Game 17: Gold Rush! - Final Rating

Gold Rush is in the can so to speak and I'm quite curious to see where the PISSED rating system places it in the scheme of things. There are definitely some good things that I plan to take into account, so despite my disappointment with the second half, I don't think it will fare too badly.

Puzzles and Solvability
Gold Rush is a game of two halves really. After the first three hour session I would have given quite a good rating for this category. There was a really good balance between giving the player just enough information to find solutions while not blatantly holding their hand, there were negative consequences to non-ideal solutions, the timer based narrative rewards swift players while still leaving opportunities for slowcoaches (like me), and all the puzzles fit extremely well in the 1800’s setting. Unfortunately, as soon as you begin the long travel from Brooklyn to Sacramento, things take a turn for the worse (and now that I’ve witnessed the two paths I didn’t take, I can confirm this to be the case no matter which path you take).

Looking back at these screenshots now, I can see the Sea Farer in the distance. It was gone by the time I went to the wharf.

There are literally huge sections of the game that feel like educational lectures, with no interaction whatsoever. What little tasks there are during this period are simplistic and feel tacked on and the player can randomly die with absolutely no way of avoiding it. While the puzzles do improve once you reach Sutter’s Fort, this last section of the game is very confusing, particularly if the player approaches it in an unexpected order like I did. You can easily dead end yourself by purchasing an incorrect (yet totally reasonable) item from the trader, the whole mule episode relies on chance rather than logic, and the last two maze puzzles of the game shamelessly take advantage of the AGI engine’s weaknesses. Looking at the ratings I’ve given past games, I probably should give it a 3, but that feels a bit too harsh for the enjoyment I did get out of it.
Rating: 4

The mule puzzle relied on the player doing something that they actually had no logical reason to do.

Interface and Inventory
Inventory is exactly as you would expect for an early Sierra game, so no comments are required there. The interface is another matter, and once again, it’s a mixed bag. On the positive side, there are some slight improvements in general movement, with past issues with climbing stairs suitably fixed. On the negative side, the game often switches the perspective of the player, whether it’s through the use of a top-down view or simply by switching the direction of the camera. While this is used to try to give the player the best view of what is obviously fairly accurate architecture and landmarks, it caught me out a couple of times and caused me to miss screens that were important to the game’s completion. Trying to move the tiny blob on the screen into buildings and interact appropriately in the top-down or pulled back camera sections is also rather difficult. Probably my biggest complaint however is the parser, which is far too limited in understanding, particularly when compared to other recent Sierra games.
Rating: 4

This is not a cut scene. The player controls a tiny little dot to move Jerrod around.

Story and Setting
Credit where credit is due! The MacNeill brothers created a unique setting for an adventure game and it’s one that lends itself well to the genre. They also deserve credit for taking the rather brave approach of giving the player three distinct pathways across America. While I have my issues with the way this was actually handled, the idea is not a bad one and gives the game a replayability the genre isn’t known for. The general plot to find your brother Jake is also quite compelling, despite him leaving stupidly cryptic notes in difficult to find places. Where the story falls down is in the way the creators felt the need to insert every single piece of knowledge they had about the era (which is not insubstantial I’ll add) into the game. Gold Rush is educational and historically accurate to the point of boredom, to the detriment of an otherwise enjoyable yarn.
Rating: 5

A decision that I had no part in making. It's hard to care about the outcome when you have no control over it.

Sound and Graphics
By now you should know what to expect when it comes to sound in the Sierra games of this time. Most of the game is met with silence, with only the most basic effects popping up in low quality. The music on the other hand can be enjoyable, but despite some suitably local tunes kicking in during the travel sections, for the most part it’s forgettable in Gold Rush. The graphics however are pretty impressive, and are probably the best example of visuals using the AGI engine. The MacNeill brothers pulled out all the stops, with larger characters indoors, large amounts of detail, and even some simplistic shadow and lighting effects. They nailed the era, including the architecture of the various buildings and the design of the numerous vehicles. The only downside is the lack of variety once you leave Brooklyn, but I have to admit that’s less of an issue if you take the jungle inclusive Panama path. Overall, I think if the music had been better, Gold Rush would have got the first 6.
Rating: 5

There was clearly a lot of love and effort put into Gold rush and it shows.

Environment and Atmosphere
As mentioned previously, I think the MacNeill brothers did a great job in realising 1848 America. There are probably heaps of inaccuracies, but given I know so little about this time in history, or the locations it took place in, I can only be convinced and impressed by the result. While it unfortunately didn’t entirely click with me until it was too late, the timer based occurrences (such as the ship leaving, the cost of items going up, and the house prices going down) all add to the sense that you’re taking part in something close to what someone of the time might have experienced. I’d like to say that the sudden unavoidable deaths add to the reality of proceedings, but it’s difficult for me to put a positive spin on what is a pretty frustrating facet of the game. That being said, even though I’ve heavily criticised the longwinded journeys by land and sea, they do the game no harm when it comes to making the player feel part of a thriving and refreshing gameworld.
Rating: 7

Previous games hadn't prepared me to take this notification literally

Dialogue and Acting
Gold Rush has a lot of dialogue! For the most part it does what is necessary without attempting any sort of literary embellishments. It’s low on humour when compared to games by Al Lowe and The Two Guys From Andromeda, but it occasionally raises a smile. Something that did catch my attention was the way it switches randomly into uneducated yankee mode, even in the descriptive narrative. I wonder whether they originally intended it all to be like that, but simply couldn’t keep it going. I’ve already criticised the over-educational approach of the game, so I won’t consider that to be a negative in this category. Not much else to say here, good or bad.
Rating: 5

It's like a new commentator just stepped into the box for a session!

