The Sands of Egypt (Steve Bjork) is an early animated game that appeared for several computer systems including the Coco. There has been a resurgence of interest in this game via Apple and Coco emulators and several requests for walk-throughs have appeared in newsgroups. What follows is not a walk-through in the usual sense, but rather help with syntax and two critical maps of the desert and plateau.

    As with most adventure games, finding the nouns and verbs that the game accepts is part of the "fun." Sands also makes use of prepositions in a fashion that can be very frustrating. When asked the questions, "With what?", "To what?", or "Where?" it is necessary to respond, "with xxxx", "to xxxx", or "on xxxx". If you leave off the preposition, the game will think you are using a noun or verb and respond inappropriately.

    The story line is very simple and I repeat it here only for those who don't have game instructions. You are Sir Percy, left in the Sahara by guides with only a compass. You have been looking for the Tomb of Ra and intend to continue the search alone or die trying.
    Six directions north, east, south, west, up, and down are possible if shown on the game compass. I single letter with [ENTER] will suffice. Nouns can be abreviated with first four letters of the word. As you aquire objects, you can get the list by typing INV [ENTER]. The game is scored by the number of moves required to complete it. A score in the eighties should be possible once you have learned the game and found the shortest (if illogical) sequence. Type SCORE [ENTER] to get your score at any time.
    The game can be saved and reloaded  SAVE [ENTER] or LOAD [ENTER] where you may select a number from 1 - 9. Q(UIT) [ENTER] will get you out of the game.

    You must make maps to get low scores in this game. However, you can't make maps until you have items to leave in a scene to identify a location; all desert looks the same. The catch is that you won't have any items to leave until you map the desert and acquire object, but you can't map without object.
    I  believe that all a gamester needs are maps of the desert to enjoy this game. Just go to the links below.
 The plateau and start of the game.   The desert and second part of the game.

    For those of you who own the original Coco game disks but can't get the game to run on an emulator see the following:  Emulator patch for The Sands of Egypt.