My Gold Mine Review – Outrun a Dragon Without Getting Fried

During my recent holiday, I was after games that were small and easy to pack, could be played just about anywhere, and delivered plenty of fun. One such game was My Gold Mine, designed by Hans Joachim Höh, Michael Loth and Christof Schilling. You’re a dwarf, and your only goal is to get mining, grab as much gold as you can and get out before a dragon turns you into a dwarven-sized French fry.

Sounds easy enough, but the lure of just one more gold nugget can be awfully hard to resist.

How to Play

My Gold Mine is a push-your-luck game where you start out already inside a gold mine alongside all your dwarven “friends”. This is represented by everyone’s token starting on the fifth card in a row of nine. The first card is the exit, while the last features a fire-breathing dragon who’s clearly woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

On your turn, you’ll choose between drawing from a face-up deck of treasure cards or a face-down deck of escape cards.

The treasure deck mostly offers golden nuggets, with some cards forcing you deeper into the mine to collect them. But there are also dragon cards lurking in the deck, each moving the dragon one space closer to the exit. Anyone caught in its path gets turned extra crispy and is out of the game.

The escape cards are a little more varied, usually offering a choice between two different options. Almost all of them will move you closer to the exit, whether that’s taking a single step back, jumping back two spaces, swapping positions with another dwarf or moving the entire group backwards. Every now and then, though, you’ll stumble across a particularly tempting option: a card offering three golden nuggets.

You keep taking turns until everyone has either escaped the mine or been turned into a char-grilled dwarf. At that point, the three dwarves who’ve collected the most gold receive a decreasing number of gold nugget tokens, rewarding the greediest survivors.

Then it’s on to round two, which plays much the same way, with the same rewards up for grabs.

The third round, however, is winner takes all. You’ll once again be trying to escape with your pockets full of gold while avoiding the dragon’s fiery temper. The difference comes at scoring, when you add the gold you’ve collected in previous rounds to your latest haul. The dwarf with the most gold takes the crown, along with a spot on the dragon’s wall of infamy.

A little gold, a lot of fun

Like other push-your-luck games, My Gold Mine constantly asks how much you think you can get away with? Where it differs from many games in the genre is that the treasure deck is displayed face-up. Rather than blindly drawing a card and hoping for the best, you can see what’s on offer and decide whether the reward is worth the risk. It means you’re less likely to randomly meet your end by drawing a card that sends you straight into the dragon’s waiting jaws.

But choosing which treasure to chase is only half the fun. The escape cards can throw a spanner in the works, adding a surprising amount of variability and interactivity to the game. You might think you’re safe, only to have your position swapped with the dwarf sitting right in front of the dragon. Or you could be sitting pretty near the exit, only for someone to move you out of the mine before you’ve collected a competitive haul of gold.

This means you’re constantly balancing your position along the row of cards, trying to stay far enough from the dragon without escaping too early and missing out on valuable treasure. Positioning yourself becomes a fun game of risk and reward, as you never quite know when the dragon will close the gap. As a result, you’ll often find yourself venturing deeper into the mine than you originally intended.

That said, one thing I wasn’t entirely sold on was the winner-takes-all approach to the final round. You could play your cards perfectly in the first two rounds, but that means squat if you mess up in the final round. The rewards for doing well earlier don’t provide much of a buffer either, meaning you still need to play your cards right when it matters most.

It’s a minor gripe, though, and My Gold Mine isn’t exactly the sort of game you should be taking too seriously.

Otherwise, this is another great addition to the push-your-luck genre. It’s one of the better-presented games in the category, with a theme that should appeal to most players. And the way the dragon creeps closer and closer to the exit, leaving a trail of fire in its wake, is a particularly nice touch that brings the theme to life.

The gameplay itself is snappy, testing both your positioning and your greed without overstaying its welcome. If you’re after a quick, accessible game that’s easy to pack for your next holiday and gives everyone a reason to sweat over one more turn, My Gold Mine is well worth checking out.