Digital Chocolate Inc. digs up gold with this addictive puzzler

California Gold Rush ($2.99)

Dig for gold, artifacts and gems in California Gold Rush, an addicting puzzler that will keep you glued to your iPhone for hours!!

My Take

The object of the game is to mine out as much gold and diamonds (or colored gems) as you can by digging tunnels in the mines.  You are Mandy, who decides to take on this job to hunt down the treasure and artifacts, while learning about the California Gold Rush along the way.  The tricky part is you only have a certain amount of stamina, measured out in steps and digging.  You have a set goal of money worth in gold to accomplish with the stamina provided.

As you are digging tunnels, you have special weapons +++3XA4Y7L99THE +++ and like dynamite and support beams to ease the stamina usage.  The gold in the playfield is sparkling giving you a sense of strategy, but there are pockets of veins hidden as well in places that aren’t marked.  As you collect the gold, your satchel only hold a certain amount.  Once it’s filled up, you have to make a trip to the surface to unload.  Again, wasting stamina in doing so.  Besides story mode, there is a timed version as mentioned.  You have 60 seconds to get as much gold.  I like timed versions to speed up your strategy, making the story mode trekking go a little smoother.

As in all DC Inc. games, there are plenty of unlock-ables within the structure.   I say it’s an educational game over the “unlock-able” history of the California Gold Rush.  Those are readable after mining certain dollar amounts of gold.  You have artifacts to find, I’m not sure how it plays out, but it’s for unlocking more content I suppose.

The controls are different to say the least.  Although typical of DC, Inc. games, it’s nowhere close to perfect mechanisms.  Touch the direction to move the player over, of course losing stamina while your character moves to that spot.  I’ll explain my complaint in the next section.

The Cons

The controls need an adjustment, after playing a touch-based game that allowed me to flick, pinch-zoom and rotate, I found myself wanting to push my finger over to see the rest of the tunnels I’ve dug to get an idea where to go next in the fewest steps.  My end result was my player moving to where I last touched the screen.  Kinda lame.  Also I know I moved the miner correctly, only to have it go in the opposite direction.  It was frustrating since I lined myself up to get more gold and possibly all three earned stars.

The offline approach is going out the door, it’s time to open up the gameplay to social networks and global scoreboards.  None of which is in this game. Ouch!

Conclusion

Although I constantly bashed Digital Chocolate for producing another cookie cut port from a PC game, it’s a good puzzler. It’s just there’s no online interaction making this one seem flat.  There are free versions for every Digital Chocolate game.  So give it a try before you buy, they encourage it as well.