Luxor 2

Luxor 2 is an action-oriented casual puzzle game developed by MumboJumbo. First released in 2006, it is the sequel to the original Luxor, which was released in 2005. The title can be played online at several different sites, and can be purchased for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Xbox Live Arcade.

The game's console debut was on April 4, 2007, with its release via Xbox Live Arcade. It can be purchased directly from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Luxor 2 is also available in a Windows Vista-only version from MSN Games which includes improved graphics over the previous computer versions.

Gameplay

The game challenges the user to eliminate colored magical spheres by causing three or more spheres of the same color to collide. Players do this primarily by shooting additional spheres from a winged scarab which they guide back and forth along the bottom of the screen. When spheres are eliminated, adjacent spheres which now form a segment of three or more or the same color will also explode in a chain reaction.

During gameplay, the on-screen spheres continuously move forward, pushed by additional small scarabs. If any sphere reaches the player's pyramid, he or she loses a life and is forced to restart the stage. If the player succeeds in eliminating a certain number of spheres without this occurring, new spheres cease to arrive and the level can be completed by removing those which remain.

There are a total of 88 rounds of increasing difficulty, plus 13 bonus rounds which the player can play through. In "Story mode", the player earns titles/rankings as he or she progresses through the various levels. Multiple difficulty settings are available as well, with play at higher settings yielding higher scores.

Stages and Rounds

Luxor calls everything that other games might call a "round" or a "level" a "stage". However, there is a clear hierarchy of stages. Thus "Stage 1" comprises rounds 1-1 through 1-4. Stage two has rounds 2-1 through 2-5. When one completes a stage, Luxor puts up a particular screen that says "stage complete". It doesn't put up a "stage complete" screen after round 1-1 or 1-2, but only after 1-4, right before the number changes to 2-1. On the other hand, when you play round 1-2, Luxor calls it "stage 1-2". Thus the creators of Luxor suffered from imprecision in language. They should have used the words "round" and "stage", but they call everything a stage. So what does a Wikipedia author do? We choose to call the individual games "rounds" and the groups of rounds "stages". It is what the authors of Luxor meant, just not what they said. We have previously said that there are 88 rounds in regular gameplay. Now we can say that these 88 rounds are organized into 14 stages. Other authors that work on this entry are urged to consistently use the terms stages and rounds.

Scoring

In general, 100 points are awarded for each sphere destroyed. The simple destruction of 3 spheres thus earns 300 points, 4 spheres 400, etc. However, if you arrange things such that you destroy 3 spheres which bring together 3 more spheres, the second set of spheres has a 2X multiplier. With cleverness, you can arrange things such that you have several chain reactions in a row with linearly increasing multipliers at every stage of the chain reaction.

At the end of every round (and at times during the round) jewels, rings, and coins are freed. Every stage has coins, and coins have a value of 250 points at all stages of game play (One collects coins less for their value than because every 30 coins earns an extra life.) In contrast to the behavior of coins, jewel and ring values increase in a simple pattern as play progresses[2]. Every stage has two types of jewel and one type of ring. Below are the listed the jewels and rings in the first five stages of play:

Additional power-ups are modeled after those from existing games, such as one which slows down the movement of the spheres, and one which causes the spheres to move backward for a short while.

Cheats

In the Options menu, press the Page Up and Page Down at the same to activate the cheat mode. A new button, "Cheats", will appear. It will be valid only to this specific profile. Cheat mode makes all stages and levels of game play accessible

There are said to be other hot-keys that, once in cheat mode, convey specific powers. In direct testing, none of the hot-keys seemed to work, so they are not included here.

SCREENSHOTS