Mummy Sandbox

Bizarre, short, and good

You dig in sandboxes with the goal of building yourself a body. 90's point & click songs play to soothe your mind of it's clinging to the unwholesome desire of immediate gratification. You want a body of your own, and you will dig dirt, and build sand castles to get it. You recognize that your labour will eventually bear fruit, but the image that occupies your mind is a you that is greater than the you that is now. It scratches at your internal monologue, and murders the actions you take. Why do you cling to something that will eventually happen to the detriment of your experience with the present? Your assumption is that you will lose your motivation in the noise of more sensory things. You see the fruits of your past labours of digging, and climbing as a result of that focus you've never really questioned, and find joy in them as yearly gifts of reflection from yourself to yourself. In those moments, you give yourself time to look back, and see the flame you've used to write words into others' lawns blowing out. You stare at your soil-worn spade, and your plastic sand castle mould as you reach the supposed pinnacle of everything. Of your life, and everyone elses'. You build your perfect body, and smile. On that beaming face is grind, and hustle. Like the Joker, you're a baby out of utero, and into car hand door hook car door. Your precious body is a wireframe pyramid without a bottom, and that lack of a bottom seems to suggest freedom. That same non-existence traps you in it's coil. You're now like a copper wire, limited by physical space, and forced to accept any currents, whether you can understand them before transmission, or not. You're incomplete. You should've never started on this journey to making a body; you're forever lost in the currents attracted by the lightning rod of material existence.

Mummy Sandbox is a small unique game about a mummy who is trying to find their way literally starting the game out with nothing not even the mummy's wrappings. The player is then told to collect the wrappings to become stronger and is given a shovel in which it's up to the player to travel within the different scenes or sandboxes to dig up dirt to "find items", which are then used on corpses which are also dug up by the player in order to solve basic puzzles and advance the game. Eventually, The player can also use the shovel to build platforms of dirt, which then the player can utilize to reach certain points within each sandbox to solve certain puzzles or interact with the objects. I'm used to playing point and click games as it's a great form of entertainment. However, I never have played a point and click game that's also a digging simulator with mummies. That said, I'm glad I did as I was able to discover a great short point and click game as well as also discover an Indie game creator in that of Z. Bill, who has a unique taste when it comes to making games. This is one developer I will definitely check out in the future for the games they put out as Mummy Sandbox was both fun and had the right cryptic vibe of a game I was looking for. Overall, I give the game an 8/10 for it's unique premise. The game is short, although it's definitely worth $2.99 and with this being Z.Bill's first game on Steam, I would recommend it and I don't regret the purchase. Z.Bill has made digging both fun and also cool.

Mummy Sandbox is a real little gem of a game. It does an incredible job of evoking a certain sort of surreality I associate with sitting up late at night playing DOS edutainment games rendered in the earliest forms of 3D. Each section of the game is comprised of a small gameplay area centered in a linked series of evocative and nicely arranged vignette spaces that manage to make a really strong impression despite most taking only a few minutes to figure your way through. This tone is further cemented by a delightfully gonzo art style that pairs cartoony 2d drawings with voxel models combined with a soundtrack made up of simple, yet rich, loops which make every area feel distinct. The gameplay is fun and straightforward: point and click puzzle-solving mixed with a block placing/destroying mechanic that reminds me a lot of the fun of the original Minecraft alpha, being plopped into a small space full of dirt blocks you can remove and, eventually, replace, giving it a very zen garden-like quality as you experiment with how to progress. It does an excellent job at staying fresh by slowly adding fundamental abilities and puzzle items to your kit, condensing a really pleasing rhythm of progression into a roughly one-hour experience. Took me far too long to get around to playing this, but I'm glad I finally did. If you've played any of Z. Bill's other games, you know what sort of vibes to expect, and in that regard, Mummy Sandbox does not disappoint -- would gladly get stuck blind in a ballpit for five minutes again!

"Mummy Sandbox" is truly a weird and unique little experimental piece of media with bold and surreal design. You play an animated being consisting of wiggly bloodied bandages, crepping around sandboxes and exhuming bodies. Definetly not your ordinary hubris! Go in blind with that outlandish first person adventure that lasts under an hour. A really interesing and psychedelic experience and worth the price! Try it out!

The way the mummy digs with the shovels looks like a lot of fun. I hope the mummy had as much fun as I did.

Very weird and cryptic game, if you're into that kinda stuff, go for it.