The Collection Chamber: PYRAMID: CHALLENGE OF THE PHARAOH'S DREAM

Master the Tools and Secrets of Ancient Egypt

Without warning, you're hurled back in time by the ancient gods, challenged to make a young Pharaoh's dream into reality. Build a majestic pyramid to the height of one hundred men, using only the tools of the time... while uncovering the mysteries of an ancient culture.

Live a fantastic adventure based on ancient Egyptian history. Understand the culture, work with people , and unveil the mysteries.

Explore an ancient pyramid site during the reign of the pharaohs. Control "virtual flight" through the Nile River Valley recreated by Academy Award- winner Dream Quest Images.

Take on historically real challenges as you build the pyramid's seven levels. Use tools and methods of the time to advance through 20 years of construction.

LEARN ABOUT
The people and culture of ancient Egypt
The process of building a great pyramid
The tools and technology of ancient times
Details of daily life along the Nile
Applying logic, science, and math to solve problems

~ from the back of the box

Ancient Egypt is a staple subject in primary-school education. With spooky mummies, gods with animal heads and those enormously pointy tombs, it's a memorable term or two that always sparked my imagination. It's also a subject particularly suited to a point-and-click adventure. I've even reviewed a good number of them on this very site. Pyramid: Challenge of the Pharaoh's Dream errs on the more educational side of the adventure game, plonking you in ancient Egypt with the task of building one of those triangular tombs. Released by McGraw-Hill Home Interactive in 1996 and developed by Knowledge Adventure, it's very much a product of the great CD-ROM edutainment boom, but it makes a surprisingly good stab at turning a history lesson into an adventure.

The story begins with you as a modern-day archaeologist visiting Egypt, only to find your research taking a rather unexpected turn when the gods Anubis and Ra transport you back to the distant past. You see, the Pharaoh has had a dream. He wants a magnificent pyramid constructed as his eternal resting place, and naturally the ancient Egyptians are going to need a modern archaeologist to sort it all out. It's a suitably fanciful interpretation of ancient Egyptian mythology, with divine intervention providing a convenient excuse for you to wander around doing jobs that would otherwise be way above the pay grade of an archaeologist. Fortunately, nobody seems particularly concerned that their new pyramid architect has just arrived from the twentieth century.

It seems every educational adventure game must include a jigsaw puzzle of some sort (left).
Your journal will be updated with historical info about any interactive hotspot you encounter (right).

Visually, Pyramid makes a strong first impression. The game combines attractive cartoon animation with pre-rendered environments, giving the various marketplaces, construction sites, and other locations a colourful and inviting appearance. Dream Quest Images, better known for its work in visual effects (they won Oscars for their work on The Abyss and Total Recall), handled the game's pre-rendered environments, giving the production a noticeably higher quality than many other educational CD-ROMs of the period. The audio is equally ambitious, with the characters fully voiced by a sizeable cast who sound marginally familiar to watchers of Saturday-morning cartoons. Names in the credits include Jeff Corey (Spider-Man: The Animated Series), Lani Minella (Nightmare Ned and a whole bunch of video games) and Tony Pope (Creepy Crawlers, Zorro) among many others. Their broad, comedic delivery makes all the historical information feel far from boring.

As you progress, information about Egyptian life and technology is recorded in a notebook, allowing you to consult what you have discovered along the way. The game covers subjects ranging from pyramid construction and building tools to food, beer, burial practices and the organisation of everyday life. These paragraphs don't just appear, but supplement an interactive task you complete in the game. Instead of simply telling you that the Egyptians made beer, it lets you actually go through the process of how they made it. If there is one omission, it's in how dark the era could be. Compared with the more serious historical recreations of Cryo's Egypt adventures, Pyramid is considerably more sanitised for its younger audience, presenting ancient life as a colourful, comedic playground rather than dwelling on its less pleasant realities. There is nevertheless an admirable amount of information packed beneath the cartoon exterior.

Click on the Ankh symbol to leave the current area (left).
Finding true north in the rather awkward star puzzle (right).

The game's central structure revolves around the Pharaoh's rather demanding mandate. His pyramid must face strictly north, it must reach a height of 100 men, it must be completed within the Pharaoh's lifetime, and it must serve as a beacon to the sun god Ra. Each objective becomes an excuse for another little adventure, with scrolls awarded for completing the various tests and then used to progress through the game. The problem is that while Pyramid does a good job of integrating these challenges into its educational subject matter, the actual puzzles are aren't particularly inventive or difficult. There are plenty of familiar adventure-game staples, including jigsaws, mazes, and even a recreation of the Egyptian board game Senet. The best challenges ask you to recreate tasks from the time period such as making papyrus or brewing beer. To do the latter, you'll need to locate the correct market stall and add bread loaves to a large pot. A slave will then stomp on it before you can strain the mixture into bottles and seal them. I don't know how accurate this is, but in terms of game design it's not exactly challenging though the production design makes it enjoyable nonetheless.

The true-north puzzle is perhaps a better example of Pyramid's educational approach, even if it is still mechanically quite simple. To determine the correct orientation for the pyramid, you first have to navigate a swamp to find an astronomer, with the route itself functioning as a maze. Once the astronomer has been located, he uses his staff to help establish the correct direction, leading into a star-based puzzle in which you must identify the relevant celestial marker. Elsewhere, similar challenges involve making papyrus, playing Senet, preparing food and helping the workers who are constructing the pyramid. The puzzles aren't likely to leave seasoned adventure-game veterans stumped, but they usually have some connection to what the game is trying to teach, which is considerably more important here than novelty.

The second disc contains a substantial interactive documentary detailing the making of the game.

Sadly, there isn't any video about ancient Egypt, but your journal will be fully filled out.

The developers were obviously proud of their work. Disc 2 contains an entire interactive documentary about its production, accessed by clicking the clapper-board side of the pyramid on the main menu. It provides an unusually detailed look behind the scenes, covering areas such as programming and animation while also taking you into the recording sessions to see the voice actors and foley artists at work. Few games of the era included such extravagance (I can only think of Myst and its single movie file interviewing Rand Miller) but its inclusion is an excellent way of giving the curious a glimpse of how games were actually made. The game's production was clearly a substantial undertaking, and that ambition is reflected in the finished product. There was even an intended Sega Saturn port, although it never became a commercial release. A Saturn prototype uncovered in 2026 confirms that the project had reached the tech-demo stage before being cancelled.

Pyramid: Challenge of the Pharaoh's Dream is an entertaining slice of mid-'90s edutainment, and one that benefits enormously from its production values. The cartoon presentation, extensive voice acting, attractive environments and lavish behind-the-scenes material give it considerably more personality than its educational remit might suggest. More importantly, the historical information is woven into the adventure rather than simply dumped into a reference section, whether you are brewing beer, finding true north or preparing the Pharaoh for his eventual journey into the afterlife. The main weakness is that the puzzle design itself is fairly generic and easy, but then this is a game for kids. Even so, Pyramid is a charming, good-natured monument to the era when educational CD-ROMs were trying their very best to make history exciting.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox running Microsoft Windows 3.1 to get the game working on modern systems. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 11.

File Size: 999 Mb. Install Size: 1.14 Gb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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