Pharaoh´s Gulo Gulo

The title sounds like mezze/kareoke night in ancient Egypt because Pharaoh’s Gulo Gulo is based on an older game with a similar name. But this one has pharaohs.

Or more specifically, mummies. A mummy. A mummy that wants to put a curse on you.

You the players are all traveling across the board, through the pyramid, and into the tomb itself, where the player who lifts the curse wins the game. Some mummy curses aren’t particularly child-friendly, but this one is suitable for almost any age: it takes the form of coloured balls in a little wooden bowl. On your turn you choose how far to move, and because each space on the journey has a coloured marker in it (assigned randomly) you have to take a ball of the matching colour out of the bowl, using just one hand.

But also nestling in the bowl is the Pharaoh’s Staff – a little wooden stick that, if it falls out or touches the table at all, means a landslide! You go back to the beginning (if you’ve made it to the pyramid, you only go back to the entrance).

Some spaces have scarab beetles on them, and if you land here successfully, you get to pick up a scarab. They’re good for two things – you need two of them to enter the tomb at the end of your journey, and one of them to ward off the mummy himself if you’re unlucky enough to share a space with him. Some markers in the pyramid will project the mummy out of the tomb towards you. Once a player has entered the tomb and successfully navigated the last two markers (i.e. removed matching balls from the bowl) – they win!