Golden Miner

Gold Miner, the online flash game, has been around forever… and if you’ve never played it, here’s your chance! The object is to throw your claw into the ground below and reel in as much loot as you can. If you accumulate enough money (mostly in the form of gold and diamonds) before each level’s timer runs out, you advance to the next level. In between levels you get to buy stuff to help your mining expedition, but remember that what you spend comes out of your running bank total which could mean the difference between advancing or falling short of the next level’s goal.

Fans of the game will be thrilled to know that Gold Miner is now on iPhone thanks to Colorme Info Tech’s translation which is very cleverly named Golden Miner. Below is a fully playable version of the online game. Go on, click Start! And then be sure to read the review of this very well made iPhone app.

Press DOWN arrow to reel stuff in, and UP arrow to throw dynamite if you have it

What  you see above is almost exactly what you get on your iPhone with Golden Miner! It’s a very good iPhone-ified version of the game with a couple of minor differences:

• There’s no shop item for increasing the value of rocks
• There’s no shop item for increasing the value of diamonds

Other than that, Golden Miner is pretty much right on. You tap the iPhone screen to launch your claw to reel in the goods buried underground, and if you have dynamite you just tap on the dynamite sticks to throw them when you don’t feel like waiting to pull in whatever your claw has a hold of.

Unlike the online flash game, Golden Miner comes with two difficulty levels and a global scoreboard. The “Standard” skill level is easier in that you don’t need to accumulate as much money to advance to the next level, plus when you grab a diamond-carrying mole he’ll bring the diamond with him. In the “Expert” level, grabbing a mole who’s holding a diamond will yield only the animal and then you have to go back to get the diamond that he dropped in a panic upon seeing your claw flying at his head.

Overall the production values in this app are great, but the one area that strikes me as really awkward is the way some sound effects are really abrupt and sound out of place. I’m referring specifically to the sounds made by the big burly miner guy when he pulls things in… the game is mostly silent, and then all of a sudden Mr. Miner will pull in a rock and scream “ARRRGGHH!” I’m all for having sound effects to add to the experience, but certain parts of the sound editing really could use some work, and a little in-game music wouldn’t hurt either.

Another thing Golden Miner needs is an options panel for controlling sound. The game will let you play iPod music which is awesome, but your tunes will get mixed in with the game’s sound which can’t be turned off.

Outside of sound issues I’m pretty impressed with Golden Miner. It’s quite a departure from Colorme Info Tech’s Painting Scroll app and, if you like the flash game included with this review, a dollar is a very small price for having this game on your iPhone.