Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta

Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta (Arabic title al-Rikaz: fi athar Ibn Battuta) is an episodic action-adventure video game developed by the Saudi studio Semaphore and published by its parent company Semanoor International, directed and written by Ahmad Jadallah. Its first episode came out between 2013 and 2014 on PlayStation 3, PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Ouya, and it was announced as Saudi Arabia's first multiplatform video game. ¹

The Arab fortune hunter Faris Jawad and his archaeologist sister Dania are called to Morocco and set off on the trail of the traveller Ibn Battuta, against a militia leader, an arms dealer and a wealthy antiquities smuggler after the same goal. In the first episode they meet in Morocco a man who says he descends from Ibn Juzayy, the sultan's writer who recorded Ibn Battuta's travels, and who shows them a diary left by the traveller, which is then stolen. ¹

It was one of the first PlayStation 3 games built on the Unity engine. Episode 1 came out on 29 May 2013 on PlayStation 3 (PAL only) and iOS; the PC version was delayed because it had not passed Steam Greenlight in time, and a "Gold Edition" followed on Windows and OS X on 3 January 2014 and on Android by 28 May 2014. A second episode was announced in 2014, as were PlayStation 4 and Vita versions; none has appeared. ¹

The first episode was panned by critics and players for broken mechanics, graphics, stiff animation and lack of originality, many comparing it unfavourably to the Uncharted series. It holds 11 out of 100 on Metacritic, 3 out of 10 from IGN Middle East, 1 out of 10 from True-Gaming and 1 out of 5 from Saudi Gamer. ¹

On 21 April 2018 Jadallah announced a full sequel, Al Rekaz, built on Unreal Engine 4; no release date had been given by 2026. ¹ The game has articles in seven Wikipedia editions, Arabic and Egyptian Arabic among them. ²

• English Wikipedia, "Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta", revision 1364834810. ¹
• Wikidata Q12187853. ²