At a THQ press event in the UK yesterday, we were able to check out a prealpha version of Eurocom's adventure game Sphinx. The game, which has been in development for over two years, will see players alternately assuming control of the titular character Sphinx and the mummified King Tut known simply as Mummy.

　　At the start of the game, Sphinx and Mummy have no connection with each other, save for the fact that in the opening cutscene Sphinx witnesses Mummy's capture. When playing as Mummy, the locales in the game will be confined to the interior of the prison fortress he is incarcerated in--locations that Sphinx will also visit after he completes the colorful outdoor levels and the two characters' storylines begin to converge. Sphinx and Mummy have very different abilities for players to master as they progress through the game, the most interesting of which is Sphinx's metamorphosis into a winged lion for levels that involve chases or aerial combat. Sphinx's largely action-based levels will account for around 70 percent of the gameplay, while the other 30 percent will see players solving a series of increasingly masochistic puzzles as Mummy attempts to escape from his captors.

　　Although the Sphinx levels certainly aren't guilty of taking themselves too seriously, the Mummy levels definitely appear to serve as comic relief. The first puzzle we were shown involved Mummy deliberately electrocuting himself and then having to avoid pools of water to reach a switch. While electrocuted, the frail-looking Mummy character was amusingly animated and had visible bolts of electricity writhing around his bandages. Other puzzles in the game will see Mummy enduring all manner of strange status changes, including turning into a puff of smoke, shrinking, turning into a bat, being split into three smaller mummies, turning to stone, being set on fire, becoming invisible, and, after being flattened by a heavy object, being squashed to the point that he becomes 2D like a character in Parappa the Rapper. Each of Mummy's status changes comes with its own humorous animations and, like everything in Sphinx, looks pretty polished, considering the game's prealpha state.

　　Both the PS2 and GameCube versions of Sphinx are scheduled for release this fall. We'll bring you more information on the game from E3 next month, where Eurocom is hoping to hand out a playable demo of the game containing both a Mummy level and a Sphinx level. For more information on Sphinx, check out our previous coverage of the game.