Play Oil's Well Online
You guide a drill through underground tunnels, dodging weird creatures while trying to hit oil pockets—simple controls, but those pixel monsters make it surprisingly tense. That MS-DOS drill sound still haunts me.
Oil's Well came out in 1983 as part of the MS-DOS Classic Games collection, published by Sierra On-Line. It was one of those straightforward arcade-style games you'd load up on a beige box PC, a quick distraction that didn't need a manual or much setup. In an era full of text adventures and complex simulations, it offered something immediate and uncomplicated.
You control a small drilling rig, moving it left and right along the surface to position your drill bit before sending it straight down into the earth. The goal is to strike oil pockets while avoiding a variety of underground enemies, like bouncing blobs and patrolling bugs, that will break your drill on contact. The screen is a single, static playfield; you watch your drill descend, retract it to avoid danger, and reposition to try again. The pacing is methodical but tense, as enemies become more numerous and aggressive the deeper you go. It feels like a careful, nerve-wracking race against increasingly cluttered chaos.
Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".
Download Oil's Well ROM
You can download this ROM to play Oil's Well offline using an MS-DOS emulator (Top Emulators).
*This ROM is provided for backup and educational purposes only.
