Pay Dirt is an engine-building, worker placement game set in frigid Alaska for 2-5 players. Players are competing to manage and grow their entire mining outfit while acquiring the most gold before the ground is too frozen to dig. The Alaskan countryside is an inhospitable environment, so players will face hardships that affect their entire outfit – not to mention the ever-dropping temperature that will shut down their operation.
In Pay Dirt players start with a small basic crew, an unimpressive claim, mediocre equipment and just a little bit of cash to make a go in one of the toughest competitions this side of the globe. Gold mining isn’t cheap and players will have to sell their gold throughout the game to keep the equipment running and their workers happy. Through clever use of their equipment and workers, players can make their mining outfits more efficient and dialed in to their preference of play. Will you recruit heavily and stack your camp with workers or will you keep your eyes on better and more efficient equipment? Will you have what it takes to hit to strike it rich and hit pay dirt?
- Cool thematic concept and engine trade-off
- Solid core idea when it works
- Punishment cards are punishing and can wipe out progress
- Endgame flow can feel punishing and unbalanced
- Mining and engine-building
- Gold mining and resource trading
- Classic worker-placement with engine-building promises
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- engine-building — Place workers and draft tiles to acquire resources and gold for money to fuel better engine capabilities
- Trading for money — Gold is the win condition; money fuels engine growth
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this game is the definition of elegance in the game and there's zero bloat
- the engine building part I thought was pretty damn fantastic
- a filler that works; it's smooth and it's fun
- one of the best two-player games out there
- embrace the carnage
- the final product is better than the sum of its parts
References (from this video)
- Captures the feel of gold mining
- Solid euro with auction element
- Availability and print status uncertain
- Gold mining optimization with auction mechanics
- Alaska and the Yukon during the gold rush
- Economic/industrial
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Auction — Prices and purchases drive production
- engine building — Assemble a production engine over rounds
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's the Pacific and the Pacific people instead of aliens and space with seventeen hundred and seventy six owners
- I think this is a fascinating game and it treats the topic with respect
- it's a risk killer like it completely does everything that risk does only better
- your action selection is so focused and so many hard decisions crammed into a comparatively short time frame
- I learned more about antibiotics in those thirty minutes
References (from this video)
- thematic premise with upgrade loops
- punishing hardship cards that disrupt fairness
- unsubtle balancing through luck
- pulling gold nuggets from dirt with upgrades
- gold mining / dirt extraction
- production line of upgrades and efficient digging
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- hardship cards drafting — round-based drafting of hardship cards that impact turns
- ketchup mechanism — leader-favoring punishment card distribution that can swing a turn
- resource collection / upgrading — upgrade equipment to improve mining efficiency
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- there's no super Superfluous rules there's no fiddliness so it's quite nice and pure
- this one stays true to what hidden role or hidden movement game should be
- I think this one is still my favorite one as one person takes the role of Jack the Ripper
- I absolutely hated this game I did not like anything about it apart from the visuals very stylish and I'm deluxified looking game
- the colorblind-friendly at all and me and my brother are both quite badly colorblind
- not colorblind friendly at all and me and my brother are both quite badly colorblind
- the ketchup mechanism in this game
- one of the nearest misses I've ever played
- therefore it's just not subtle