What did the Egyptians ever do for us, eh? Nothing. Apart from building the only surviving ancient wonder of the world, the pyramids. And inventing writing (well, hieroglyphics). And black ink, paper, the leap year and sails. Oh, and they also inspired the Ankh series of adventure games from Xider.

This is the second point-and-clicker to be set in ancient Egypt, and it begins with the eponymous Ankh being nicked from our hapless hero, Assil. His mission is obvious: to retrieve the damned thing before miscellaneous nefarious acts are perpetrated. You don't always play the part of Assil, though, switching into other roles, such as his love interest Thara, at different points during the game.

The graphics are drawn in a pleasant enough cartoon style, and the interface is kept simple and works very nicely, so some important boxes are ticked there. In terms of style, Ankh is comparable to the likes of Monkey Island in that it very much shoots for the humour angle. However, it's not nearly as sophisticated as the classic LucasArts adventures and some of the jokes are pretty laboured. Nevertheless, there are some good gags and chuckles to be had.

When it comes to the puzzles, the designers have come up with an admirable collection of interesting conundrums. They're generally pretty logical and satisfying to solve, with nothing too much in the way of ridiculous tangents. They do tend to err on the side of simplicity and it's all a matter of subjective taste where adventures are concerned, but we'd rather this than leaning towards frustration.

The only frustrations we encountered here were minor niggles with the game engine. It's slightly annoying that when you click on objects to examine them, Assil has to walk around and stand in a certain position before he reports his findings. This isn't a huge deal, it just means that at times you have to wait three or four seconds for no real reason. Also, there are occasions when some of the characters speak over the top of each other, so you can't hear anything but a garbled mess.

Aside from these small flaws, this is an entertaining and amusing adventure, although as we've already mentioned, some of the jokes fall flat. It's no Monkey Island, but it is reminiscent of those days and veteran gamers will doubtless enjoy the nostalgia. Speaking of which, the game even comes with a code wheel as copy protection! We never thought we'd see one of those again.

Although the humour is rather hit and miss, there are some laughs to be had here and overall Ankh is a quality adventure with some well designed puzzles. They can err on the simple side at times, but we'd rather that than straying into the obtuse.