Ankharia is an action puzzle where you control a small pyramid on its quest to destroy colored blocks. You can only destroy blocks which are of the same color as you. Stepping on a colored circle change your color. Sounds easy? But there are a lot of traps and enemies you must dodge; blocks that disappear only when you step on a specific tile; lock doors; walls to bomb; and mush more... so make sure you play the well made tutorial on you first time.

The game has excellent graphics. The initialization menu let you choose the resolution, the graphics quality, windowed or full-screen. You can also configure input keys and joystick buttons. Such high level of customization ensures comfortable play.

Music comes from copyright free sources. All tracks give a distinct atmosphere to each level type. Calm and relaxing for the bright surface levels, heavier theme for cave-like levels and faster beats for the lava level where you face dodging challenge.

There is a total of 30 levels (10 easy, 10 normal, 10 hard) in the game. To gain access to a level, you need to beat the lower difficulty ones and reach a certain number of beaten levels. This often gives several levels to choose from and builds an excellent difficulty curve. When I completed the 30 levels I wished I could build some myself with a level editor.

Completing each level involves a good balance of puzzle solving skills and execution skills. As there is no time constrain, you can take the time to plan your moves and minimize the risk. If you are in the mood for more action, you can always challenge your dodging skills. The blocks you destroy open new paths for you and the moving enemies. This produces compelling dynamic mazes where you can limit enemy movement until you cleared enough dodging space. Moving enemies bounce back when they hit each other or hit a spike trap. This apparently banal feature requires you to pay attention to collisions between enemies on top of the classic collisions between you and the enemies. Such emphasize on surrounding awareness builds fun challenges. The in-game menu allows you to configure the camera distance. I really like this option : the maximum distance is perfect to plan moves but unfortunately this setting resets every time we start a new level. When you lose a live, you see some stars at the respawn location and have to press the action button to respawn so you can avoid respawning just in from of an enemy.

/* BUG: When you die, if you press <Esc> to open the menu before you respawn then select "Change camera" and press the action button, you gain control of your character while the camera distance adjustment bar is open. So you can move while moving enemies remain static and left/right moves change the camera distance. You can also enter this situation if you quickly enter the menu and select "Change camera" at the start of a new level.*/

The level design is well done to make the puzzles enjoyable and it even includes some exploration elements, thanks to structures that becomes transparent when you reach them and other ones that the shop item reveals, destroy or open. The game also makes sure your character is always visible.

When we lose a level, we get back to the level selection menu with level 1 selected. It would be better if the level we just tried was selected so we can quickly retry it.

If you collect an ankh in a normal or hard stage, you can quit the stage and the ankh for that stage is considered collected although you did not complete the stage. I think you should lose the ankh like you do with collected coins.


Conclusion:
Ankharia is a very well polished game. It is fun and challenges both your brain and some of your dexterity.