Sutek's Tomb

Introduction

Legend has it that there was an ancient Geb named Sutek. He was stronger, fitter, and cleverer than the other Gebs, and was praised by all for his courage and wisdom. When he died, they built him a tomb that was the same shape as him (known as a Gebmid). It had four triangular sides, and a square base. There are now many Gebmids around the Lost Desert, but Sutek's was the first. To stop people getting at Sutek's riches (millions of Neopoints), his advisers placed a combination lock on the tomb. Strange symbols adorned an impassable door. For the person who could figure out the pattern to unlock the tomb, well, he would be the wealthiest person alive! This game is excellent if you're bored since it has a fun zen mode, but if you hate slow puzzle games, this one may not be for you.

Controls & Instructions

In order to get points for this game, you must swap two adjacent tiles to line up three, four, or five of the same tiles with your mouse. The more tiles you line up, the more points you get. In easy mode, a combo of 3 tiles gives you 3 points, a combo of 4 tiles gives you 9 points, and a combo of 5 tiles gives you 21 points. In hard mode, a combo of 3 gives you 10 points, a combo of 4 gives you 30 points, and a combo of 5 gives you a whopping 70 points. Also keep in mind that a tile may be used in more than one combo at once. For example, if you have a "T" shape with five of the same kind of tile, it will count as two separate sets of three and give you 20 points.

In zen mode, each combo only gives you 1 point, but you will have unlimited time, so if you really want the avatar and you have a lot of time on your hands, you could attempt it. Keep in mind, however, that if you run out of moves and the board reshuffles, your points are set back to zero. Also, in hard and zen modes, you will have to contend with 2 extra tile types and a 10x10 grid (as opposed to a 8x8 grid in easy mode). The tiles that you will see in easy mode are:

Gem | Sun | Tree | Geb | Head

And once you get to hard or zen mode, you will start to see these tiles too:

Scarab | Shrine

Special Tiles

There are 5 special tiles that you could see in the game. They are listed below in order from most common to super rare.

	Lucky Coin: These coins act as wildcards and can be used with any of the other tiles in the game. Save these for large combos or when you're really stuck.
	Bomb: If you can get a bomb to drop 2 or more blocks down, it will blow up the whole column above it, earning you points for the number of tiles it blows up. If three bombs are lined up, they will be removed like any other group of three. If a bomb reaches the bottom of the board without blowing up, you will get 5 points and it will disappear.
	Ankh: If you can get one of these old artifacts to get to the very bottom of the grid, it will destroy the whole column it is in as well as the whole bottom row. This earns you a ton of points!
	Painted Scarab: Painted Scarabs are almost the same as Ankhs except when they hit the bottom row they only destroy the column they were in, not the bottom row. They still give you a ton of points though!
	TPOSG: The Phantom Orange Shirt Guy is a programmer at neopets and enjoys adding himself to a lot of the games he programs. This one is no exception. If you happen to get TPOSG, you are very lucky as he is the rarest tile in the game. If you can get him to the bottom of the grid, he will destroy every single tile giving you 500 points!

If you ever see one of the last three items, don't start searching for ways to get them to the bottom. Continue playing the game as you normally would but look right under or near them more than elsewhere and beware, if you ever run out of moves and the grid reshuffles, you're out of luck because the special tiles wont come back.

Tips & Strategies

The game itself is very easy. Getting all the points you need within the time limit is the hard part. However, there are a few strategies that will help you on your way to the top of the high score list.

Make matches quickly, even if they are of only 3 tiles at a time, since tiles will fall down every time you make a match. Also, try making horizontal matches instead of vertical ones, since they will open up more opportunities for new matches.

This next cheat takes a bit of time, but is very useful if you are near 2000 points to get the avatar or near a high score with very little time left. What you do is very quickly take a screenshot (if you don't know how, see our Screenshot guide) and pause the game. Then go to paint, or any other image editor you might have handy, and look for possible combos. Once you have a few and you know where they are, go back to the game, play and get the points. Keep in mind you can only pause three times throughout your game. This method is only helpful to get your last couple of points when you're almost out of time.

Combos of 4 or 5 tiles will give you extra time. This is very helpful if you are trying to get a high score or the avatar, since you get more opportunities to get points.

The best way to get more options on the board is to make matches near the bottom of the board, since more pieces will drop down and give you more available matches.

One great way to practice for high scores is to play match-3 games such as Bejeweled. I personally like to play Bejeweled Blitz, which is a one-minute round of Bejeweled created for Facebook as an application. You can even practice on Apple mobile devices if you purchase Bejeweled 2 through the App Store.

One game mode that lots of people like to choose is either easy or normal, because they think that hard mode is too difficult. However, this really isn't the case once you get used to the game. Hard mode offers many more opportunities for matches (and combos!) because of the increased board size and the addition of the Scarab and Shrine tiles. With hard mode, you can easily accumulate hundreds of points quickly once you build up your abilities! The only real deterrent experienced players face in Sutek's Tomb is the race against the clock.

Cheat Codes!

There are two different codes for this game. They are:

plzsutekcanihavemoretime - Type this code in anytime to gain 30 more seconds. This is a very helpful (and long) code and is best to be used when you only have 10 - 20 seconds left. To not waste any time typing this code in, pause the game and type everything but the last letter, the e. Then, resume the game and press e to activate the code. Again, the best way to gain time is to create combos of 4 or 5 tiles!

pyramibread - You can type this code in any time in the game as many times as you want and it will show you a possible match. Usually this code doesn't help because it takes longer to type the code than it does to find another move. Only use this code when you are really stuck.

Conclusion

Sutek's Tomb is an easy-to-learn game that, with practice, can be very easy to score highly in. Don't forget to use the cheats and combos of 4 or 5 tiles in order to keep that hourglass from running out.

Sutek's Tomb also has it's own Neopedia Article !