Sep 25, 2026 · 1 hr 13 min · 13 segments
This time the OMR! team think about the early historical sim Oregon Trail, and look at a few games which arguably share some of it's design DNA; Keep Driving, 80 Days and Organ Trail. With regular…
It's not the only thing we played because we had a bit of a high concept episode this month, right? So, geez, this was kind of your idea, right? Do you want to tell people what the idea was?
Yeah, so typically, like you said, we play one run-based game a month and we're all playing the same game.
commenting on it.
And so far, those have been pretty recent.
I think Bad North was maybe the oldest, but still, it's like within the past 10 or so years.
So when we started this podcast, I had the idea for...
We were thinking up run-based games, and I was racking my brain thinking about them and had this light shine that like, oh my gosh, Oregon Trail, the game I played growing up in school, is technically a run-based game.
So the idea that I pitched y'all was... hey, could we all play the Oregon Trail? Maybe we could each pick a spiritual successor of it.
Maybe not a spiritual successor, but the same idea of Oregon Trail and kind of compare and contrast and talk through them.
Because ultimately, I think you had something to say about it, Joe, but how does the Oregon Trail show up in game design history kind of related to Rogue and what other people traditionally talk about in terms of run-based games?
I was not aware of this game as a kid.
Like we didn't have it at school as an educational game or anything.
And I remember playing it about like 10 or 15 years ago because I think I was talking to people online who remembered it fondly and were like talking about it.
And I played that and I played Organ Trail, which is the spiritual success that you've played, which is the zombie one, right? But yeah, I mean, we didn't learn much about American history at school.
It is an interesting one because it does have these kind of loads and loads of random events and stuff.
And I think, one of the suggestions that you came up with of like a similar modern game was like FTL right which is you know you're kind of going in the same direction every game you're like doing a big journey and there's all these little story events and rather than being about like crawling through a dungeon and killing loads of stuff it's about kind of managing people and resources and all the stuff that happens along the way so definitely feels like there are yeah like modern games in this kind of like pool of run based games that maybe aren't like in any conscious way derived from it.
But you look at something like FTL and there's more Oregon Trail DNA in it than there is rogue DNA in it.
Was this originally actually an educational game? I thought that was a joke.
No! So I can plant the seed here.
So I'm a little older, but I was growing up in the early...
I was in grade school in the late 80s, early to mid 90s.
And I think I first played the Oregon Trail, the version that I think most of us played for this episode, the original, not the original, an early DOS version of it.
And I played it on a five inch floppy or five and a half inch floppy.
Have y'all ever played? I do remember floppies.
I do remember floppies.
It's not the only thing we played because we had a bit of a high concept episode this month, right? So, geez, this was kind of your idea, right? Do you want to tell people what the idea was?
Yeah, so typically, like you said, we play one run-based game a month and we're all playing the same game.
commenting on it.
And so far, those have been pretty recent.
I think Bad North was maybe the oldest, but still, it's like within the past 10 or so years.
So when we started this podcast, I had the idea for...
We were thinking up run-based games, and I was racking my brain thinking about them and had this light shine that like, oh my gosh, Oregon Trail, the game I played growing up in school, is technically a run-based game.
So the idea that I pitched y'all was... hey, could we all play the Oregon Trail? Maybe we could each pick a spiritual successor of it.
Maybe not a spiritual successor, but the same idea of Oregon Trail and kind of compare and contrast and talk through them.
Because ultimately, I think you had something to say about it, Joe, but how does the Oregon Trail show up in game design history kind of related to Rogue and what other people traditionally talk about in terms of run-based games?
I was not aware of this game as a kid.
Like we didn't have it at school as an educational game or anything.
And I remember playing it about like 10 or 15 years ago because I think I was talking to people online who remembered it fondly and were like talking about it.
And I played that and I played Organ Trail, which is the spiritual success that you've played, which is the zombie one, right? But yeah, I mean, we didn't learn much about American history at school.
It is an interesting one because it does have these kind of loads and loads of random events and stuff.
And I think, one of the suggestions that you came up with of like a similar modern game was like FTL right which is you know you're kind of going in the same direction every game you're like doing a big journey and there's all these little story events and rather than being about like crawling through a dungeon and killing loads of stuff it's about kind of managing people and resources and all the stuff that happens along the way so definitely feels like there are yeah like modern games in this kind of like pool of run based games that maybe aren't like in any conscious way derived from it.
But you look at something like FTL and there's more Oregon Trail DNA in it than there is rogue DNA in it.
Was this originally actually an educational game? I thought that was a joke.
No! So I can plant the seed here.
So I'm a little older, but I was growing up in the early...
I was in grade school in the late 80s, early to mid 90s.
And I think I first played the Oregon Trail, the version that I think most of us played for this episode, the original, not the original, an early DOS version of it.
And I played it on a five inch floppy or five and a half inch floppy.
Have y'all ever played? I do remember floppies.
I do remember floppies.
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