theSchap's Blog

Who: Devel­oped and pub­lished by Dig­i­tal Chocolate

What: Puz­zle, Strat­egy, Adventure

Where: In Cal­i­for­nia, 1848

When: Avail­able now in the app­Store for $0.99, though I swear I paid $2…

Why: You can mine for gold while you poop! What else are you going to do with that time?

Sur­face store of Gold Rush.

This type of game always reminds me of Dig Dug. You don’t drill around killing stuff with a bicy­cle pump, nor do you have what appears to be a space suit on, but you are dig­ging in a 2d view so that may be all that is needed for me to remoniss. In this game you dig through the earth with your trusty pick axe, hack­ing through the vary­ing den­si­ties of rock. With a lit­tle luck, you can come across some cool stuff. The under­ground is rid­dled with lava, ice, gas, and bats. Some obsta­cles require you to blow through them with pur­chased dyna­mite, and some can’t be blown through with any­thing at your dis­posal so you bet­ter find a new route. The other more unique obsta­cles have their advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. For exam­ple; ice is easy to break through, but it is the only thing that can halt a lava flow. It may seem like a nice short­cut to the depths of the mine, but when you hit some lava you are going to wish it was close. And you will hit lava, because most of the big veins of gold are near it, or sur­rounded by it.

A large deposit of gold!

At the begin­ning of each level or mine you are given a pool of sta­mina. Mov­ing, and min­ing use up this sta­mina as you tra­verse the level. There are two main game types. Either you start at the top and you must col­lect the most gold or dia­monds that you can, or you start at the bot­tom and have to escape. Occa­sion­ally you will come across a miner that was trapped due to a col­lapse, and sav­ing him will get you some gold, and a nice map of the area around him. Why he didn’t start dig­ging his way out when he knew his sur­round­ings is beyond me.

The major­ity of the strat­egy in this game is based around explo­sives. How many you buy, and when or where you use them. Other things can be pur­chased such as sup­ports (so the mine doesn’t col­lapse on you), maps (that reveal part of the mine), rest (at the inn where you can chat up the locals for tips and replen­ish a lit­tle sta­mina), and a remote shop (this can be built fur­ther down into the mine to save time and sta­mina from haul­ing gold back and forth).

The game has a good bal­ance of strat­egy and trea­sure hunt­ing that will keep you enter­tained. As you play you also unlock snip­pets of min­ing past for your read­ing plea­sure, so It’s an edu­ca­tional game too! Go learning!

There is lava in the mine!

Quan­ti­ta­tive Review:

• Game­play: 8.0 - There isn’t any­thing new going on here, but the game is well bal­anced and enter­tain­ing and pol­ished. Each level has 3 tiers of gold min­ing suc­cess and I found myself revis­it­ing mines to improve myself. Cut­ting a dark and dan­ger­ous path deep into the mine and find­ing an enor­mous deposit of gold feels very reward­ing. I have one beef with the con­trols, but it’s mainly the hardware’s fault. I would select a loca­tion to walk to and my lit­tle miner would mine some­where else expelling my pre­cious sta­mina. With great fore­sight from the devel­op­ers, you can tap once any­where to stop all actions in progress, unless you’re slid­ing across an ice patch.
• Visu­als: 9.0 - I was very impressed with the art­work and style in this game. It’s con­sis­tent through­out and it’s pleas­ing to look at with bright col­ors and smooth ani­ma­tion. The cel­e­bra­tory cheer after find­ing a large deposit of gold fills me with glee.
• Sound: 7.0 - The sound effects are good, but vol­ume lev­els in the music are pretty bad. It’s like watch­ing tele­vi­sion. The com­mer­cials are 20%-30% louder. The same is true for the song within the shop, and when you use a map. If you turn this song down to a relax­ing level, the music in the main game is nearly inaudible.
• Pre­sen­ta­tion: 8.5 - I’m always a bit leery of buy­ing a game for the iPhone now that they sep­a­rated the mar­ket by releas­ing the 3GS with a bet­ter proces­sor. I can never be too sure if my game is going to chug along. Per­haps devel­op­ers will offer dif­fer­ent graph­ics set­tings to cure this worry. I bring this up because there were hic­cups while min­ing in this game that prob­a­bly don’t exist in the “enhanced” model. It would freeze for a bit, and then speed up to com­pen­sate. A bit like play­ing a PC game online. Other than that the game asked me once if I wanted to sign up for some kind of newslet­ter. I said umm… no!?! It hasn’t both­ered me since.

• Trea­sure Hunt­ing Sat­is­fac­tion: 8.0 - In a few of the lev­els you need to col­lect an arti­fact in order to unlock some­thing com­pa­ra­ble to the Cave of Won­ders. This is pretty fun. Find­ing trapped min­ers is pretty fun. Find­ing large veins of gold is fun. Find­ing explo­sives crates and boxes of Pan­dora… = fun. Over­all it’s a good hunt.

• Over­all: 8.1 - If you enjoy search­ing for stuff, with a lit­tle strat­egy thrown into the mix then you will enjoy this game. It doesn’t go much beyond that. You can upgrade your bag size, but that’s about the only RPG aspect that I can think of. Games like this really ben­e­fit from RPG ele­ments like upgrad­ing your pick axe so you can bust through a bar­rier of gran­ite or some­thing. It’s well worth the $0.99 price tag… I swear I spent $2.