I'm pretty happy with a 50 for Gold Rush. It's not as good as Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest or even Police Quest, but it's more enjoyable than games like Tass Times in Tonetown or The Black Cauldron. We're 17 games in now and I'm satisfied the PISSED rating system is working adequately. Now...time to check out the first King's Quest game I haven't played previously...King's Quest IV!

Game 17: Gold Rush! - Alternate Paths

I decided that to give Gold Rush an accurate rating, I really needed to at least know what the alternate paths from Brooklyn to Sacramento entailed. To save me having to restart the game from scratch and play through the other ways, I hopped onto YouTube and found some Let’s Plays by a guy called sierragamescott (he deserves a shout out for some detailed work!). I’ve taken some screenshots from his run throughs so you can all get a glimpse of what the Panama and Cape Horn paths look like. In the end though, all three paths are lengthy exercises in reading historical information while interacting very little with what’s actually happening on screen. All three paths have the same guy sitting around that gives you the bible. All three paths have a point where all of your items, apart from a few necessary bits and pieces, are taken from you (for different reasons). All three paths have sudden and unavoidable deaths that require you to restore to a hopefully recent save game. I’ll try to complete my final rating post tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are the shots...

PANAMA

The Sea Farer had left by the time I reached the wharf.

Both the Panama and Cape Horn paths take place aboard the Sea Farer

Avoiding Deadly Ants: The Panama Jungle is a deadly place for Jerrod, but apparently not for the serene bible reader

Death by Gator!!!

CAPE HORN

The entirety of the Cape Horn path takes place aboard the Sea Farer

Rio de Janeiro is a stunning place, not matter how simplistically it's represented

Yet another excuse arises to rid Jerrod of the majority of his possessions

Cholera: Another unavoidable death. I feel sorry for Scott trying to create Let's Plays for Gold Rush and having this happen repeatedly

Both journey's end here, but getting a coach from this perspective looks overly difficult

Game 17: Gold Rush! - Won!

Jerrod Wilson Journal Entry 4: “What an incredible day! Not only have a finally found Jake, the two of us have just discovered an enormous quantity of gold! As has been the case every step of the way on this journey, finding Jake’s cabin (after being led there by his mule) was merely a stepping stone on the way to actually discovering his whereabouts. The only thing of use I picked up in there was a box of matches and while I found a trapdoor beneath a large rug in the centre of the room, there didn’t appear to be any way of opening it from within the cabin itself. I made my way to the cabin outhouse and discovered that it was no ordinary hole in the ground. I had no option but to climb in and see where it led! It turned out that Jake had been digging tunnels beneath both the outhouse and the cabin, and that there was a lot of gold down there. Eventually I found him and immediately after celebrating our reunion, we got down to digging for gold. Shortly after I started, I broke into a large underground cavern, literally filled with gold! We’re now disgustingly rich!”

James' House: I've finally found him right? Right?!?!

Well, I’ve finished Gold Rush! It took me just over an hour to get from finding Jake’s cabin to celebrating the discovery of a huge cache of gold with him. There were only two real challenges remaining and unfortunately, they were both examples of the game taking advantage of the engine’s shortcomings (one of my pet hates). As I mentioned in the journal entry, the cabin didn’t actually offer much other than a box of matches, and there appeared to be no way to open the trapdoor I found under the rug from within the room (the game specifically tells you that there’s no way). The obvious place to go next was the outhouse, which was just a few metres away from the house. Getting to the outhouse though turned out to be far more challenging than I could ever have guessed!

No Jake and no note. All bets are off people!!!

When I said “look at outhouse”, the game responded with “there’s a path running from the front door to the outhouse”, but said path seemed to be blocked by what I can only describe as shrubbery. I walked along the wall of bush, but there was no gap to walk through. I tried to go round the obstacle by going a screen west, then south and then east, in an attempt to enter the cabin screen from the south, but not only was I constantly accosted by bandits, entering from the south simply placed me at the northern part of the screen again. Clearly I was going to have to find a way to get past the bush, but I was struggling to think of one. I couldn’t climb over it, nor could I light it on fire using the matches. Finally, I just tried walking through it again and noticed one spot where I couldn’t walk west when I was hard up against it. I walked east and then south and then basically mashed the south, east and west keys until I ended up standing on the southern side of the bushes!

Perhaps it was common to have a maze seperating miners from their toilets in the gold rush era

Honestly, if you’re going to place a maze in a game, surely you need to let the player know that it’s even there, and then give them a perspective that might allow them to navigate through it in a sensible fashion. This sort of puzzle seems intentionally placed to do nothing more than slow the player down, and unfortunately it wasn’t the last or worst case of it. Anyway, once I got to the outhouse, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the way forward was to actually hop into the filthy hole! I did enjoy the breaking down the fourth wall humour that they went for here as Jerrod asks the player whether he really has to get into it. Once in the mine, I lit my lantern and started to look around. There's a door blocking your path, but I was able to use the remaining unused items in my inventory to get past it (tie the string to the magnet and lower it through the hole in the door to get the key on the other side). Once through I eventually found a pick and started hacking at the walls randomly. After I’d been everywhere that I could, I’d found a couple of chunks of gold, but still no Jake!

