From Oh Mummy to Mummy Scape: remaking a 1984 Amstrad classic
Oh Mummy was a tiny Amstrad CPC game about walking around boxes in a pyramid. Here's what made it so addictive, what we kept, and what we added to make Mummy Scape our own.
Some games are big because of what they show you. Oh Mummy was big because of what it hid.
Gem Software made it in 1983, and in 1984 Amsoft brought it to the Amstrad CPC 464. It often came in the bundle of free games you got with the computer, which is why so many of us played it. You were an archaeologist in a pyramid. The floor was a grid of corridors around closed boxes, and every step you took left footprints behind you. Walk all the way around a box and it opened.
That was the whole idea, and it was enough.
I played it with my brothers. I must have been 8 or 9 when we started, and we kept playing it for years, all of us around an Amstrad with a green phosphor screen. The controls were Q and A for up and down, O and P for left and right. Sometimes one brother took Q and A and another took O and P, and steering one explorer between two people was hilarious. It made us so nervous! Back then the graphics were very simple and you had to bring a lot of imagination, but we lived every second of it.
Why it was so addictive
Every box was a small bet. Inside there might be a key, a tomb, a scroll that let you destroy one mummy, a mummy that climbed out and came after you, or nothing at all. You needed both the key and the tomb to finish a level, and a mummy you woke up followed you into the next pyramid. All of it to a looping tune based on “The Streets of Cairo”, the old snake-charmer melody.
So every corridor was a choice. Open one more box, or head for the exit while you still could? The mummies made that choice harder with every box you opened. The rules fit in one sentence, and you were still thinking about them on the way to school.
Its idea is often compared to Konami’s arcade game Amidar (1981), where you also traced the edges of a grid to fill boxes. Oh Mummy put it in a pyramid and turned the boxes into surprises.
What we kept
When we started Mummy Scape, the rule was simple: don’t break what worked.
- Your explorer still leaves footprints, so you can see where you’ve been and which columns are almost done.
- A column still cracks open once you’ve walked all four sides. Shared sides count for both neighbours, so a smart route opens two at once.
- Columns still hide gold, the key or a mummy, and you never know which until it opens.
- Clearing every column doesn’t end the level. Finding the key does, and you still have to walk out of the door.
What we added
This is where Mummy Scape stops being a remake and becomes our own game.
In the original, mummies simply chased you. Ours listen. They hear your footsteps through the corridors and see straight ahead. Walk quietly and they might shuffle past. Run and they come. From level 7 on, they start guessing where you’re heading.
There’s no timer with numbers on screen, just an hourglass. Sand runs out, and some columns hide more sand. You feel the time rather than read it.
Some columns hold Magic Flames, extra lives you carry from level to level, but only if you make it out the door. The same goes for coins: die on the way out and the tomb keeps them.
Others hold a curse: darkness that leaves you with only a flashlight, a mist over the floor, or a swarm of scarabs. Each one changes how you plan the next route.
The key never appears until every mummy in the level is awake, so you can’t sneak out early. You face the full tomb first.
Over twenty levels the new ideas arrive one at a time, up to 8×8 tombs with five mummies awake.
And it’s all in 3D now: torchlight, carved walls and columns that sink into the floor when they open. The camera looks down at an angle, so the grid still reads as clearly as it did on that green screen.
Oh Mummy is the first game I remember. Bringing it to phones and tablets was a dream, and it has finally come true.
Play it
Mummy Scape is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android phones and tablets, with no ads and no purchases.
If you played Oh Mummy back then, we’d love to know what you think. And if you never did, now you know where the footprints come from.