Digital Chocolate has been extremely active in the iPhone/iPod Touch app scene from the beggining almost to the point that it would seem they have released a new title monthly. But that’s not neccisarily a bad thing considering that many of their games are easyily accessible quirky and most importantly, fun. California Gold Rush is a worthy successsor to Digital Chocolate’s fame seemingly recieving its inspiration from classics such as “Dig-Dug” and “Boulder Dash”.
California Gold Rush’s protagonist, Mandy, is a newcomer to the mining profession with an eye for gold. She can sense when gold is nearby, marked with little exclamation points as you dig through the earth. By just tapping a square in the mine, Mandy bores right through it. It takes her several swings to clear away rocky patches of earth and each swing of her pickax drains a little bit of stamina, which acts as a sort of timer for this game. When her stamina runs out, the stage ends and you need to have pocketed enough gold by that time to reach at least the first star in a meter strung along the top of the screen. Moving through the mines also uses stamina, but at a much slower rate. Mandy cannot carry all of the gold she finds in a single load, so you must climb to the surface every once in a while to sell off your haul at the general store, conveniently located at the top of every mine. Here, you can buy sticks of dynamite that drill through the mines in both horizontal and vertical lines.Using dynamite is a great way to save stamina and break some of the more resilient rocks and patches of iron which are completely immune to your pickax.
California Gold Rush is a mix of the puzzle and stratagy genres. The puzzle element is figuring out where the hidden gold is in the mines by burrowing around or looking for clues, often handed over by locating trapped miners in the earth, or by buying maps and clues from the general store. The strategy is maintaining your stamina so you do not run out of it prior to fulfilling the levels objectives. Prospecting into the unknown can sometimes reveal massive gold veins, or it can lead you right into an impenetrable rock wall or a pool of lava and often the deeper you dig the larger the danger of cave-ins (indicated by dust trickling off of a wall) that will sap you of stamina.
The graphics are bright and colorful with rather impressive explosion effects. and the soundtrack seems to have been ripped straight out of the old west with plenty of whistling and flair. However, I will say that I wasn’t thoroughly impressed with Mandy’s path finding skills. The clicking and/or dragging to move Mandy to nearby locations seemed to work very well it was when I sent her directly from the mines up to the generl store (Clicking the backpack icon) that I became slightly unhappy with Mandy’s choices. Her paths would lead to unexpected mining that cost stamina I did not intend to expend or she would run straight into a bat (the primary enemy in the game) which cost stamina and a 1,000 gold when there was clearly another way around not inhabited by a bat.
California Gold Rush is a great game that will easily please both puzzle and strategy fans and while luck does play a part in your quest for gold, thinking things through before breaking into the ground will make things quite a bit easier. Think before digging, look at your surroundings, buy maps and dynamite and always watch your stamina. I also appreciate how the game smartly rolls out new challenges so you are never overwhelmed, but never bored of playing the same kinds of stages over and over again. Couple all of this with great production values, and California Gold Rush becomes a game that I wholeheartedly recommend.
Pros:
- Catchy tunes
- Colorful graphics
- Impressive game play with a fresh coat of paint over the classics it draws from
Cons:
- Would have liked to see more landscapes
- Needs improvement on the path finding A.I.
Who doesn't enjoy old school dynamite explosions?
Can someone tell me where all these underground ice sheets came from?
Uh oh... lava in a mine is never a good thing.