This puzzle took some thinking, but it's pretty obvious which items to use, just not necessarily how to use them

It’s here that I had a stroke of luck, and I have to wonder how anyone might progress past this point without a similar thing happening. While I was attempting to find some sort of path I hadn’t yet explored, I accidentally fell off a ladder. Due to the rather annoying sensitivity of the ladders in the mine, I’d already fallen to my death several times, so I prepared to restore once again. Only this time while I was falling, the light of my torch showed me that there was a path off to the left of the ladder. Basically this path was only accessible by blindly stepping off a ladder halfway up in exactly the right spot! There’s absolutely no way of knowing that it’s there from what I can tell, and I can only guess that this is the part of the game that Fenrus got stuck on for two years. I, through sheer luck, only got stuck there for about twenty minutes, but I can see how easily someone could get stuck here permanently.

Oh I know...I'll just randomly step off this ladder onto the path that I don't know is there!

Once I got myself on the path (which took many attempts without falling even when I figured there was one), it wasn’t long before I was talking to my long lost brother. We both started digging in the underground cavern that he’d been working in, and a few pick-swings later, we were celebrating an extremely impressive find. Watching both Jerrod and Jake dance around is pretty hysterical, and I have to say the ending is well handled, which is fortunate after such an ordeal in getting there. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the game as a whole just yet. I want to make sure when I rate it that I don’t let the poor second half completely negate what was a pretty enjoyable first half. There are lots of interesting ideas in the game and the setting is fresh and still to this day pretty unique. I’ll sleep on it and give a final rating tomorrow. Then it’s time for King’s Quest IV. Who wants to accompany me?!

I'm pretty satisfied with 213 out of 250, considering how many things I fudged my way through

Session Time: 1 hour 00 minutes

Total Time: 9 hours 00 minutes



Game 17: Gold Rush! - Only as Good as My Mules

Jerrod Wilson Journal Entry 3: “While the physical difficulties of travelling between Brooklyn and Sacramento are now in the past, my time since arrival has contained challenges of a different sort. Trying to piece together what my brother’s cryptic messages mean has led me through many, many miles of wilderness, and I often feel like I’ve missed something important that would make my task of finding him much simpler. Miraculously, I’ve been assisted by my amazing luck in panning for gold. I’ve managed to pull close to $2500 worth of gold out of the American River, which has allowed me to stock up on supplies for whatever challenges are coming my way in the coming days. I finally found where Jake has been staying in the Green Pastures Hotel (it was room 12, not room 21), but getting in there was difficult to say the least. Once in, instead of finding him, I found a few items that he’d left me and another note. This note gave no hints as to his current whereabouts, but it did give me a path to follow which has eventually led me to a house some 30 miles away from Sutter’s Fort. I’m about to enter, but given all that has happened, I somehow doubt that my adventure is over.”

Hotel Green Pastures: Where my last session ended.

Hmmmm...last night’s three hour Gold Rush session did result in a lot of progress, but I don’t feel particularly good about it. It was a real struggle to be honest and a lot of what I achieved occurred through trial and error rather than any sort of satisfying logical thinking. The majority of the time I was very uncertain about what the game required me to do, but thankfully following my instincts eventually got me where I needed to go. I do think that part of the blame has to lie with me rather than entirely with the game (I’ll explain why I say that shortly), but there’s no doubt that the game loses focus and drive once you leave Brooklyn. My last post ended with me standing in front of room 21, wondering why the door wouldn’t open when all the hints I had led me to that particular place.

Room 21: Not how you do it!

I spent quite a while standing in front of that door! I read and re-read Jake’s letter, went over the various hints I’d collected since, but could think of nothing else that might get me inside. I figured the answer would probably have something to do with the man at the front desk, so I tried asking him all manner of questions. Unfortunately, the game’s parser is extremely limited in what it understands, so pretty much everything I tried to ask him resulted in “what do you mean” or “I don’t understand the word ‘about’”. Looking at the message box behind him gave me the idea that perhaps Jake had left a message for me, but I couldn’t think of any way to ask about it that the game understood. “Ask about message”...”message for me”...”message from jake”...”do i have a message”...”message”...”room 21 message”....I tried everything I could think of with no success.

I've met some pretty unhelpful concierges in my time, but this guy...

At this point I didn’t know what else to try, but since I’d arrived at Green Pastures Hotel entirely by luck, and didn’t feel I’d done a very good job of exploring the surroundings of Sutter’s Fort, I decided to go back there. Perhaps I missed something that would aid me in the hotel!? I restored back to Sutter’s Fort and this time decided to buy a gold pan rather than a shovel. During my travels I’d seen many men panning for gold in the river, but no-one digging with a shovel. I figured that might be the way to get more gold, and therefore be able to afford all the items in the trader’s shop rather than just the one. With that in mind, I left the fort, stopping at the cemetery to read the hidden message on the tomb, and went straight for the river. My first attempts at panning were a failure, but I kept walking down stream, trying at different points. Eventually I found another guy panning, so I thought maybe he knew something I didn’t. I panned close to where he was and it turns out people looking for gold don’t look too kindly upon others working in their territory!

A bit harsh for panning within a few metres of a dude don't you think?

