The Oregon Trail

Review

Well, here you go. The phrase "you learn something every day" is sometimes overrated, but most days, hopefully, we learn something. That way, we can go to bed with a sense that we have broadened our knowledge, whatever it is, and fall asleep with our newly discovered facts. I didn't know that the original game was a text-based strategy game developed in 1971 and was used for 8^th grade history classes. The origin of the game is older than me, which I find very exciting. And here I am, in 2022, about to take the 2,000 miles (3219 kilometres) from the town of Independence in Missouri to Willamette Valley, Oregon. I heard it was a difficult journey, and I invite you to follow four souls who are about to experience The Oregon Trail.

The Oregon Trail is a casual western adventure game developed and self-published by Gameloft on the 14^th of November 2022 on the Steam platform. The game is also available on Nintendo Switch.

The Oregon Trail consists of a five-leg journey from The town of Independence to Oregon City. On your first playthrough, you'll have no choice but to start from the town of Independence, but from then on, depending on how far you managed to travel on your previous playthrough, you'll be able to choose where to start. If you manage to finish the trail, you'll be able to start a new game from the last leg of the trail if you wish to.  

When you start a game, you'll have to select your four characters: a banker, a farmer, a missionary or an adventurer in your first playthrough. I also had a musician in my second playthrough, which I unlocked by successfully finishing a quest in my first playthrough. Each character will have a small description about them as well as three categories: Stats, Personality and Skills. Stats outlines each character's health, morale, stamina and hygiene, which are represented in gauges. Personality and Skills also have four traits each, but they will remain undiscovered until you start making choices while playing the game.

Each leg is a route to a specific destination that your party has to reach, either a fort or a town, and is divided into segments with a certain number of locations to reach, a path if you like. Between each of these locations (paths), you have routes to select to get to the next location, divided into waypoints. You have to select which waypoint your party and wagon will reach. These waypoints could be a place for hunting, fishing, gathering herbal medicine, resting your party or oxen and a few other things which I’ll let you discover. Your choice will depend on your party's needs between each segment of the leg you are into. So, for example, you might run low on food and choose to go hunting or fishing to gather more food rather than selecting a waypoint with a campfire. 

So, how does the game present itself? After selecting a waypoint, you'll see your party starting to walk from the right side of your screen, and the scenery will move from the right to the left side of the screen, and there is not much else to do. You do have a target icon for spotting animals, which is part of the collectables and gives you experience points each time you point and click on them. There’s usually one event between each waypoint. It could be that one of your characters hurt themselves, or found a carcass, or talked to or found a character who may have been lying down or injured (usually part of a quest) or even had issues with your wagon (deteriorating), which makes the game less monotone.

When you reach a prominent location such as a fort, a town or a stage within a path, you'll be able to do a couple of things. First, you can talk to people; some will be part of a quest, and others will be given information about the location. You can sell skins or fish and even find out what is for trade from your fellow adventurers. If you reach a town or fort, you'll be able also to access the local shop, which usually has all important items for sale. So make sure you have plenty of money in your wallet when you reach a town or a fort.

The Oregon Trail offers good replayability for different reasons. First, I don't think that you can do all the quests in the same playthrough. And some of the quests have different outcomes, too, depending on your choices. You can also unlock different trails, such as the Californian Trails, along with fun weekly events, which you can find on the main menu.

The other fun part of this game is the mini-games, such as hunting and fishing. I am not sure if there are others when you play other trails.

The graphics are nice, and the soundtrack is pretty good, too. I haven't experienced any crashes, and I enjoyed playing this game, although it might not be for everyone.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

The Oregon Trail Steam Store Page