by Amr (@siegarettes)

• Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan 
• Developer: Collectorvision Games
• Publisher: Collectorvision Games
• Switch, PC

Sydney Hunter wastes no time diving into every adventurer trope, then immediately lampshading them. The titular Indiana Jones imitator drops right into an ancient temple, meets the native people, and sets out to prevent an ancient curse from stopping the progress of time itself. Sydney doesn’t understand the local language, so the first stop is to pick up an ancient artifact to let you understand them. Sort of. Turns out they understand you, and the whole ancient artifact thing is just a bit of fun they were having with you. They even point out that “Mayan” is incorrect, as the people themselves are called the Maya. 

That’s about the spirit of things in Sydney Hunter. It’s familiar by design, playing out as a tribute to both those adventurer tropes, and the iterations of them presented in games like Montezuma’s Revenge. Get the red key to open red doors, and whip some bats along the way. Your enjoyment will be largely dependent on your level of fatigue with the theming. 

Thankfully, it’s generally a good one of those. Whipping feels good, and the single screen challenges that make up each level provides you with a series of small problems that are fun to work out. My biggest complaint is that death drops all keys you reached before the last checkpoint, resulting in repeating those challenges more times than I’d like. Losing treasure on death provides enough tension to keep you alert and encourage methodical play, but there were a few too many long stretches between checkpoints that made me wish I could just book it to the next area when I died. 

If you need another ancient ruin in your life Sydney Hunter has you covered. Solid level design keeps its temples enjoyable to explore, with a few good boss fights to cap each of them off. Just makes sure that these temples don’t turn into your tomb.