Boulderdash 1984

Is it still worth playing?

Boulder Dash is a maze-based puzzle game released in 1984 for Atari 8-bit computers, created by Peter Liepa and Chris Gray. The player guides Rockford through a series of caves laid out as rectangular grids of blocks, tunneling through dirt to collect a set number of diamonds within a time limit. Boulders and other objects stay fixed until the dirt beneath them is removed, then they fall and become a hazard, so the player avoids falling rocks, amoebas, butterflies and fireflies. Puzzles revolve around collecting diamonds without being crushed and using the interactions between objects, such as a butterfly turning into diamonds when a falling rock hits it. When enough diamonds are collected the exit door opens. The name is a pun on balderdash. Digging out diamonds while the rocks wait above is a puzzle that is still a challenge.