Treasures of the Aegean
Review

Treasures of the Aegean (2021) is a Tin Tin-style tomb raiding adventure game. You are Marie Taylor and unveil the secrets of a forgotten kingdom trapped in an endless time loop. To do this, in 15 minute runs you explore a hand-drawn world to recover valuable relics, map the caves and gather clues to solve puzzles and prevent history from repeating itself forever.

Play involves speedy running, jumping and climbing to find new areas of the island as the clock ticks down. More than just a race, you slowly discover the structure of the Minoan society, how they arranged civic responsibilities and dealt with money and work.

Each run adds more information to the persistent map that helps you solve key puzzles, before the world blows up and the loop restarts. You slowly find puzzles to solve that unravel the time looping conundrum.

Unlike other exploration platform games, you have all your abilities from the start. You can go pretty much everywhere, bar a little puzzle solving and some minor abilities. The amount you can do is a bit overwhelming at first, but as you chip away at it in each of your 15 minute runs you become familiar with the world. Also, because you start each of your runs from a different location, you get sample a wide range of environments before you have uncovered how they are all linked together.

The result is not only an unusual platforming game, but one that pairs artwork and soundtrack with intriguing exploration of this Bronze Age Aegean civilisation.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Treasures of the Aegean 2 years ago.