You've Got the Midas Touch

It may not exactly be the Klondike, but you're about to dive into a wonderfully colorful adventure wherein you must seek out mounds and mounds of gold. Diving your way through these relatively uncharted caverns, you are assigned the task of hammering your way through the less valuable rock in search of gold, pure gold. To complete each level, you must gather at least three golden nuggets.

The frantic arcade action found in this title is terribly addicting, yet incredibly simple. When you are shown the various blocks on the screen, you simply remove them by clicking on groups of three or more blocks of the same color. When these blocks are removed, all the blocks above them will come tumbling down to fill the void. The gravity effects are surprisingly accurate, because you'll find that some blocks will get stuck on ledges along the sides. To get these to tumble down, you must remove the blocks beneath them.

Digging Deep into the Mines

Guided by the apparent ghost of a prospector named Jack, you will dive deeper and deeper into these caverns in search of gold. The screen automatically scrolls downwards as you dig deeper into the ground. You must work quickly, because if the blocks reach the top of the screen, you will only have a few moments before you lose. On the flip side, if you find that the scrolling is too slow, you can either use the scroll wheel or the right-click button on your mouse. This advances your descent slightly.

Along the way, Jack will provide you with a series of unique challenges for additional treasures. For example, you may be asked to maintain an accuracy level of at least 80%. Alternatively, you must remove a group of 20 or more blue blocks with a single click.

A True Prospector's Tools

What kind of gold prospector would you be if you didn't have some tools to aid you along the way. As you progress down the caverns, cascading through a seemingly infinite series of colored blocks, you may encounter some useful tools that will help you dig a little faster and find that gold a little sooner.

Among these tools is the pickaxe. If you click on this tool, it will automatically remove all the blocks of its color from the screen. As you can imagine, this is very powerful and will come in very handy when you find the blocks getting a little too close to the top of the screen.

Some of the other tools you may encounter are the shovel and the hammer. The former can be used to remove all the blocks from a single row, whereas the latter clears three columns worth of blocks. The wrench will rearrange the blocks in its immediate vicinity so that they are easier to remove, whereas the dynamite will blow up a 5x5 grid of blocks in the area.

Greater Riches for the Patient

There are two competing strategies here that you may consider. On the one hand, you may want to get through each stage as quickly as possible, clicking on the group of three gold nuggets as soon as you can. On the other hand, if you are more patient and dig deeper into the caverns, you may find that it is possible to group together more than three nuggets at a time. More riches await those who are willing to wait.