In the game you are the "gold pusher", a funny little man
who,
for some reason, wants to push a pot of gold
on
top of a small "rain bow". When goldpusher succeeds in pushing
the pot of gold on the rainbow, the puzzle is solved, you get bonus points
and you move on to the next room. However reaching the rainbow may be extremely
problematic. There are voracious monsters
hunting for goldpusher and the pot might get easily stuck by all kind of
obstacles.
To help GoldPusher to complete his job there are rocks
and
balloons
, which
can also be pushed around. They can flatten the road to the rainbow or
they can kill monsters. There is a kind of gravity, which only affects
the rocks. When a rock falls down and a monster happens to be in the way
it gets killed. The balloons do not fall, they rise, and again, when a
monster is hit by a rising balloon it dies.
Also Goldpusher is killed by a falling rock, or when he tries to lift a rock. Actually, he manages to lift the rock a little bit but then his force yields and he is crushed by the full weight of the rock. Remarkably enough, GoldPusher is not killed by a rising balloon. He can force a balloon down. He can even lift the gold pot (or a rock) by pushing it on a balloon (or pushing the balloon under the pot) and then pushing the pot upwards. He manages again to lift the pot a little bit, but now, immediately, the balloon comes to his aid and prevents the pot from falling back on GoldPusher and killing him.
GoldPusher is quite strong. When he pushes a rock which can't move any
further (against a wall for instance) the rock falls to pieces and vanishes.
The same happens of course when GoldPusher pushes a balloon which can't
move. GoldPusher cannot break the iron rocks
and
the gold pot.
Another help for GoldPusher in some rooms are the "spades"
. He can pick
up spades and throw them in the direction his nose is pointing. When a
spade touches a monster, it freezes the monster for some time, so it can't
move and hurt GoldPusher. Another use of the spades is in filling holes,
so that the gold pot can be moved across the holes, where it would otherwise
get stuck. Also spades can be used to capture monsters by blocking their
way in e.g. a corridor. A monster cannot pass a way which is blocked by
spades or rocks.
Bombs behave like spades. Goldpusher can pick them up and throw them.
When a bomb is thrown it is also ignited!! That means it will soon explode
,
killing and crushing everything in its direct surrounding. Even one type
of wall piece is destroyed by a bomb (the brown stone). Iron balls and
the chauldron are not destroyed, but they are moved by the blast. Of course,
an exploding bomb ignites other bombs next to it.
There are five kind of monsters in the game:
snails
, orcs
, spiders,
icebears 
and rock-piercers
.
The snails are slow and move in straight lines. Only when they find their
way blocked, they try other directions, with a strong preference (75%)
for a turn into the direction where you (GoldPusher) are standing. So when
a snail is moving freely and you are standing next to it, but not in its
way, it won't attack you. The orcs move like the snails but much faster.
Icebears move like orcs but they can also push rocks and balloons! The
rock-piercer moves like a snail, but it crushes all rocks and balloons
it comes across. Finally spiders are the most intelligent monsters. They
constantly look where you are and try to find you. When they find their
way blocked they will try all kind of possibilities to get around the obstacle.
In the title bar of each room you can see how many points you can collect. Because the rooms can have very different characteristics (arcade action, strategy or just a puzzle), you can choose freely which ones you want to solve, according to your taste. Once a room is completed, the player has the opportunity to choose any other room, although the game automatically increases the room-number and presents that one as the next puzzle. To choose another room, a menu command is available. A completed puzzle can not be solved again, to prevent a player to increase his score by solving the same puzzle over and over. When a player changes rooms in the middle of a puzzle in progress, the player is punished by loosing 50 points. The effect is the same as aborting the current puzzle and then choosing another room. One can only switch puzzles without the 50 point penalty at the beginning of a puzzle, before the first move is made (the game is then paused and GoldPusher is flashing).
