pretty simple to get into, and honestly one you could get through by brute forcing every command upon reaching a new observable object.
Each part of the pyramid is broken into several rooms connected by branching paths, and thus most of your time will be going through a small set of rooms, clearing them out of their items by solving little puzzles, and then gaining the item needed to reach the next set of the pyramid. There’s very, very little backtracking required, and the game is relatively linear and stress free. That doesn’t mean Dead Tomb is a brainless cakewalk by any means, as you will have to deal with traps and other situations that will kill your player. However, dying just makes you reset the current room you were in, so there’s no loss of progress to worry about.
Honestly, I was a bit surprised by how much I enjoyed the game once I got into the swing of it, even though it is remarkably simple. Once you get an idea on what to do, you can make it through most of the game relatively quickly, and even the trickier rooms felt more like “Aha!” solutions worth discovering compared to something nonsensical requiring you to use a guide. In no time at all I found my way through most of the pyramid on my own, and even beat the game outright in roughly an hour or so of game time. Sadly, there’s no difficulties or randomization available to make the game different on a replay, and the achievement set in this game is so simple you’ll likely get all of them within minutes, but at least Dead Tomb is a very fun romp for the short time it lasts, and the lack of frustration really helps it be more approachable.
Conclusion
Overall, here you have a rock solid port of a very fun modern adventure game. Even with the lack of save states, the game has a pretty solid password system, and the entire adventure is short enough you could marathon through the entirety of it all in a hour or two.
Sure, you’ll die a lot, there’ll be some funny secrets to discover here and there, and there’s a ton of trial and error, but when the game really isn’t all that frustrating and each solution is one step closer to the ultimate end goal, I found that Dead Tomb quickly became a nice, fun little romp that was worth playing through to the very end. The few times I got stuck, I quickly realized when looking for the solution that it was often a lot easier than the situations seemed to be, and with none of the puzzles in this game being too outlandish, I definitely recommend just going in blind and having a fun time figuring your way out to the very end.
There’s not anything extra to do after beating the game, but for $5 I find the quality of the experience to still be well worth the asking price, and a solid homebrew all around that I recommend clearing at least once.
I give Dead Tomb a 7 out of 10.