The kids are spending their summer vacation in Egypt, where they are accompanied by an Absent-Minded Professor named Botch and his Obviously Evil colleague, Sir Alistair Loveless. During an excavation of the tomb of Peribsen, a ring attaches to Joni's finger. Unbeknownst to her, the ring was owned by Set, the Egyptian god of chaos. Loveless, who has been seeking the power of Set, kidnaps Professor Botch and raids the tomb, leaving behind only a mysterious ancient scroll.
The first section of the game takes place in Cairo, where your goal is to get the scroll translated. The local antique dealer needs "Cairoglyphs" to help with the translation, so you'll have to go on a Fetch Quest to find some. Ultimately, the scroll leads you to the game's second area, the Nile Kingdom. This is a Mouse World version of Ancient Egypt. Your goal here is to collect gems from the mice in order to gain access to a palace presided over by a talking blue cat. The third and final section of the game has you racing to the center of a pyramid, where the ClueFinders will rescue their professor and thwart Loveless' Evil Plan to unleash chaos upon the world.
This game is often regarded as the Oddball in the Series. The kids never split up, with the Team Pet Socrates filling the usual role of Santiago's red videophone. Indeed, this is the only game in the series in which Socrates appears with any prominence. Additionally, the storyline is more fantastical than usual, the tone is more light-hearted and parodic, the villain's identity is known from the start, and the art style is different. This game and Math Adventures are also the only ones in which the ClueFinders don't wear their regular outfits.
This game provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: The Cairene shopkeepers need the ClueFinders to do their jobs for them.
- Artistic License – History: Peribsen's tomb was found in 1898, but the game portrays it as being newly discovered.
- Bigger on the Inside: The obelisk in the Nile Kingdom is a lot bigger than its exterior would suggest. Justified as it's magic and inhabited by four of the Egyptian gods.
- Call-Back: If you click on the kids in "World Exports," they wonder what time it is back in Numeria and suggest mailing something to Vasco da Bongo.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Alistair Loveless boasts, "Soon, I will be the most powerful villain on Earth!"
- Cliffhanger: When the Cluefinders and the professor are leaving Egypt at the end, they talk about hopefully never seeing Alistair ever again. Cut to one of the back rows where Alistair (still transformed as a mummy) is sitting while wearing a disguise.
- Clingy Macguffin: The ring refuses to come off Joni’s finger when she first puts it on. Until Loveless steals it.
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: At the end, Socrates dresses this way on the flight home in order to disguise the fact that he's a dog and thereby avoid riding in the cargo hold. It works, so far as we can tell.
- Divine Assistance: The Cluefinders receive a temporary power boost by four of the Egyptian gods: Horus grants Owen flight, Bastet grants Leslie intelligence, Sobek grants Santiago strength, and Isis grants Joni bravery.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Socrates is growling at Loveless right in the opening cutscene.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Loveless thought he could control chaos and make Set his slave. Instead, Set transports Loveless into a mummy for his foolishness. Worse, Professor Botch had previously warned Loveless about the possibility that he might not be able to "control Chaos."
- Evil Laugh: Parodied/subverted by Mr. Loveless, when he starts coughing mid-laugh:"I swallowed my mint."
- Fate Worse than Death: Loveless is turned into a mummy by Set. And he's still alive afterward.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: It's possible for Egypt to be a correct answer in "World Exports," even though this would mean you're shipping goods to the country you're already in. Unless that is, these are ordered domestically.
- God's Hands Are Tied: During the final act, the Cluefinders encounter the Egyptian gods, Horus, Sobek, Isis, and Bastet, who provide the main characters with magical boons to help them defeat Set. According to Horus, said gods would fight him themselves, but the passage leading to him is marked with a sign: "You must be under this height to defeat the forces of Chaos." (And the height is forty feet, no less!)
- Hijacked by Jesus: Though not as badly as in some other series. It helps that Set was fairly evil even in the old myths.
- Honest John's Dealership: "Have I got a deal for you! You can pick any one of my beautiful jeeps, but only one can make it to Cairo!" Of course, he tells you in the next breath how to work it out by multiplying the number of gallons by the miles-per-gallon, so maybe it's a Subverted Trope.
- Insistent Terminology:Owen: Dude, I wonder if there're any Cairoglyphs hidden in all this cloth?
Fabric proprietor: Cloth?! Hello! This is fabric. It's gorgeous! - Kubrick Stare: In the cutscenes involving Botch and Loveless, the recurring close-up shot of Loveless shows him giving this look to the camera.
