Picking up treasure may trigger a trap or traps (indicated on the treasure cards), which can make you lose one or more lives. When you reach a treasure room that hasn't been emptied by an opponent, you may stop and pick-up treasures in the form of cards from a face down deck (those pretty ones with photos of actual Egyptian artifacts that I mentioned earlier). Throwing these trapped tiles down in an opponent's path to slow him down was a pretty common strategy in our game. The distribution of the deck makes these dull event cards pretty much a wash - gain a life this time, lose a life next time, whatever. Since this is a race game, it's being forced to stop moving that is the pain and horror of these tiles. It would be far cooler if they had some kind of strange and interesting event related to exploring a tomb that explained why you lost a life, gained a life or earned protection. They all have some long, boring educational text about Egyptian mythology or something like that on them. They are pretty generic, and boil down to lose a life, gain a life, or save this card to prevent losing a life in the future. These cards are the most disappointing part of the game. There are some tiles that are "trapped" and make you stop moving, and draw an event card.
After laying your three tiles, you roll special dice to move along your path. On your turn you pick three random corridor tiles out of a bag, and place them adjacent to any other corridor tile or treasure room on the board, which means you could use them to continue your own path, or you could use them to shoot your opponents off in the wrong direction, or even trap them in a dead-end. Players lay corridor tiles (straights, right angles, three way intersections, and four way intersections) on a square, gridded board in an attempt to create paths to several treasure rooms. Like DungeonQuest and The Adventurers, it is absolutely possible for all players to die, and for everybody to lose the game.
In Secrets of the Tombs, players are archeologists, or perhaps just tomb robbers, racing to be the first to collect a certain amount of treasure and get out of the tomb alive. Surprisingly, there is actually an enjoyably trashy game in the box. I would expect a game like this to be a dreadful roll and move affair, or possibly a dreary set collection game. Other cards, if you bother to read them, have information about Egyptian mythology. As such, it contains lovely components, including cards with photos of actual Egyptian artifacts and educational text descriptions. Secrets of the Tombs was clearly designed by Martin Wallace to be sold in the British Museum's gift shop.
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