The objective of Luxor Evolved is similar to other marble-popping matching games such as PopCap Games's Zuma.[3] Typical of the Luxor series, each stage includes a series of scarabs pushing a line of spheres along a path toward an open pyramid. The player must "rescue" the spheres, using a marble-launching "winged scarab" that moves across the bottom of the screen. Rescuing is accomplished by matching a chain of three or more of the same color spheres, or by using various power-ups to clear spheres more indiscriminately. If any marble completely enters the pyramid, all chains are pushed far away from the pyramid and the player loses a life.
As the player clears marbles, treasures, powerups, and life collectables will spawn and fall toward the player's scarab to be collected. Treasures spawn whenever a player clears all the marbles from a chain's "vise" (displayed as a bug on-screen), with the vise exploding into various amounts of treasure depending on how far it was along the track. Powerups spawn by scoring either three "chains" (marble-clearing shots) or "combos" (sets of spheres cleared with a single shot) without missing, and life collectables (displayed as hearts) appear when the player clears a sphere group that is five marbles or longer.
While the game is played, a multiplier can be earned in the background with fast and accurate shooting; this multiplier increases points earned by both matches and collectables, leading to many treasures becoming highly valuable, especially in higher difficulties. This multiplier has a high limit, which can make for large amounts of points, but it resets completely to the base score when a single shot is missed.
There are also "Super Powerups" unlocked over the course of play, which unlike all other collectables, spawn shards at fixed points within the level, and require the player to hit them with a sphere to be collected. Each of the three Super Powerups require six of their respective shards to activate; once all collected, the player's scarab instantly transforms into an upgraded form featuring the given power-up for a short time, allowing for spheres to be destroyed at an extremely high rate. The first one unlocked, "Force of Sekhmet", turns the player's spheres into fireballs, "The Incarnation of Horus", turns them into lightning bolts, and "The Aspect of Ra" turns them into "lightbeams" (lasers).
Luxor Evolved is a radical departure in play-style from other games in the series. In contrast to its predecessors, Evolved focuses significantly more on speed, with marble chains usually both short and moving at high velocity along the track. The levels themselves require players to clear a large number of these groups to pass, but thanks to their short length and fast appearance, these levels do not drag on, typically complete-able in under three minutes each, with the game itself beatable in under three hours total.
Another radical departure comes from level layouts as well: whereas previous games consisted of long journeys, with levels repeating many times across numerous stages, Evolved shortens the level progression significantly, having only eight stages consisting of six levels each in the main loop: with nine extra secret levels unlocked by collecting treasures, and eight additional bonus levels unlocked by completing a stage's survival level, for a total of sixty-five levels,[4] plus a playable credits roll.
The main six levels in a stage are laid out in the following system:
- X-1, X-3, and X-4 are all regular levels with one sphere track.
- X-2 are survival stages, where the player must keep the spheres away from the pyramid for a specified time limit. Failing this level still loses a life, but unlike all others, it will merely move players on to X-3 upon death. If the player outlasts the time limit in this level, they will be sent to a bonus stage, where sphere chains move along invisible paths, to be destroyed by powerup balls for free points.
- X-5 are dual-path levels, with two separate tracks for the spheres.
- X-6 are boss levels, named and styled after Egyptian gods such as Geb, Osiris, etc. These levels require the player to match away a sphere chain moving quickly inside their body, which is frequently blocked off by other sphere chains moving in front. Bosses can also spawn their own track with a pyramid for spheres to travel on, further complicating the task.
Once the eighth boss stage is completed, the game will fake crash, putting the player into the final credits, which consists of a few non-mandatory sphere chains to shoot at before ending and showing the player's final score.
Said scoring system for this title gives a base of 100 points per sphere matched, a various amount of points per collected treasure (starting at 1000 and going up to 15000), and upon level completion an additional bonus is added based on player's shooting accuracy percentage for that round. If the players get 100% accuracy, or clear every single sphere in a bonus level, an additional large bonus is achieved. Scoring points also contributes to unlocking upgrades for powerups in-game, which enhances their effects when collected.
This score system is modified by four game difficulties: Casual, Normal, Hard, and Elite. Casual removes the life system entirely, and halves the player's score. Normal is the default mode, with base score and average sphere speed. Hard doubles all score, along with increasing the spheres' speed, and Elite, a difficulty unlocked only after beating hard mode, triples all score along with further increasing the game's speed, often to where avoiding level failures require near-perfect reaction times.
Achievements also feature prominently in this title, with a total of thirty-three to obtain while playing. Some (such as "Showing Promise", unlocked after completing the game's first level) are easily achieved during normal play, and others require certain conditions to be met, forcing the player to look for/create situations to earn them. All achievements are also obtainable concurrently on Steam, if the game was bought from that specific shopping platform.[5]
