“You have died of dysentery”

These words have been a classic since the 70s (before I was even born). Oregon Trail has been around for what seems like forever. I had never played the previous iterations…not sure why. I have always been intrigued by a game that killed you with the “flux”, but I had never picked it up until the other day on my Pre. This version is made by Gameloft (the same people who made Asphalt 5) and costs $5.99 on the App Catalog. You can see what the classic version looked like below…don’t worry, it looks a lot better now.

So what is Oregon Trail? Well it is basically a simple role-playing/puzzle game that puts you in the role of big pappa who is taking his family WEST to fulfill their destiny in Oregon. Its part of the whole manifest destiny stuff from your American history class (or at least it was in my class). The goal of the game is to keep your family alive as you cross the terrain of the USA. As you cross, you will run into towns and outposts where you can pick up supplies and upgrade your wagon.

Gameplay-wise it is kind of like a choose-your-own adventure. You get to choose which path you go down which then determines what dangers do you face. How do you cross the big river? Try to ford it and risk losing your supplies (or drowning one of your children). Do you rent a raft? Well that will cost you some of your precious, hard earned money. Basically everything boils down to making choices that will keep you and your family alive and healthy.

As you make choices you play mini games.

Need to repair your wagon? To do this you need tap the nails as the come by (you get points and experience for this).

Want some money? Play classic Simon with telegraph machines.

Kid break his arm? Well…ya just gotta wait a couple of days on that one and he will heal right up.

The games are varied (there are 5 or so of them), but they all come down to tapping something at the right time. Nothing mind-blowing, but the variety keeps it fresh.

Along your travels you will also encounter famous figures (like Senator Abe Lincoln) who will give you quests like meet him at Fort Suchandsuch and he will give you some money. The quests are simple and basically require you to pick the correct route so you can get to Fort Suchandsuch (the other path will take you past that fort and over to Fort Whatsitcalled).

To get all the way across the country is gonna take you a good while. Personally, I am in Salt Lake City and I have been playing for around two hours. Once you get across the country, you could easily play again and see a very different set of challenges with the various paths.

What makes the game entertaining are the graphics and the humor. The cartoony graphics are nice looking and set the tone for the silliness you are about to encounter. The humor pops up in various ways…your wife complaining about the stinky hitchhiker, dad telling the kid to walk it off after he breaks his leg. One of my favorites is when you are walking and you see an eagle flying in the background. Dad says “Eagles are so majestic…”, and the about five seconds later you are queued to tap your screen at which point your character pulls out is gun, fires and the big eagle falls out of the sky. At which point your wife will probably yell at you and call you a monster for killing the beautiful animal while your kid says “Nice shot!” I am probably butchering the humor there, but I found it hilarious. You can see this play out in the video.

One minor thing that I found annoying was the lack of saves. This is a phone game which means I need to be able to save and get out very quickly. This game only saves whenever you hit a town or major event which could be several minutes. I don’t see why there isn’t a save anywhere feature…

The major thing I ran into is crashing. Yup, just like Asphalt 5, this game crashes…regularly. If you really want to spend a decent amount of time playing, then you have to reboot your phone first. Once you do that it will play reliably for a good while, but if you start without the reboot…well, lets just say it ain’t pretty. Crashing + infrequent save = one cranky customer. *sigh*

Gameloft…I like your games, I really do, but this stability thing has got to be fixed.

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