Some rooms contain more than one difficult part. When you solved a difficult passage, you can pause the game before continuing (press P, tab, cmd-P or click the mouse). The current situation is then automaticly remembered. When GoldPusher dies in the next difficult part (or when you abort in a hopeless situation), you don't have to do the room all over again, but you are repositioned in the situation of the last pause. When you are repositioned at the situation of the last pause, but you want to restart from the beginning, you must (again) use the abort command.
The scoring follows a simple scheme. Every room completed adds a bonus to the total score. This bonus depends on the difficulty level of the room. While you play, each monster killed also adds a small bonus depending on the "intelligence" of the particular monster. When GoldPusher is killed (or when you abort in the middle of solving a room) you loose 50 bonus points. The total score is in the top left corner. In the bottom right corner the number of spades you picked up is counted. The bonus points earned in a room by killing monsters only become permanent when the room is completed successfully. That is, if GoldPusher is killed, you loose all bonus accumulated in this room and you fall back to the situation at the beginning of this room, minus 50 points. When you took a pause and GoldPusher is killed (or you abort) you loose 50 points but you keep the accumulated points at the time of the pause.
Only at the beginning of a new puzzle, thus when the previous puzzle has been successfully completed, you are allowed to save the game. A dialog box is presented with four save-buttons. Each save button can store one saved game. So up to four different games in progress can be saved. Loading a game can be done at any time. However, a saved game can only be loaded once!. This has to be that way, otherwise the concept of earning and loosing points has no meaning. If one could load a saved game over and over again, one would immediately reload a saved game as soon as one would run into a deadly situation. The pause feature allows you to remember a situation in the middle of solving a room. However you can only return to the last pause situation when you die or abort (and thus loose 50 points). A pause situation is not remembered when you save the game.
GoldPusher can be moved using keys: h,j,k and l. h is left, j is down, k is up end l is right. As an alternative the numeric keypad can also be used. Another alternative is using the mouse. When the item "mouse-control" in menu "help" is enabled, GoldPusher will try to follow the mouse-cursor. I do not recommend mouse-control because it is less accurate then key-control when fast reactions are required. Spades are picked up by walking over them. Hitting the spacebar throws a spade. A mouse click or typing 'p' (or tab or cmd-p) pauses the game. Only then the menu-bar can be used (and becomes visible on small screens). If you set the speed to "single cycle" in the speed-menu, all movement on the screen will stop. You can advance the animation frame by frame, manually, by clicking the mouse. To stop single cycle mode, hold both the command key and the 4 down, while clicking the mouse.
Many rooms have a title containing a hint how to solve the puzzle. Unfortunately the title-bar of the rooms is not visible on small screens (512x342). You may use the editor to read the room titles in that case. When you know how monsters behave, you can use this knowledge to guide them to a place where you can trap them or kill them. E.g. you know that a snail will turn with high probability into your direction when it bumps into something. Many unexpected tricks can be played in the physical reality of GoldPusher. To find it out is part of the fun of the game. E.g. you can throw a spade in the air just in front of a passing icebear. The icebear is not hit by the spade, but it bumps against the flying spade and thus changes direction. In some puzzles you have to use this trick to guide the icebear to the right place. This trick requires precise timing. If you throw too late the ice bear will be hit by the spade and is lamed. If you throw too early the icebear won't bump and won't change direction. Another trick is to use the spade as an umbrella against a falling rock.
When you are stumped by a puzzle, you can check the "Show Solution" item in the Help menu. You will get a real-time play back of the solution. You can stop in the middle of a play back by pushing the mouse button. Then you can continue "by hand"
First check the menu item "Record Solution" in the help menu. The room is then reset to its initial state in the pause mode. Just start playing. When you push the gold pot onto the rainbow you get a dialog, asking if you want to make this recording permanent. Say OK. And that's it. During recording you can even pause the game! When you die (or abort) and the pause situation is reloaded, the recorder is also rewound to the pause situation. So you don't see any errors in the final recording. You can also die during a recording and start all over again. The replay will do exactly the same.