An involving, multi-character isometric adventure set in an Egyptian tomb, Pyracurse was written by Mark Goodall and Keith Prosser and published by Hewson in 1986.

You take control of a party of four (a woman, two men, and a dog…), on a rescue mission to find a lost scientist. Each character has individual strengths and weaknesses. Frozbie the dog, for example, can dig up buried items. Very useful in certain situations.

Controlling the characters is done via the little red little menu at the bottom of the screen and either joystick or keys. You choose a character and put them into “mobile mode”, then you can take them for a manual walk. Items found when wandering around can be picked up by simply walking over them. An inventory is also accessible via the small, red menu.

A variety of monsters patrol the tomb. Some will chase any of the party members on sight, while others will only activate when approached. Each character has their own life bar and will snuff it if it reaches zero. Exploring can be quite tense for a tiny little 48K game… That’s what made Pyracurse a critical hit at the time, and still makes it worth a play now.

More: Pyracurse on Wikipedia