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The concept of Gold Gold Adventure Gold is an intriguing one. You play as a God-like overseer watching over a growing kingdom meant to do one thing: acquire more and more gold through various means. Whether this is by selling goods, completing dungeon quests, or enticing generous adventurers into your tavern and other market stalls, your omnipotent powers are constantly used to build on, upgrade, and expand your settlement, whilst also making sure it doesn’t fall to the nearly nightly hordes of monsters that try and attack it if you don’t keep them at bay. All the while you’re also joined by a God-beast of your choosing that acts as a “boots on the ground” being that wreaks havoc on enemies, or assists adventurers in their quests. This is still an early access game, so I’m taking that into account in this review.
Getting into It
The two main modes of the game, at the time of posting, are a “Wave Defense” and a "Colony Mode." During the day you’ll be tasked with trying to make & earn gold and build upon your settlement, while also trying to prepare (or discourage) the nightly waves of enemies from attacking. During the endless "Colony Mode", you can attack dungeons on the map to quell their thirst for violence, while on the Complete 10 Days "Wave Defense" mode, they’ll attack you nightly no matter what. Making sure your army of recruited adventurers, or your chosen God-Beast, are prepared to defend your kingdom, while also expanding your reach and influence on the map encompass the main gameplay loop of Gold Gold Adventure Gold.
Being an Overseer of Adventurers
What’s cool about it all is that it’s sort of a “Black & White” like experience where, for the most part, you’re using your guiding hand to encourage recruited adventurers to do specific “quests.” This innovative system has you pinpointing exactly where you’d like for your intrepid heroes to go by assigning quests for them to pick up and complete, just as if you were designing an RPG for them to complete. How do you get them to complete these tasks? Gold, of course! The currency is used practically everywhere in the game, including upgrading buildings, defenses, decorations, extra buildings, and adding extra adventurers (though luckily they also can just decide to join your town on their own.) Once someone (or a group of someones that have partied up) take on the quest, you can follow along from above and watch them venture out to complete it. It’s a pretty cool feeling to be spectating a sort of “live service” MMO of your own creation take place in real time (or 2x sped up time, which is a very much appreciated feature to speed up those longer treks.) You can use these quests to direct adventurers to explore new unvisited areas of the map, take on groups of enemies, or defend an area, as a few examples. It’s not a super complicated system, which is appreciated for the most part. I loved reading the live text recaps of what was happening during raids on a dungeon by my chosen party of characters, and seeing them gallivanting to and from their chosen tasks.
I did have some trouble sometimes trying to get my citizens and npcs to take on quests to progress my settlement, but that’s sorta the point. You’re not completely in control, but there’s still an element of strategy that requires your input to push the kingdom forward. The townsfolk won’t build anything outside of farms or marketable goods, for example. You’re the only one who decides how the gold that is earned is used, and it felt very important in the early game to make prudent decisions to facilitate making consistent gold in the later days. In addition to the quests you’re divvying out to adventurers, you’re also given specific goals that you can complete for “perk cards” that will reward you with new troops to build buildings for so that you can recruit them, spells you can cast to assist with combat situations, positive and negative bonuses that you can bestow upon your citizens and their going-ons, along with a bevy of other helpful and situation-specific upgrades. It was a bit confusing at times to figure out exactly where on the map I needed to set up quest markers to complete the tasks given to me. This could’ve just been a learning curve I needed to get better at, but I would’ve like a bit more direction on where exactly I needed to look. For example, if I’m supposed to “Defeat This Enemy” somewhere on the map, maybe a general area circle or something would be helpful, instead of having to just put general “Explore” quests all over the map areas I haven’t explored yet until I find it, if I find it at all in time before the quest expires.
A Vibrant Mix of Fun, Cute, and Dungeon-y Goodness
Enjoyably, the visuals in Gold Gold Adventure Gold are cute as can be, vibrant, and artsy. The 2D beastkin, monsters, and adventurers mixed with the 3D world present a pleasant and lively gameplay space to watch over. It was quite enjoyable to just watch everyone go about their business around town and the world. What’s even cooler is that as your town grows and you get more gold, you’re able to add some decorative spice to your town, including fences, walkways, and more. Additionally, they can add some defensive help to your town, or other helpful benefits. Now, I did have some trouble with navigating trying to reorganize my town, as some things are set for good once you build them, as well as the unpredictable nature of how your farmers expand on their own at the edge of town, leaving their goods up for easy attacks by waves of enemies. They’re not a big loss when they’re destroyed, but it’s still a bit irksome. I would’ve loved to be able to freely reorganize my town, but alas, I am sometimes merely a watcher of the creation. Buildings and troops will also change in appearance as they grow in power and abilities, especially your Godbeast, who eventually grows into a huge intimidatingly large being that stomps around the map dolling out death and defense to your enemies. I loved seeing my Blacksmith dragon go from being just a lil guy to a big fire-breathing beast. Overall, the graphics in the game ran smoothly, provided lots of information, and everything about the UI was gushing with adventurously gold personality.
Playing in the Background
The audio present in the game isn’t meant to be flashy and overtake the game itself. It’s more for flavor, as your actions and those of the adventurers all have their own punchy sound effects. Posting quests or selecting actions has the appropriate ‘thonk’ to it, and you can listen in on little battles and activities as you zoom in and out of the world you’re flying around above. There is scarce background music though, and it rises only when needed for bigger battles or situations. The theme song at the beginning is super catchy, though.
In Conclusion
At the end of the day, Gold Gold Adventure Gold is an early access title with a great foundation. There’s a fun gameplay loop, an adorable cast of characters to recruit and watch take on the world, and a relaxed sound environment to back it all. What could maybe put it over the top is some story direction or beats within the gameplay, or an overall goal beyond just “making lots of money.” It doesn’t have to have these to make it a good game, per se, but it could put it from being “good” to being “great.” I very much enjoyed the “limited” mode that made it so I had a main goal of surviving the nightly attacks until day 10. But it did all end sort of suddenly and without much fanfare. At $25, I’d say it’s worth it in its current state if you really like “God-like” strategy games where you’re sorta in control, sorta not, and if the style fits your interests. They’re still adding to the game currently, and I am looking forward to hopping back into the world when more is available to experience, including the extra Godbeasts they have planned.
