Anxys

Anxys is a frantic arcade maze game inspired very heavily by the 1982 classic Tutankham.

You are a ghost.

And, as everybody knows, ghosts are greedy.

So when an ancient tomb full of treasure appears nearby, there is really only one sensible thing to do:

Go inside and steal everything.

Unfortunately, ancient tombs tend to contain more than decorative pottery.

Monsters roam the corridors, time is limited, and getting rich while already dead turns out to be surprisingly hazardous.

How to Play

Guide your ghost through the ancient tomb, collect treasure, fight enemies and reach the end of the stage before time runs out.

The corridors are narrow.

The opposition is numerous.

And your ability to shoot is somewhat constrained by supernatural union regulations.

Keep moving.

Grab what you can.

Kill what you must.

And try not to discover whether ghosts can die twice.

Controls

• CURSOR KEYS — move the ghost
• A — shoot left
• D — shoot right
• SPACE — make a wish, once per level

Yes.

You can only shoot left and right.

Vertical enemies have therefore discovered an important tactical advantage.

Shooting

Your ghost can fire horizontally using A and D.

This means positioning matters.

You cannot simply point in every direction and solve problems with enthusiastic button pressing.

To attack an enemy, you often need to:

• move onto the correct row,
• anticipate where it is going,
• fire before it reaches you,
• and avoid whatever else has meanwhile approached from another direction.

The tomb is essentially a collection of narrow corridors specifically engineered to make this inconvenient.

Make a Wish

Once per level, press SPACE to have a wish granted.

There is only one available wish.

Not treasure.

Not eternal happiness.

Not a comfortable retirement.

Your ghost wishes for:

Every enemy on the screen to die.

A refreshingly focused supernatural philosophy.

The wish can only be used once per stage, so timing matters.

Use it too early and you may regret it later.

Save it forever and you have successfully recreated the traditional RPG problem of finishing the game with every powerful item still unused.

Beat the Clock

Every stage has a time limit.

Clear the level before time runs out.

Exploring carefully is useful.

Standing around admiring ancient architecture is less so.

The clock is always running.

This constant pressure is one of the reasons the original Tutankham felt so wonderfully stressful — and one of the reasons this game is called Anxys.

Relaxing entertainment was apparently never the objective.

Extra Lives

Reach certain score thresholds and you may earn an extra life.

This is useful because the tomb contains numerous opportunities to spend the lives you already have.

Collect treasure.

Kill enemies.

Push the score higher.

Then squander your new life almost immediately through overconfidence.

Tradition matters.

Features

• Fast arcade maze gameplay.
• Ancient tomb exploration.
• Treasure collecting.
• Horizontal shooting.
• Enemies moving through narrow corridors.
• Strict level time limits.
• One devastating wish per level.
• Score-based extra lives.
• Strong early-80s arcade inspiration.
• Runs directly in the browser.
• Extremely questionable ghost economics.

A Little History

Anxys makes absolutely no attempt to hide its inspiration.

It is a clone and tribute to Tutankham, the 1982 arcade game developed by Konami.

I played the original extensively back in the day.

More accurately:

Tutankham ate a considerable number of my coins.

Its gameplay was fast, tense and wonderfully stressful.

That feeling eventually supplied the name for my version:

Anxys.

Because subtlety is overrated.

Faithful Beginnings

The first four levels of Anxys are almost verbatim recreations of the original Tutankham stages.

That was deliberate.

The project began as an attempt to reproduce the game I remembered from the arcade rather than merely borrow its basic idea.

Later development allowed the game and its underlying code to evolve further, but those opening stages remain a direct tribute to the original.

Why Tutankham?

Tutankham had an unusual combination of mechanics for its era.

It mixed:

• maze navigation,
• treasure collecting,
• shooting,
• enemy avoidance,
• time pressure,
• restricted attack directions,
• and stage progression

into something that always felt slightly out of control.

You were armed.

You were mobile.

You theoretically understood the maze.

And somehow none of those facts made the experience relaxing.

That tension is exactly what Anxys tries to preserve.

Under the Hood

Anxys was originally written in 2018 using JavaScript and jQuery.

It belongs to the earlier generation of my browser games, before the later WebGL-heavy LaughingSkull ENGINE projects.

The game was remastered in 2024, bringing an old project back into the modern LaughingSkull catalogue rather than allowing it to fossilize completely in a forgotten directory.

Its systems are comparatively straightforward:

• grid-based maze movement,
• enemy entities,
• projectile combat,
• treasure and scoring,
• timed stages,
• level progression,
• and the wonderfully indiscriminate wish mechanic.

Simple systems.

Very little peace.

Play Anxys

▶ Enter the Tomb on LaughingSkull.org

Free to play. No account. No installation.

Enter the tomb.

Steal the treasure.

Become increasingly Anxys.