The major challenge by far in the gold miner game is the clock. When you play, you are issued a certain monetary goal for each level. You achieve the goal by grabbing chunks of gold and other items from the virtual mine underneath you. You have to reach the goal before the clock runs out and that can be more difficult than it sounds. If you grab the smallest chunks of gold, they will come to the top quickly giving you more time to collect more pieces. If you grab the larger nuggets, they are worth a lot more money, but take a long time to drag to the top. When you are racing against the clock, you will have to decide if you have time to go for the large chunks or only the smaller ones, and also if you will have enough money for your target.
Another challenge in the gold miner game is the number of rocks surrounding the gold chunks. When you drop your crane into the ground to grab chunks of gold, you have to be careful not to grab a rock instead, a good level of precision would help you a great deal here. Rocks are worth only a small amount of money, and take a long time to crank up to the surface because they are heavy. You can waste a lot of your precious time by missing the gold and grabbing rocks instead.
The next challenge is the gopher. These pesky little critters run around in the mine, and scurry back and forth. When you drop your tool to pick up gold, you can very easily grab a gopher instead. When you are playing the gold miner game, time is of the essence and you can waste plenty of it on these varmints. There are times when collecting a gopher is good news because on some levels there are gophers with diamonds in their mouths, and these are worth a significant amount of money. For the regular gophers however, they are simply pesky obstacles.
Finally, there are the powder kegs. At the game’s higher levels, many of the treasures are placed precariously close to the powder kegs. If you accidentally hit a powder keg instead of grabbing your target item, everything around it will blow up, and you will be unable to reach your financial goal if there are not enough gold chunks and diamonds left in the mine.
