The Oregon Trail: Android Apps Written Review
In the grand tradition of western expansion, the new The Oregon Trail: Settler Android app from Gameloft continues the story of one family’s quest to go West. If you’re unfamiliar with Oregon Trail, well, shame on you. That ultimate classic won a place in all our hearts, and if you’ve been dying to see what happened when, despite snake bites, broken wheels and fording rivers, the plucky settlers made it to the territories, our Android app review of The Oregon Trail: Settler should put your mind at ease.
Gameplay
Reviewed by Valerie Lauer
The Oregon Trail: Settler app is a civilization builder, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s one party RPG, two parts frontier adventure. Sure you’ll build houses and businesses, complete quests and do other builder type things, but mostly you’ll be acting sheriff, handle your town’s crisis situations and even shoot the occasional bear, or any other critter crazy enough to wander around your home stead.
The allusions to traditional Oregon Trail dilemmas make this app super special. We’ve never had this much fun playing a civilization builder before, and we’ve taken on our share of builders here at Android Apps Review.
The gameplay is smart, interesting, and tickles the all-important nostalgic funny bone in all of us. It was impossible to resist this app. We fell in love. Sure, there’s some pesky in-app currency you might want to buy, but you really don’t have to. That’s right, you can actually play this game and not be driven crazy by the app covertly maneuvering you into spending your cash, at least not that we could tell after playing for several days. That alone sets this game apart as well thought out and more fair for gamers than most of the other apps out there like it.
Layout & Design
The Oregon Trail: Settler
Due to a ton of houses, crops, settlers, stores, shops, storage and such, you’re screen’s going to get pretty busy in The Oregon Trail: Settler. While the app does support zoom and scroll features, it doesn’t support 360 degree viewing, which can be a little frustrating in a busy game. We found ourselves tapping the wrong building pretty frequently, and a rotate feature could have solved that issue.
Design wise, the game is fun and colorful. There’s a certain level of sophistication to the app’s two-dimensional graphics, though they are decidedly cartoon style.
Functionality
The Oregon Trail: Settler is a hefty download, both initially and when you actually start running the game. So, depending on your connection, it may take a few minutes to download the extra 28 megabytes of additional data necessary to run the app. Also, it has a relatively slow load time in general, although, once you’re in the game you’re gold. Otherwise the app works quite well, even with so many actions happening at once.
Overall Value
In the grand tradition of Manifest Destiny, in The Oregon Trail: Settler it’s all the land you can grab, free of charge. Well, at least the app download is free of charge. And, as we mentioned earlier, you don’t have to shell out a ton of cash to have fun playing this game. That might be our favorite thing about it.
In other words, go get this game. If you ever played Oregon Trail you’re simply going to love it.
The Oregon Trail: Settler
Android Apps Review Details: The Oregon Trail: Settler Android app is free. This app requires Android 2.0.1 and up. You may download The Oregon Trail: Settler from the Android Market.
