Rush for gold: Alaska is a cute (there's hardly any better word to describe it) time-management strategy game set in Alaska during the years of the Gold Rush. The game may look childish (actually it is :)), but that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed by adults. Its difficulty is pretty well set and it does require some basic strategic planning skills.
According to the story (yes, there's one) we play as a young woman whose family business has gone bankrupt so she seeks fortune in Alaska, to find gold, in order to pay the creditors. Our first job is to help sorting out baggages at a train station (where everyone seem to have lost their stuff) and by doing so, we receive the recognition of the town mayor, who asks us to be his assistant and become the leader of the gold diggers.
The game consists of 2 major locations: the town overview, where we can decorate the settlement, which is just for show, there's no actual gameplay here and the mission area, where we have to perform various tasks. In these missions we have to collect a given amount of the 4 resources (gold, wood, food, coal) or build/repair a building within the time limit. These resources can be traded at the corresponding merchant (for example gold for food at the Indian tent). To each task we can assign workers, who return to the town hall after their job is finished. The number of our workers can be increased by spending food and naturally more workers mean more assignable duties. After a worker finished his task we have to manually collect the resource by moving the mouse cursor over it. That is not all however.
There are various risks and hazards, the main one being the time limit. As we progress, we receive several forms of aid which we can use once in a while: speeding up our workers' movement and efficiency, freezing time and also resource packages. The use of these helps are compulsory to get maximum amounts of stars for each mission (these function as ingame achievements and are also necessary to decorate the town). Also there are simple obstacles blocking our path which we have to remove: these vary from fallen over trees to hungry bears, all which require certain resources to get rid of. Wolves and bandits are the most dangerous of them all, they can scare the workers thus making us lose valuable time. Our heroine is the only one who can chase the wolves and the bandits away with her revolvers (later on we can recruit a sheriff, he is the best in dealing with the convicts). It is rather strange though that a young woman has to protect the entire group from these dangers...
Everything is controlled by the mouse, there's no need to use the keyboard at all. The gameplay consist of clicking and moving the cursor on the right spot in the right moment basically. Of course as I said before, there's a minimal amount of strategy involved. Hint: the berries reproduce, so they are a constant source of food and therefore should be our primary target at the beginning of each mission.
My main problem with the game was that it becomes quite monotonous towards the end (even though the last mission does present us new elements). There are some bugs present, that can affect gameplay, like the one where we may lose precious materials, when our heroine is interrupted by wolfs or convicts, while she is on route to a trading post and the resources about to be traded has already been deducted from us. We can circumvent this however by always cleaning our path, right before conducting a trade. Likewise, another minor problem is that the resolution has to be manually reset every time after launching the game. Also there are some small grammatical errors.
There are 40 missions altogether, 10 for each season. All the maps have a different look according to the given season (in the winter scenario for example there's a quest where we have to clear the railroad from the snow). The graphics is cartoonish and of simplistic design, but the characters are well animated and funny looking, with beautiful, colorful scenery full of trees, flowers and waterfalls. The music is what you'd expect from a game like this: fitting Wild Western music, that'll most certainly cheer you up.
The game is one of those few cases that's entertaining for adults and small children alike. The fact that it's a casual game is both a blessing and a curse: I would have liked a bit more variety, but I also enjoyed it greatly as it used and combined the scarce elements it possesses. I would recommend it to anyone who'd like a quick relaxing experience within a cheerful and charming game.
PROS
+ provides fun for everyone
+ lovely Alaskan scenery with cute characters
+ it does have a passable story
CONS
- gets a bit repetitive later on
- some minor bugs
RATING
7/10
(Köszönet Hofinak a játékért)