- Lighter and Softer: Interestingly, 4th Grade Adventures is this even compared to 3rd Grade Adventures, and has much more of a sense of humor.
- Living Statue: The Cluefinders encounter The Sphinx and the statue of Thoth, both who move around and talk to the Cluefinders.
- Mouse World: The Nile kingdom is inhabited by mice who are "convinced that they are Ancient Egyptians." Thus, they're constructing a mouse-sized version of Ancient Egypt.
- Mythology Gag: Upon meeting the sarcastic sphinx, Leslie says, "It seems somewhat odd that we would encounter a character like this in an Ancient Egyptian pyramid." He then replies, "Who were you expecting? Reader Rabbit?"
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Sir Alistair Loveless III. Also a Preppy Name.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: The ancient Egyptian gods are insistently referred to as "embodiments", not gods.
- Obviously Evil: Even without the name, the above-mentioned Alistair Loveless might just as well be walking around under a neon sign reading "BAD GUY".
- Oddball in the Series: This is the only game in the main series where the Cluefinders never split up, resulting in their Team Pet Socrates taking the place of Santiago's videophone whenever the player needs a hint during one of the puzzles. Not to mention, the game has a different art style than the rest of the games, the characters have different outfits, as well as its story revolving around mythology rather than sci-fi.
- Oh, Crap!: Joni gets this when the ring she slipped under her finger is stuck there.
- Prophecies Rhyme All the Time: The first section of the game has the Cluefinders seeking out "cairoglyphs" to decode an ancient scroll that will lead them to the next area. Each set of twelve cairoglyphs allows the translation of one of the five rhyming couplets. If one is willing to brute-force a little bit, this can even be exploited for Sequence Breaking — the key clue always takes the form of either "X, Y, then X once more, to open up the secret door" or "X, Y, then an ear, to make the secret door appear". After unlocking the secret passage and solving one last puzzle, another scroll points to the next area, and it too is translated as a series of rhyming couplets — notably, this one is called out as being kinda awful poetry, and it's implied that the antiques dealer is at the least massaging the translation pretty heavily, if not outright making it up.
- Really 700 Years Old: The antique dealer claims to be five thousand years old.
- Riddling Sphinx: Once inside the pyramid, the children encounter a Sphinx and must solve his word problems to open doors and proceed.
- Same Language Dub: As usual, the U.K. edition redubs the characters with British voices. Notably, averted with the Sphinx, for whom the original American voice track was left in.
- Shout-Out: A lot of incidental characters are caricatures of figures from The Golden Age of Hollywood, adding to the overall parodic vibe:
- The three map mice are mice versions of The Three Stooges.
- The Riddling Sphinx who talks like Groucho Marx.
- When asked about his roles for the games on Twitter, voice actor J.S. Gilbert (who voices Horus in 4th Grade and other minor characters in 3rd Grade) said that the voices for the gods Horus and Sobek from 4th Grade were inspired by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., respectively.
- The talking cat is a parody of Tallulah Bankhead.
- The overseer mouse in "Rolling Stone Builders" is a parody of Edward G. Robinson, see?
- Shown Their Work:
- While Peribsen's tomb was found in 1898 - rather than when the game was set - there was a particular reason that he was chosen: Unlike most other Egyptian Pharaohs? His patron deity? Set.
- The kids also do need to take a car drive to Cairo - as the site of Peribsen's tomb is closer to the modern city of El Balyana
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- Spanner in the Works: By accidentally getting the ring stuck to her finger, Joni unwittingly deprives Loveless of it, thus delaying his plans until the ClueFinders are in a position to stop him.
- Stock Animal Diet: In "Map Mice," the mice are trying to find a piece of cheese in the desert.
- Tempting Fate: "I'm fresh out of gems, but I know you're wonderful. You'll work for free, right?" Weirdly, it actually falls to the player to make the joke land, either by clicking back to the path or by warping away with LapTrap. Given the way the line was delivered, the developers clearly expected that most players would not continue to work without payment, and they probably weren't wrong.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Joni's quite enamored with the Egyptian jewelry in the tomb they visit... at least until the ring won't come off.
- Toothy Bird: Horus is portrayed this way.
- Valley Girl: The fabric store proprietor in Cairo for some reason."That is going to make the most totally stunning outfit. That fabric is, like, so in."
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Set is a pretty serious and intimidating villain for a mostly light game, his demeanor may be quite cheerful but he is truly cruel and he does not hesitate to attack a bunch of kids. He also turns Loveless into a mummy and then tries to kill him because he finds him annoying.
