Pick up Gold Rush! and see if you could survive the trek to California.Adventure set in the years of the gold rush The Steam release even includes design documents for the game, which are an unexpected treat. It teaches players a bit about the California Gold Rush and offers multiple ways to experience that trip. When you consider the time in which it was made, Gold Rush! is a very effective adventure game. This weird shift in difficulty was definitely unexpected. Still, the journey is quite cool! It’s only once you finally reach California that the puzzles become more challenging, and at times annoying. The graphics are about what you would expect from late 80s tech and the audio is nearly nonexistent (and grating when it chimes in). In this game, all you ever really have to do is combine an action and object such as “give money” or “take rope” so it’s not bad at all. Some modern gamers like to make fun of adventure games with text parsers. It was certainly interesting to experience each journey, to say the least. Sometimes text glosses over harsh realities of the time while at other moments it faces them head on. Each route also provides copious information about the journey. Each route offers a completely different experience and puzzles to solve. Players choose from one of three routes to take: Cape Horn, Panama, or by land. Gold Rush! focuses primarily on the journey from New York to California. Of course, rumors have also been spreading about gold in California which means many other people have decided to head West too.

As such, you decide to head out to find him. 11 years ago your brother left town and you haven’t heard from him since – until today. You begin the game with a steady job at the bank, a house, and no family to speak of. This is certainly an interesting approach, and one that many might not expect. Instead of being all about panning for gold, the game is more of a travelogue about what it took to actually make your way to California. Gold Rush!, originally developed in 1988, is set right before the gold rush in 1848. Surprisingly, there aren’t a ton of games covering the time period. Platform: PC – Direct, DOS, GamersGate, Green Man Gaming, SteamĪfter having recently whet my appetite with 1849, the California Gold Rush has become a topic I’ve found myself more interested in.

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