After restoring, I continued panning for gold for miles on end until I finally had some success! From that point onwards, I was struck gold a few times on every screen, all the way to back to the Green Pastures Hotel. Every time I found some I gained another point, and by this stage I must have gained about 15 to 20 points in this fashion. Despite wondering how many more points I’d be able to collect this way, I decided to try my luck in the Green Pastures Hotel again. This time my attention was drawn to a room that had no number at all! Where the number should have been was just a few holes as though it had been removed, and this room was right between number 11 and number 13. Eureka! It wasn’t room 21 that I was supposed to be entering, it was room 12! I’d not thought to reverse the numbers and had been so focussed on room 21 that I’d failed to see what was (or wasn’t) right in front of me.

Room 12: Still not how you do it!

My excitement dissipated when I tried to enter room 12 however, as it appeared to be nothing more than a supply closet, and the door was blocked by supplies which I apparently didn’t need. So while I was now quite sure that I was on the right track, I still couldn’t see how to proceed. I decided it was time to read one of the hints you fine readers had left for me. Lars-Erik had left me two hints, with one apparently being more obvious than the other. The first one said “If you left your hotel room and knew someone may be coming to meet you (and you didn't have a cellphone), what would you do?” Well...I’d leave a message at reception. but I’d already tried that! I read his bigger hint, which turned out to be “I would have left you a message”. OK, so it was obvious I was trying to do the correct thing all along but just hadn’t used language that the game understood. I went back to the reception area, determined to get whatever message Jake had left for me.

Yeah, sure...it gives me something to do while I wait for some direction around here

I spent another couple of minutes asking for the message in numerous different ways before I finally hit on one that the game understood. “Get message”! This pissed me off to be honest. It’s hard enough to figure out what to do when the game doesn’t give you any real hints, but when you have actually figured it out and are punished by limited parser options, it’s just not fair play. It’s not like I was just picking a message up from the box that I knew was there. I was asking the man at the counter if there happened to be any messages for me. Surely one of the twenty other ways I asked for the message could have been enough! Anyway, to make matters worse, there was no message for me from my brother at all. When I typed “get message”, the guy told me that only hotel occupants could check for messages, but would I mind delivering one to room 11 for him?! I don’t think I need to tell you that this is terrible adventure game writing. What was I supposed to deduct here? "Hmmm...everything points to room 12, but that turned out to be nothing more than a supply closet. Oh, I know what to do! I’ll see if there’s a message I can deliver to whoever occupies room 11!"

OK. Make sure you leave the door open so I can explore your room for no particular reason

Delivering the message to room 11 resulted in the recipient leaving the room unoccupied so I could explore it. My immediate thought was that I was supposed to get into room 12 from room 11, so I investigated the wall, the fireplace and then the window. There was a ledge outside the window, so I unlatched it, climbed through, and shimmied my way along to the next window. I could see nothing else to do but to smash the window to room 12, but since I lost two points for doing so, I assume there’s a cleaner way. It seems that room 12 is actually cut off from the rest of the hotel, but that Jake has been living out of there for some time. In the room were a few items that were clearly intentionally left by Jake for me.  More specifically: a piece of string, a magnet and a note. The note simply said something along the lines of thanks for coming and that if I’m looking for gold, I should find him. No shit!

5 points to the first person that can tell me how I was supposed to open the window (it's probably obvious)

Thankfully I spent a bit more time investigating the room, as right before I was about to climb back through the window, a bird flew in and landed in a birdcage in the corner. On inspection it appeared there was a capsule attached to its leg, containing yet another note. “For a clue to my exact location, insert proof of identification here.” Alright, now I was getting somewhere! I placed the photo I took from the family album back in Brooklyn in the capsule and watched the bird fly away. I waited many minutes, but eventually it returned with, you guessed it, another note in the capsule. “As stubborn as our friend may be, just leave it to him and he’ll lead you to me!” Aaaaaggghhhh!!!!! I gave you proof of my identity like you asked, why do you have to keep being so damn cryptic!? After reminding myself that solving cryptic puzzles is what adventure games is all about, I decided to stop getting frustrated with the game and to enjoy the challenge. My first thought was that the “friend” the note speaks of must be the bird, but following it was impossible as it simply disappeared as soon as it left the window.

If I'd left ten seconds earlier than I did, I would never have seen the bird fly in the window

The phrase “stubborn as a mule” popped into my head and I remembered that there were mules in the stable back at Sutter’s Fort. Given that I’d not yet returned to the trader there with all the gold I’d found, the fort seemed to be a good place to go next. Before I did that though, I spent about twenty minutes (seriously) wandering up the American River panning for gold. I racked up another thirty points and collected about $2500 in gold while doing so, but it was an extremely repetitive process. Eventually I just couldn’t find any more gold, so I figured I’d reached the limit of the amount of gold (and points) that the game was going to give me. I ended up over forty miles east of Sutter’s Fort, so for the first time since starting Gold Rush, I set the game to the fastest speed limit, and sped back like The Flash. I didn’t realise that I was in for a big surprise on arrival!

Jerrod really appreciated finally getting some "alone time"

On entering the fort, I had every intention of heading straight for the trader to buy the shovel and the lantern that I’d not been able to afford previously. You might remember that in my last post I described how movement within the fort walls goes in a circle, so if you go keep going west, you end up in the same place you started. Well, I guess I was wrong! Since the trader was one of the last places I found in the fort on my first visit, I decided to go east this time around, hoping that would get me to my destination quicker as it was at the end of the circular route. I was shocked to find myself in screens I’d simply not seen before!!! Now I’m pretty meticulous in exploring locations as thoroughly as I can, so I feel pretty stupid that I’d missed some pretty important stuff here, but I also think the game is at least partly to blame.

