Facts about the history of the trail itself. The names of different towns, forts, and rivers that existed on the trail back in the 19th century.ģ. Understanding the sheer amount of difficulty that traveling the Oregon Trail entailed.Ģ. While playing, three learning goals seem to emerge.ġ. It’s really a rather tough experience getting your party to Oregon fully intact is a feat that takes planning, careful resource management, and quite a bit of luck. There are also mini-games on hunting and river rafting that introduce a few extra challenges. How much food do you buy? Clothes? Spare parts for your wagon? How fast is your traveling pace, and are rations limited or eaten generously? Do you try to ford the river yourself or hire a ferry? These decisions affect the long-term health of your party members and their ability to cope with difficulties that occur along the way. In The Oregon Trail, you have a number of resources to manage and decisions to make.

The Oregon Trail, first published in 1985, puts players in the role of pioneers from the 1840s making their way from Missouri to Oregon via covered wagon, and encountering many obstacles and dangers along the way. Now, let’s test this method by using it to analyze a classic learning game that many of us who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s will have played: The Oregon Trail. In my last post I introduced a method for deconstructing learning games to estimate their effectiveness.

Oregon trail 2 hunting