The Underground Maze Game That Struck Black Gold
Oils Well, released by Sierra On-Line in 1983 for the Atari 8-bit family and later ported to DOS, is one of the more unusual titles in Sierra’s early catalog. Part maze game, part economic satire, and entirely addictive, it tasks players with guiding a drilling rig through underground tunnels to collect oil deposits while avoiding enemies. It is essentially an Amidar-style maze game with a petroleum-industry theme – which sounds absurd and absolutely is, in the best way.
About This Classic
Sierra On-Line, founded by Ken and Roberta Williams in 1979, is best remembered today for the King’s Quest series and for pioneering the graphical adventure game genre. But before King’s Quest, Sierra published a wide variety of games across multiple genres – arcade-style action games, educational software, and experimental titles like Oils Well that defied easy categorization.
Oils Well is essentially a clone of Amidar, the 1981 Konami arcade game where players trace paths around a grid to claim territory while avoiding enemies. In Oils Well, the grid is replaced with underground oil fields, the territory-claiming mechanic becomes “drilling for oil,” and the enemies are transformed into oil-eating monsters. The premise is thin but the gameplay is genuinely compelling – a puzzle-action hybrid where every level demands you plan your route carefully while reacting to enemy movement in real time.
Gameplay and Tips
You control a drilling rig that moves along the lines of a grid-based map. Your objective is to trace every line on the grid – representing underground oil deposits – while avoiding the creatures that patrol the tunnels. Once all lines are traced, the level is complete and you move on to a harder configuration. Some levels include bonus oil barrels that appear at intersections, offering extra points for quick collection before they vanish.
The strategic tension comes from the path-planning constraint: you can cross your own trail, but doing so resets that section of line, forcing you to re-drill it. This means the optimal route through each maze requires you to plan a path that covers every line exactly once without doubling back – a version of the famous “Eulerian path” problem from graph theory, rendered as a video game.
Pro Tips
- Start with the outer edges: The grid’s outer boundary is the safest area. Trace the perimeter first while you study enemy patterns, then work your way inward. Trying to tackle the center of the maze immediately is a reliable way to lose a life.
- Use dead ends as safe zones: Enemies follow predictable patrol routes. Identify dead-end branches in the grid, drill to the end, and pause there. Enemies typically cannot reach you in a dead-end cell, giving you time to plan your next move.
- Time your path crossings carefully: You will inevitably need to cross your own trail on complex levels. Cross only when the nearest enemy is at least two grid segments away – crossing your trail temporarily stuns your rig for a fraction of a second, which is enough time to get caught.
- Watch for the oil monsters’ speed shifts: Some enemies speed up when they enter certain grid sections. Learn which enemies do this on each level and bait them into slow zones before attempting to pass through high-traffic intersections.
Controls
- Arrow Keys: Move drilling rig in four directions along grid lines
- Space: Pause game
Why It’s a Legend
Oils Well belongs to a specific and underappreciated genre of early 1980s PC gaming: the maze-territory game. Alongside Amidar, Pepper II, Make Trax, and the later Qix, these games combined puzzle-solving with arcade reflexes in a way that few modern games attempt. The territory-claiming mechanic – watching a blank grid fill with your color as you complete each section – provides a deeply satisfying visual feedback loop that rewards methodical play.
The game is also an artifact of an era when Sierra On-Line was willing to publish almost anything that was fun, from oil-drilling maze games to graphical adventures to educational software about biology. This creative diversity, before the industry consolidated around a handful of proven genres, is something modern gaming has largely lost – and exactly why preserving and playing these early titles matters.
Did You Know?
- Oils Well was developed during the early 1980s oil crisis, when public interest in petroleum drilling was at an all-time high. The game can be read as a gentle satire of the era’s oil obsession, though Sierra never explicitly marketed it as such.
- The game’s title is a pun on “All’s Well That Ends Well” – a Shakespeare reference that was entirely lost on most of its target audience but delighted the Williams family, who were known for their literary sensibilities.
- An emulated version of Amidar (the arcade game that inspired Oils Well) is also playable through the Internet Archive. Comparing the two side by side is a fascinating exercise in how different developers adapted the same core concept to different themes and hardware constraints.
- Sierra On-Line was originally called On-Line Systems and was founded in Ken and Roberta Williams’ living room in Simi Valley, California. The company’s first product was Mystery House, the first graphical adventure game ever released.
💬 Comments & Reviews
Enjoying Browser Games? Try Steam!
Discover thousands of games on the world’s largest PC gaming platform. Free-to-play, indie gems, AAA blockbusters — something for everyone.
Support Indie Developers on itch.io
Discover unique indie games made by creators worldwide. Many are free or pay-what-you-want!