Gold Fever Review

Gold Fever is yet another Bejeweled-like puzzle game, this time with a Western theme. The twist in this game is that you don't move pieces--you simply flip them over. The playing fields are populated with coins of varying colors. Each coin has two sides--you clear coins by matching up three adjacent coins of the same color and showing the same side. As coins are cleared, more drop in from the top. You don't need to have all three coins in a vertical or horizontal row. They just need to touch one another, even in a snaking pattern. The game starts off with only two different colors of coins on the playing field which is easy, but as you go along, new colors are added, and the playing fields take on more irregular shapes. Gold nuggets are also mixed in, which can't be moved or flipped, complicating matters. If you can make these fall off the bottom of the grid you get extra lives. You can earn power-ups to remove coins, but the ultimate problem with the game is the random nature of the new coins dropping. Sometimes it seems as though you can't clear a level unless you are fortunate with the starting pattern of coins; at times it seems as though the game is more luck-based than skill-based.