Xider Games has announced today the first details pertaining to the Nintendo DS conversion of the humorous PC point-and-click adventure game, Ankh.

The game’s storyline follows Assil, a confident young Egyptian teenager with one big problem:

“After stealing the Great Pyramid key to organise a party for his friends, receives a death curse by accidentally breaking one of the holy urns. This leaves him just a few hours to prevent his very existence being erased. As fate would have it Assil stumbles across a magic Ankh and the girl of his dreams. Using all their cunning they must find a way through Ankh’s mysterious and inspiring setting to rid Assil of his curse.”

As you may well imagine, the handheld’s stylus provides a brilliant substitute for the point-and-clicking action of a PC mouse, in a genre that is developers seem to have criminally ignored to a greater extent on the Nintendo DS.

Walk like an Egyptian…

“With Ankh we have tried to remain faithful to the spirit of past Point and Click adventures,” said Jan Klose, project manager, Deck 13 Interactive. “While the crucial ingredients of humour, strong storyline, fun puzzle elements and meaningful character interaction remain key to the game’s overall appeal, we’re now able to add the kind of graphical polish previously unseen in the genre.”

Ankh, a direct port of the original PC game released in 2005 features wave after wave of riddles, puzzles and charming characters in a game that harks back to an era where point-one-click titles were all the rage, typified by their well crafted gameplay elements and skilfully crafted scripts.

Viva Media CEO Carlo Voelker comments, “The heart and soul of any great adventure game lies in its characters and the obstacles that they face. Ankh provides players with truly lovable characters, in-depth gameplay, breathtaking visuals, and devilishly fun black-humor.”

Let’s hope Ankh leads the way, not only to its sequel (Heart of Osiris) getting a release on the Nintendo DS, but an overall push for similar types of games on the format as a whole.