Dog Beach or Bust

Oregon Trail, except the trail is Chicago and the destination is a dog beach

Live

Anyone who has had a big dog in the city knows when it comes to their favorite things, not much is standing in their way. Dog Beach or Bust is an Oregon Trail parody game where two people and their Bernese mountain dog leave the Gold Coast and attempt to reach Montrose Dog Beach before midnight. They are met with trials and tribulations, and must balance time, money, energy, sanity, and hunger.

Ten stops

Nine of the ten stops have activities to do at them, with the tenth being the beach. Version one let you walk straight past all of them, and because money only ever went one direction, the optimal run turned out to be to ignore Chicago entirely and speedrun north. Now every stop that has an activity requires the player to make a decision before moving on. You can strategically choose where you want to make money, and where you want to spend your money.

1 / 8

Transportation Options

There are six different ways to travel between legs, each of them with a different pro and con. What makes it interesting is not every transportation option is available between every leg:

  • Walk — Free and Rory's preferred method of travel, but is also the slowest mode of travel in the game at 2.6 mph, and drains everyone's energy faster than any of the other options.
  • CTA — Costs a flat $5.50 for everyone, and travels a little bit faster than walking at an average pace of 8 mph (factoring in traffic). The catch to the CTA is the user waits anywhere from 2 to 12 minutes, and it adds a detour on top because the route the bus takes is not always the exact route you needed.
  • Divvy e-bike — Costs $1 to unlock plus $0.30 a minute, and goes 11 mph, which makes it the best value on a long leg. The drawback is a 5% chance of getting "doored" by a car on the street, which can put someone in real trouble and cost you twenty minutes, or that the docking station is full when you arrive, causing you to take another detour.
  • E-scooter — Slightly cheaper than the bike, but also slightly slower. This mode of transportation has the single highest crash rate in the entire game.
  • Uber — The fastest ride and one that takes you exactly from pickup to drop off, but you skip half of the random events the city has to offer. The biggest drawback is it's expensive, and the price surges about 1/3 of the time. There is also a ~20% chance the uber driver will cancel upon seeing the dog.
  • Petty Cab — No base fare, and costs $9 per mile, making it by far the most expensive option in the game. This is also the only transportation mode that shortens the trip since most petty cab drivers know shortcuts. There is zero risk with this mode, and the party gets popsicles during the ride. Not available on every leg.
1 / 5

Random Chicago Events

Twenty-nine different ways to not make it to the dog beach. The ones that you really have to look out for aren't the huge disasters, they're the small distractions like when Rory finds ranch, or when she decides she's done walking and sits on the sidewalk. All of the events are Chicago themed and fit with the neighborhood they take place in.

1 / 6

Making Money

Twenty-one minigames over six different minigame classes. This includes a timing game, memory game, and side-scrolling runner game amongst others.

1 / 4

Two Endings

You either make it to the dog beach, and Rory is ecstatic, or you don't, and she cries the entire way home. The three main seasons (Spring/Summer/Fall) have a win rate of 60-65%, while the Winter season drops to 40%. When you win a game, you are met with a nine second cinematic. The beach is revealed, Rory is taken off the leash, and she runs off, disappearing into the crowd of dogs who all seem to know her. The summary at the end gives basic counts of miles, money, meals, and how many times Rory had to be coaxed during the run.