One real positive is that stairs are handled much better in Gold Rush than in any previous Sierra game

It’s obvious that the MacNeill brothers were trying to push the envelope in lots of ways, and one of the things they attempted was to play around with the navigational directions. In all previous Sierra games, the direction your facing doesn’t switch when you move between screens, at least not when you’re in the outside world where orientation is important. In Gold Rush, you enter the fort by moving what would traditionally be considered north, but then you appear on the next screen as if you’re going south. Go left two screens and then go down one and you all of a sudden enter a screen from the left. It probably makes sense when you have an overall perspective of the overhead layout of the fort, but it caused me to become quickly disorientated and subsequently to miss a few locations that were vital to my progress in Gold Rush. Basically what it means is that if you go to the left three screens in a row and then go back to the right for three screens, you don’t necessarily end up where you started.

How differently I might have played the game had I found the blacksmith and the mule salesman earlier!

The end result of this little stuff up is that I now had access to a blacksmith and a mule salesman. Before I did anything with them, I went to the trader and purchased both the shovel and the lantern. On my return I got into a strange conversation with the blacksmith where he eventually gave me a message from my brother. The message was that in these parts Jake is known as James. I couldn’t see how that was helpful in any way, but the blacksmith did give me a branding iron that “James” had left for me. It seemed pretty obvious that the iron would be used on an animal, so I paid a visit to the salesman next and bought myself a mule. Heading back to the blacksmith, I heated up the iron and branded the mule with my brother’s symbol. Still having no idea why any of this would be useful, I decided to follow Jake’s hint and see if I could somehow get the mule to lead me to him.

Out of all the information he might have left for me, that's what he decided to tell me!

I repositioned the two of us outside the fort and tried typing a few different commands. “Leave mule” didn’t work. “Ride mule” didn’t work either. Eventually I had some form of success with “follow mule”, despite the fact that he wasn’t actually going anywhere (another parser issue), but the game responded with “try that somewhere nearby”. I took the mule to a few different screens and tried “follow mule” repeatedly, until a got a response telling me that “this ol, mule has a hard time leadin’ the fleas on its back! It won't take ya anywhere!” What the?! By now I was getting pretty frustrated with Gold Rush. I wasn’t really making logical decisions anymore; I was simply trying things until there was nothing else to try. Did I buy the wrong the mule? Was I supposed to select a particular one when talking to the mule salesman? I restored to the salesman and tried taking different approaches. Nothing worked.

Thanks for the tip! Shame it didn't work!

In the end I decided to go to the one place in the fort where I hadn’t actually done anything yet. It seemed odd that there would be a mule stable for no reason at all, so I took my mule there to see what might happen. I couldn’t for the life of me think of what I might achieve there, but that’s the way I’d solved quite a few puzzles of late. This post has gone on way too long already so I’ll cut to the chase. I had to leave the mule in the stable, then come back and look at all the other mules until I found one that had the same symbol branded on it (I’m assuming it was left there by my brother) and take that one instead. The stableman is fooled because you leave with a mule with the same symbol as when you arrived, so he lets you go. Why would anyone actually think to do this? Seriously, does this Jake guy actually want me to find him? I’m starting to have my doubts!

Any of his numerous messages might have directed me straight to this mule

I took this new mule out in the wilderness and typed “follow mule”. I then spent the next five minutes following the mule through 34 screens (seriously, 34!) which represents 34 miles of wilderness until I arrived at what I assume is Jake’s location. I decided to end the session there as I knew I already had a heck of a lot to write about. I apologise for the length of this post (the first person to leave a comment saying “I made it” gets 5 points)! At this point, as I’m sure you can tell, I’m getting increasingly disappointed with Gold Rush. What started out as an interesting and technology pushing game has spiralled into a mess of ideas with puzzles that rely almost entirely on luck and guess work. I can see that the game wouldn’t have been quite so challenging if I’d done certain things in a certain order, but I don’t feel the player should be punished for taking any path available to them, as I have. Here's hoping the last part of the game tightens things up a bit!

Betting Odds: Jake's in the house $2.80 - Jake's left yet another note for me in the house $1.40

Session Time: 3 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours 00 minutes

Game 17: Gold Rush! - Burnt by Wagon Hire

Jerrod Wilson Journal Entry 2: “After a harrowing and life threatening journey, I’ve made it all the way across the country to Sutter’s Fort in California. After the ferry took me a fair way inland to Independence, I joined the Long Island Joint Mining and Stock Company and the lot of us began our journey by wagon across country. We were faced with just about every type of weather and landscape imaginable on the way, and were close to starvation and dehydration on several occasions. Somehow we seemed to avoid the hostile Indians while running into tribes that actually gave us aid. I thought the captain had made a serious mistake when we took the Truckee Route through the desert rather than the Lassen Cut-off, but we somehow made it to Sutter’s Fort as planned. Since arriving, I’ve spent my time looking for my brother, and trying to piece together what his letter might have meant. Everything has led me to room 21 of the Green Pastures Hotel, but my mission has stalled at a locked door. I’m getting close though...I can feel it!”

