Run From Mummies will probably tickle Power Stone players as much as it does pyramid-robbing children

Local co-op for those keeping up with the Indiana Joneses

Every now and then I reflect on the statistically determined average age of a Gamer – what is it now, 36, 37? Please let it still be under 40 – and realise with alarm that, by extrapolation, a lot of the people reading this probably have children. Augh, children! Please excuse me while I go stand on a chair, clutching a broom. I’ve never understood the craze for generating smaller versions of yourself. It’s one of those weirder subcultures you read about in the papers, but rarely observe in daily life.

I do, however, understand the appeal of same-screen co-op games like Run From Mummies - which, being a bloodless comedy dungeon romp, seems like a fair pick for those encumbered with boisterous selfspawn. Don’t worry, the “mummies” of the title are just regular old disembowelled corpses wrapped in cloth, not those sinister, non-embalmed “mothers” you’ve been hearing about down the grocers.

Run From Mummies is a game about archaeology in much the same way that Whack-A-Mole is a game about moles. You and up to three friends are tourists trapped in a giant pyramid filled with rambling undead, spike traps and laser-beam statue bosses. Your only weapon is a camera – you can stun the inhospitable relics and mess with other objects using the flash, in what is probably a serviceable metaphor for the effects of tourism on archaeological sites generally. Snapping a picture means standing still while an AOE triangle extends from your feet, however, so try not to do it whilst running away from a rolling boulder.

There’s a demo for Run From Mummies on Steam. The full game spans seven regions linked by hand-drawn cutscenes that have reasonable Two Point energy. There are apparently “secrets” and “lore” to uncover, but while I can get behind probing layouts for sliding walls, I’m not sure plumping the codex is the point of a game like this. It reminds me a bit of Sega Dreamcast classic Power Stone, except that it’s top-down and 2D. Undoubtedly, half the fun will be getting in each others’ way.

Too cartoonish for your tastes? I can only assume you have older children between the ages of ten and twenty, “teen-agers” if you will, who think 2D is way uncool, ma. Perhaps they’ll be happier with the new Indiana Jones game. It’s fully 3D, boasting the finest polygons Microsoft's money can excavate from all the programmer brains they've got stowed in the cellar. It also has a photography mechanic where the point is actually to take photos of stuff, rather than giving hangry skeletons a seizure. Bit off-the-wall, but let's see where it goes.