Nobody ever thinks about the families of adventure archaeologists. While hat wearing, whip toting heroes go out to find lost artefacts that belong in a museum, their families sit at home, wondering if that giant boulder finally squished its mark. Chase for Adventure: The Lost City stars the daughter of one such adventurer, but she’s got a plan to track down dear old dad to see what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into.
Chase for Adventure is a casual resource management game that plays out in a series of levels across unexplored parts of the globe. Well, they’re not that unexplored, seeing as how resources, roads, and even people are often in the way. You begin each stage with a basecamp and a single worker and must figure out the fastest way to stock up on resources and accomplish the level goals. Efficient clicks, that’s what being an adventure archaeologist is all about!
Piles of resources are abundant in Chase for Adventure, as are warehouse drop points that continually generate bits of food, buckets of water, piles of wood, and chunks of crystal. You’ll need ample amounts of all four resources to repair bridges, chop down trees, chip away at stones, and fill in swamp pits. You even have a helpful pal named Jack who can scare away monkeys blocking the path. This is the jungle, after all.
Some stages in Chase for Adventure include items you must collect to complete certain goals. Lighting a fire to ward off the fog, for example, means you’ll need some moss and other materials to assemble the torch. Once you’ve cleared those paths, piece the items together and complete your objective.
Level design in Chase for Adventure leaves something to be desired. Apart from some light strategy centered around which pile of resources to pick up first, it’s mostly a matter of clicking every clickable object and waiting for workers to do their thing. Regenerating resource piles were thrown in to make sure you never get stuck, but this was used as a substitute for more clever path design. Instead of using them as a backup, you’ll spend half your time running back and forth between warehouse drops so you can remove that next obstacle. It gets tedious rather quickly, especially if you didn’t upgrade your camp and only have one worker.
Chase for Adventure is a very middle of the road kind of time management game. There are some good features that make it playable and entertaining, but they aren’t substantial enough to overshadow the mundanity that dominates the core of the gameplay. Not broken or frustrating, but not quite top of the line, either.