At the end of my last post I was about to depart Brooklyn in a stage coach on the back of a ferry

I can now categorically say that Gold Rush is unlike any other adventure game I’ve played. It took me around an hour to travel successfully from Brooklyn to Sacramento. During that time, I spent quite a bit of time staring at the screen, reading meticulous historic information about the path, very occasionally taking control of Jerrod again to surpass an obstacle, and randomly dying for no apparent reason. My feelings throughout this whole process switched from admiring how unique the experience was to feeling disaffected while the game took total control away from me. I can’t help having the feeling that the MacNeill brothers simply wanted to make use of the admittedly impressive amount of knowledge they have of the challenges faced by gold hunters travelling to California, despite the fact there was no real way to get it into their game in a satisfyingly interactive way.

I assume the Sea Farer would have taken me all the way around America rather than straight through the middle of it

I’m certainly not going to give you a blow by blow commentary of the journey, but I’ll try to give you an idea of what took place. At the end of my last post, I’d hopped on a stage coach, which then boarded a ferry to leave Brooklyn. The next few minutes displayed a map of America, with a little red line marking the path taken inland through various rivers and lakes. Apparently I changed boats several times before arriving at Independence, where it was planned for me to join the Long Island Joint Mining and Stock Company. Control was temporarily handed back to me at this point, and the next part of the game involved completing assignments for the captain of the company (such as choosing some animals to lead the wagon and deciding when the plains were suitably dry to commence travelling). These tasks are very easily achieved, particularly as there are only four screens that can be accessed, and the whole section feels like it was included to fill in the story rather than offering any real challenge to the player.

One of the few times you actually get to do anything between Brooklyn and Sacramento

One thing I should note is that one of the miners gave me a bible and when reading it (it only displays a few famous sections), I couldn’t help but notice the words GREEN PASTURES in capitals in Psalm 23. I noted this down as likely to be important at some point and we set off. It’s here that Gold Rush pretty much becomes an educational piece of software with only short opportunities for player interaction, at least for a while. I was informed very descriptively of the various landmarks that we passed, the effects of the weather on the team and animals, and the numerous forts that we came across on the way. Most surprisingly, at one point I received a message telling me I fell off a raft and was swept away to my death. It then told me there was nothing I could have done about it. It was just an accident! Really!? So the game is just randomly killing me and making me restore even when I have no control and have made no decisions? It might be realistic of life in this era, but I couldn't help feeling a bit pissed about it.

Hahaha...Game Over...just because!

There were two places during the whole wagon journey where control was returned to me. The first one is where the wagon comes to a stop at the top of a long slope leading to water. I was informed that the animals were extremely thirsty, but nothing more. I soon found out that I had approximately ten to twenty seconds to put chains through the wheels and detach the oxen or else they would drag the wagon at high speed towards the water, causing it to flip and kill everyone on board. This did take me a while to figure out and I suffered numerous game over messages before I did. The second point of user interaction occurred when I was close to starving. The game dumped me next to the wagon and once again gave me a short time limit to find food and water before either the wagon gets away or I died. This was a pretty pointless scene, as both the food and the water are found in the only place they could be, an abandoned wagon on the side of the path. I really got the feeling the developers realised they would be losing the player by now and at least gave them something to do.

Well...I had chains...and some wheels...so...

After these parts were completed, it was just a matter of waiting for the history lecture to be over and I arrived at Sutter’s Fort. It was here that I got another update on my progress, telling me that I’d achieved 87 points out of a possible 95, excluding the points for reading the bible. Given I was 13 points off the maximum after Brooklyn and I was only 8 points off at California, I can only assume that reading the bible gave me at least 5 points. I have to say that things have become very unclear since I reached the fort. I spent a while completing my obligatory mapping of the screens, although the screens don’t join up in the way you might expect. If you keep on moving to the left of screen, you simply make your way in a circle around the inner part of the fort, rather than moving continuously west. It was a little off-putting at first, but it clicked eventually.

Something tells me the fort is based on exact measurements

There really wasn’t a heck of a lot I could do in the fort, but there was a trader who offered gold pans, shovels and lanterns, and there was also a mule-keeper who didn’t seem willing to sell any of his mules. The trader told me he would accept any form of gold, so I offered him the gold coin I found in Brooklyn. He accepted it, allowing me to take only one of the items on offer. I had absolutely no idea as to which of the items was the correct one to choose, or even if there was a correct one, so I selected the shovel at random. I’m going to assume that the game can be completed, no matter which item you take with you, as I’ve still seen no suggestion as to which one I need. If that’s not the case, then this could be one of the worst dead end cases I’ve seen. Just outside the fort was a cemetery and it’s here that things got interesting.

Jerrod arrives at Sutter's Fort with grey hair and a beard 

Just as in the cemetery in Brooklyn, I wandered around reading the inscriptions on each of the tombstones until I found one that said Wilson Marshall, my father. This reminded me of Jake’s letter, which mentioned that he’d come to bury pa, and I figured this all had to have some meaning. What was particularly odd was that I’d already seen my father’s tombstone in the Brooklyn cemetery (he died in 1839 not 1848), so this message was clearly planted by Jake as a message. Remembering the holes in Jake’s letter, I used it on the tombstone and was then able to move it around. It locked into place at one point and the letters R21OOM appeared. This didn’t mean anything to me, but I noted it down and went on my merry way. It’s also worth noting that the tombstone mentioned Psalm 23 for anyone that hadn’t discovered the GREEN PASTURES message in the bible.

