Customer Reviews

Cherokee Trails

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I purchased this game, expecting it to be akin to The Oregon Trail. Instead, it starts out in a modern-day flea market, where five kids are turned loose with $20 each. From the flea market, they're supposed to get whisked back in time to the days of the Trail of Tears -- but that happens only if they read the cheat sheet and figure out the hidden path to the past.

Once in the past, the "game" only gets hokier. Players basically get to sit and track their supposed progress on a screen. Every now and then, they'll be asked if they want to stop at a trading post for supplies. Of course, every trading post is the same -- staffed by a skeleton, and selling the same tired list of ridiculously-priced supplies. (Who fixed the price of flour at $1 a pound??? Probably the same person who assumed the average family on the trail had at least $500 in gold on them.)

As for the trading players supposedly get to do for supplies, a couple of details need to be pointed out. For starters, the only people in the game are the children who get swept back in time. Everybody and everything else they encounter along the trail is either a "good spirit" or a "bad spirit." Players are supposed to distinguish between the two and only trade with "good spirits." Once you get past the whole communing with the dead element, you'll find that even "good spirits" offer you nothing worth trading for.

In the end, players get to buy food every now and then and decide whether to stop or continue on in thunderstorms. Other than that, this so-called "game" consists of watching a line progress across the screen and being told when a member of the wagon party is sick or dying. The introduction to the game does relate a bit of the history of the trail of tears, but absolutely nothing beyond what you would find in the most basic of references. Reading an online encyclopedia article would be more informative, just as interesting, and a whole lot cheaper.