Let's Go Find El Dorado
Let's Go Find El Dorado is the abbreviated name of a 2009 freeware game called Fuck Oregon, Let's Go Find El Dorado. It was later ported to the iPhone, under the name So Long Oregon, Let's Go Find El Dorado. This article deals mainly with the former.
Created by Justin Smith for the indie game competition Ludum Dare, Let's Go Find El Dorado is a hybrid of Oregon Trail and Excite Bike. You control a wagon party, departing from Independence, Missouri, in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. Many formidable peaks lay in your path, but never fear! Your wagon will launch from them with ease, sailing through the air and above the many rivers, towns, stores, and Indian villages.
Using the left and right keys, you can control the direction the wagon faces, in order to smooth landings and bounce around less on impact. If your wagon tips over, one of your party members will be injured. They can also catch diseases from towns and rivers, and when all of your party members are dead, the game's over. You must also reach El Dorado before your food runs out.
You can download the game for free here. The remake can be purchased here.
- Anachronism Stew: You can opt to use a car instead of a wagon, and Typhoid Mary's one of the things that would kill you on your journey.
- A Winner Is You
- Bilingual Bonus: look up "Poubelle" in a French-English dictionary. Take your time, we'll wait.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: There's plenty of ways the game can screw you over. Infected towns and hostile indian reserves, infinite streams of bandits, infecting multiple members of your party when the wagon touches the stream, snakebites (the most potent status ailment in the game), impossible to cross terrain, and refusing to stop your wagon even if you push the opposite direction key. Heck, it can even suddenly get your party sick with thyroid fever for no reason at all. And to top it off, a bear or buffalo, or even a rabbit or squirrel, can knock you over. And oh, the Chupacabra and Typhoid Mary.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: See The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard above.
- Excuse Plot
- Fake Difficulty: Don't go too fast towards the end, or you might fly over El Dorado and fall off the edge of the map and die.
- Luck-Based Mission: If you don't find a store or friendly Indian tribe who will give you food, you are going to starve before El Dorado. Period. The sharp-angled mountains that you can get stuck in don't help, either; you must go back and get enough momentum to sail over them, or else try to bounce in such a way that you land on the other face.
- Realistic Conestoga Wagon Physics
- River of Insanity: If you touch water for more than a fraction of a second, one or more members of your party will catch dysentery.
- Standard Status Effects: Dysentery, Typhoid, and Cholera all sap the HP of your party members. The first two will wear off with time, and can be cured by doctors in town, but cholera will not. It can be "cured" by giving the person dysentery. There's also Indian curses, which make your wagon very bouncy and hard to control...
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: If one of your party members dies, you can get an Indian guide to replace them.
- Timed Mission
- Total Party Kill
- You Fail Geography Forever: Done on purpose. In your journey, it's possible to go from Twin Falls, Idaho, to Managua, Nicaragua, in mere seconds!
- Going in Circles: Due to the artistic license the game engine takes, it's possible to pass by towns with the same name a couple of times, after crossing various rivers that shouldn't be in North America or Central America no less, before eventually finding El Dorado.