Yes, why would you continue looking when the message is so very clear? R21OOM!

So, at this point I had a few clues to mull over, but no real direction to take. Neither R21OOM or GREEN PASTURES meant anything to me, and the only hint of Jake’s whereabouts from the letter was “I live in the area drained by the American River”. Leaving the fort resulted in a top down perspective for a short period until I left the screen. After that I wandered aimlessly through stacks of screens, occasionally digging a hole with my shovel and finding nothing. Each screen tells you how far South and East you have travelled from the fort, but I found nothing of interest on any of the twenty or so that I wandered into. Eventually I decided to stick to the edge of the American River and walk along to see if I could find the “area drained” that Jake wrote about. Surprise, surprise! After crossing about fifteen or so screens to the east I came across a hotel called Green Pastures!

Eureka!

I immediately assumed Jake must be in there and I had a “eureka” moment (that word has never been more fitting than it is in Gold Rush!) when I realised R21OOM must mean room 21 (yes, it's obvious in hindsight). Looking back at the tombstone screenshot, I could now see that the message was Room 21: Reserved For You Always! I entered the hotel, tried and failed to book a room, then rushed to room 21 excitedly. The door was locked. Knocking achieved nothing either! Realising that things might not be as straight forward as I was hoping, I decided to call it a night and approach Green Pastures with a fresh mind tomorrow. I’m not requesting any assistance just yet as I haven’t really given it a good shot (there's every chance I only need to ask for the keys), but if anyone wants to leave some explanations regarding the trader and the general fort surroundings (in ROT13 of course), I’ll check them out if I get really stuck.

Everything leads here! It would be more exciting if I could actually get in the room though.

Session Time: 2 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours 00 minutes

Game 17: Gold Rush! - By Land or by Sea?

Jerrod Wilson Journal Entry 1: “Just days ago I was content to live my life in Brooklyn, working as a newspaperman for the Evening Star. I’d never considered leaving behind the house my father built and while I’d often repressed feelings of wanderlust that entered my mind, there were simply too many opportunities in Brooklyn to run away from. That's all changed now! Announcements started coming through of a gold rush in California. Many people that previously seemed settled in Brooklyn simply packed up their stuff (or in most cases sold it) and set off with the dream of getting their own piece of the riches on offer. I’m not the type of person to get caught up in such madness, but then a letter arrived from my brother Jake! I haven’t seen him for many years and had begun to think him dead, so the news that he was alive changed everything for me. His letter also hinted that he’d found gold too, so I made the decision to join the flow of hopefuls headed to California. I quit my job, sold my house, withdrew all of my savings from the bank, and have now purchased myself a ticket that will get my as far as Independence, Missouri. I’m currently in a stage coach aboard a ferry with everything I own on my person...which isn’t much.”

We're on a bridge Charlie!

It’s always a good sign when I’d prefer to keep playing a game rather than spend time writing a post about it. There are some games where writing posts has been a fantastic excuse to stop playing because I’m not actually loving the experience (don't worry, I always enjoy games to various degrees, even the bad ones). That’s certainly not the case with Gold Rush! I’ve spent three hours playing the game (split over three sessions) and am really keen to see what happens next, but I also know that if I don’t sit down and start typing, there’ll simply be too much information to get out all at once. As it is, I’ve already got a stack of notes and 61 screenshots to look over, so I better get into it. Before I get stuck into the detail, I’ll start by saying that I can already tell that Gold Rush deserves more credit than it receives. Not only does it push the boundaries of what Sierra’s AGI engine was ever going to be capable of achieving, it also manages to be a rather unique experience at a time where many of the games coming out of Sierra were merely following a blueprint, albeit with different coats of paint being applied.

A nice little house, which apparently belongs to me

My game started in a fairly random location of Brooklyn. Straight away it’s apparent that the creators have spent the time making the town feel like a living, breathing place, rather than an empty shell for goings on that revolve entirely around the protagonist. There are townsfolk wandering around randomly and lots of little details that have little to do with the story or solution, but that certainly help to quickly make me feel part of the game environment. I immediately set off wandering around, forming a map in excel of all available screens the way I always do in Sierra games (that is, when there are enough joining screens to make it helpful). In each screen I typed “look”, and if any particular items or landmarks were mentioned, I tried investigating them directly. I racked up a few points this way by collecting items (a coin and some flowers), and eventually mapped a total of seventeen screens to explore within Brooklyn, including a bank, post office, cemetery, warehouse, livery, travel agent, park and a couple of stores.

Failing to take this advice results in points being deducted from your score

Of particular interest to me was a house in the residential area that apparently belongs to me, so that seemed to be the best place to kick off my journey. On entering the house, I was in for a surprise. All of a sudden Jerrod had increased in size! In fact, he now took on an appearance similar to the characters found in Maniac Mansion. It's not a massive deal. but having the characters given more resolution and focus really helps raise the intimacy of the various goings on that occur behind closed doors. I’ve since discovered that this effect only occurs in the smaller buildings (such as the hardware store, the post office and the travel agent) and not in the larger ones (such as the bank and The Evening Star). I didn’t find much of use in the house, but I did come across of photo album which filled in some of the back-story around my family, particularly the fact that the bank president, named Mr. Quail, looked after Jerrod and Jake after the death of their parents. I took a photo out of the album, and left the house.

