Gold Runner

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Game description

Gold Runner is a pretty straightforward clone of Lode Runner. You control a little fellow that looks like a stick figure, who runs around collecting gold nuggets in weirdly designed levels while being chased by guards. Whether you're a good guy or just a kleptomaniac is not explained, but once all nuggets have been collected, a level exit opens up that looks like a portal. Mission accomplished! Or is it?

For those not familiar with Lode Runner, there are two important mechanics. First, the player cannot jump, with the only way to go up is to climb ladders, if any are present. However, you can also dig holes in the ground, which may act as traps for the pursuing guards, or open new passages to the lower parts of a level. Holes fill up very quickly, and you can only dig the floor in front of you in the direction you're currently facing. Take that into account when you need to dig multiple layers of floor tiles, as you need at least two free cells to dig a hole.

Second, guards will sometimes pick up the gold nuggets and carry them around, and either drop them randomly by themselves, or when you "force" them when trapping them in a floor hole. You can always see how many nuggets you still need to collect to finish a level, so be careful not to miss any that are carried around by guards.

Any guard swallowed by a self-filling hole will come back from the top of the level, which sometimes traps them in an area where they can no longer reach you, but at other times they fall straight on the top of your head, or at least somewhere where they still cause trouble, depending on the design of the level.

On the whole, Gold Runner is fairly nice to play and does not include overly taxing difficulty. You get a bonus for finishing a level in as little time as possible but otherwise there is no overt time limit. The only little quirk of note is that unlike some other Lode Runner-like games, you can only dig in the direction you are facing, as opposed to having two separate buttons for digging to the left and to the right, which means that sometimes you need to turn around really quickly to dig a hole that you need to get rid of a pursuing guard for example.

Gold Runner was marketed as shareware. The unregistered version contains the first "world" of the game, with options to further get up to 100 more levels and a level editor.

Description by MrFlibble

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