Bigger characters isn't a huge advance in technology, but it's a nice touch. Is that a bong on the table?

I knew from my research that Jerrod will at some stage receive a letter from his brother, so my next destination was the post office. As expected, there was some mail waiting for me there, which was a letter from my brother requesting I come quickly to California. The letter finished with the line “P.S. Bring something from home so I will know it’s you”, and I figured that must be the purpose of the photo I took from the album. When I looked at the envelope the letter came in, I noticed a bump under the stamp, which on further inspection turned out to be a gold flake. It appears Jake has found gold! The letter itself has some strange holes in it, which have apparently been cut into it intentionally, but I don’t really know what that might mean at this stage. Shortly after leaving the post office, announcements started to come through that gold had been discovered in California, and everything started to push me towards that path.

This is the LETTER that you RECEIVE from your BROTHER Jake (aka Adam West)

By this stage I’d only been playing for about thirty minutes, but it would be another two and half hours before I was ready to depart Brookville. I quickly found two different paths that I could take, being by coach or by a ship called the Sea Farer, but finding the money to be able to afford tickets on either (the coach costs $950 and the ship costs $2300 or $1800 for a longer route) was really challenging. Unlike the other Sierra game that aimed for realistic situations and factual information, Police Quest, Gold Rush refuses to hold the player’s hand, and lets them figure things out entirely for themself. I literally had to put myself in the shoes of someone in this era wanting to get their own piece of the gold rush to be able to solve anything. What would they do? What would they try to take with them? Who might they speak to?

This notice fails to mention that the ticket prices are ridiculously exorbitant!

The list I came up with was quit their job, sell their house, withdraw all their cash from the bank, and stock up on supplies. I went to the Evening Star, and when I couldn’t find anything else to do, I quit! I received a few points for it, but that was it. I tried to figure out where I might go to sell my house, but there didn’t seem to be an appropriate place. I eventually figured out that you simply need to type “sell house” from literally anywhere in the game for your house to go on the market. It’s an unusual solution but one that’s discovered if you even attempt to talk to anyone (such as the bank manager) about the subject. Once it was on the market, I came across a real estate agent outside the house, who informed me that I’d got myself a lofty $750 for the house my father built. Next step was to head over to the bank to withdraw whatever money was in my account. The bank teller asked me for my account number, which I didn’t know, so I asked to speak to the bank manager.

It's strange that the same horrible light blue interior design keeps popping up in Sierra games, whether they be set in the past, present or future

I’d actually spent a long time speaking to Mr Quail earlier in the game, as I figured his connection to my family must have been mentioned for some reason. It was fairly frustrating to be honest as the game recognises very few requests for information, and I’ve come across the standard Sierra style answers over and over again (“how can you do that”, “what do you mean”, “the word ‘about’ is not recognised” etc.) . Unlike games such as Leisure Suit Larry, where you can ask anything about anything and get an answer (usually a funny one), there is very limited information available at any time when playing Gold Rush. Anyway, his purpose in the game became obvious once I needed an account number, and he happily handed over the number (which is 1!) on request. This gave me access to another $200, taking my total to $965 (I started with $15). Nowhere near enough to get a ticket for the ship, but just enough to get the stage coach.

I was expecting to find a saloon in Brooklyn somewhere. Sadly, there isn't one.

Knowing that Gold Rush is renowned for giving the player multiple pathways to reach the destination, I spent a long time trying to figure out how I might be able to get more money for the ship ticket, but I’m afraid I’ve failed. If there is a way, it has avoided me, so I eventually gave up and purchased my ticket for the coach. That wasn’t the only thing that confounded me during my time in Brooklyn. The hardware store owner informed me that I have an amount of money available on my account to purchase supplies, but not how much. There are many items in the store that seem suited to a life digging for gold, such as a wheelbarrow, rope, shovel, pick, lantern, etc., but I’ve seen nothing that would hint as to which ones I should acquire. I tried various combinations, but none of them resulted in points, so I can only assume it doesn’t matter. I’m beginning to wonder whether the best thing to do is buy none, but I’ve picked up a shovel, a pick and a lantern in case my intuition is wrong, before my account ran dry.

So many things I could buy, no instructions on what I might need!

Having ticked all the boxes in my plan for leaving Brooklyn, I gave my ticket to the man at the livery and hopped on the wagon. I was taken straight to the docks where the coach moved onto a ferry, and a message came up telling me that I’ve got myself only 47 points out of a possible 60 to this point. That seemed a pretty good spot to stop and write a post (wow, that’s three words in quick succession with the same letters!), but it’s got me wondering what I might have missed. More importantly, is there something I haven’t done that’s going to dead end me later on!? It seems to me that the episodic nature of Gold Rush is going to be ideal for the blog, as it puts neat bookends at the end of each section where you guys can all tell me how I’m going. Is it possible to get enough money to take the ship? Is there a way to get aboard without needing that much money? Where are the missing 13 points? The only other thing I’ve done of note is put flowers on my parents tombs in the cemetery, but I’m not going to spend any more time in Brooklyn trying to earn points unless there’s a reason I won’t be able to proceed later. As usual, please use ROT13 for any hints or tips and remember, you could earn yourself imaginary and entirely useless companion assist points!

"Keep trying!!" - Is that another way of saying "Better luck next time?"

Session Time: 3 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 00 minutes