Alaska Gold Fever drops you into 1896 Alaska—and not because the cold somehow used to be nicer back then. Nope, this mix of survival and simulation has you digging for gold in the middle of the gold rush, and it’s aiming higher than pretty much any other game in the genre.

Whenever I search for gold prospecting games, I end up buried under an avalanche of ancient software and throwaway casual stuff. Which is annoying, because that’s not what I want from a gold rush game. Sure, Gold Mining Simulator, Gold Hunter, and a few others have already nudged their way into sim territory. But come on—who wants to mess around with excavators, conveyor belts, and trucks in our terminally dull modern age?

No, let’s be honest: digging for gold means the mid-to-late 19th century, America, pickaxes, gold pans, battered hats, six-shooters, bandits, and burros. See? Even that floppy-hatted guy in the trench coat over there agrees. Ah, Humphrey Bogart... good to see you, kid. Back from the Sierra Madre?

That rough set of ingredients fits Alaska Gold Fever from Baked Games pretty well, but the game’s reaching for even more: an open world, hunting, dog sledding. So what is this—Christmas all over again on April 14, when it launches on PC? In this preview, I’ll walk you through everything that matters about this trip back to historical Alaska.

The (almost) full gold prospector experience

I’ve been following Alaska Gold Fever since 2023 and took part in a few pretty insightful playtests along the way. So I can say with confidence that Baked Games has something special cooking here. This first-person gold rush sim goes deep, which means it stopped being just about digging for gold a long time ago.

You get to experience just about the whole day-to-day routine of a prospector from that era. Naturally, it starts with tracking down mines—and Alaska Gold Fever’s world has nine of them in total:

• five small mines for quick expeditions
• three medium-sized mines with branching tunnels
• one large mine with multiple levels

On top of that, the game throws in the sort of things you’d expect from an open world, including POIs, hidden treasures, and some properly nasty bandits. According to the developers, these ruthless outlaws aren’t just background dressing. They roam the map, set up their own camps, and make the wilderness a dangerous place, especially when you add wolves and brown bears into the mix.

Support beams, mine carts, and smelting furnaces

But let’s head back into the mines for a second, because this is where the attention to detail really shows. You’ll have to carve your own way forward with dynamite, a pickaxe, a bucket, and a shovel—which also means hauling rubble and dirt back outside and dumping it into the gold sieve.

Later on, you can build simple tracks for a mine cart, which makes life a lot easier. Tool upgrades do the same. Makes sense: a better pick gets you through the rock faster. Once you’ve dug a fair way into the mountain, you’ll need wooden support beams to stop the whole place from coming down on your head. Naturally, those have to be made first, which means chopping wood and working it at the right bench.

There are several ways to process resources, including—of course—gold smelting furnaces. Refining your gold finds earns you more money, because yes, there are settlements where merchants will buy your goods. And naturally, you’ll also need to shop now and then, whether for ammo, new tools, or weapons. Speaking of which: you can buy mines as well. Once you own one, you’ll eventually be able to put other people to work there—and keep them happy if you want productivity to stay up.

For all its detail, though, don’t expect some revolutionary level of realism. If you dump rubble into the gold sieve, the thing shakes itself and spits out more or less gold dust, flakes, or nuggets at the end. The whole game is clearly streamlined compared to how any of this would work in real life; but still, just about everything a retro prospector could need is in there. And that’s worth a lot.

Life outside the mine

Since Alaska Gold Fever isn’t just a gold rush sim but also, to a degree, a life sim, you’ll be able to buy and expand your own homes. In 1896 Alaska, that obviously doesn’t mean flashy luxury mansions—think roomier log cabins instead. I haven’t been able to play this part myself yet, but one screenshot suggests a fairly standard system for building and placing furniture and other items.

Surviving the (icy) wilderness

Another, rather less fun, side of prospecting life is (ah, ha, ha, ha) stayin’ alive. So how exactly do you survive in Alaska’s partly frozen wilderness? Well, first things first: you need food in your stomach. Which brings me back to one of my "favorite activities": hunting wild animals.

Yes, yes: I’m one of those people who really hates killing virtual animals. I’ve probably been softened up by civilization a little too much—and owning pets (cats) doesn’t exactly help.

Still, the kills are worth it: besides meat, you can also collect hides, pelts, and hunting trophies for further use. Whether you’ll be able to stuff a piece of roast meat into your face while out on the trail is still up in the air. But mechanics for building a campfire and cooking meat are already in the game.

Another survival mechanic revolves around the cold: the farther you push into the wilderness, the lower the temperature drops, and staying alive means wearing warmer clothing—especially during the snowstorms the game promises. Even cold water has a negative effect on your character’s health, though not right away. What matters is how long you’ve been exposed to the cold.

Yup, there’s a story

Even though I’ve spent a while talking about the game’s mechanics, Alaska Gold Fever is also meant to put real emphasis on story, according to Baked Games. And in at least one playtest, that was absolutely the case: my prospector wasn’t simply dumped into the wilderness, but dropped near a small settlement complete with a tutorial guy.

He filled me in on the area and hinted at the first story thread. Officially, the hunt for gold is meant to be driven by a main story as well as side quests. It also very much looks like some POIs are woven into smaller stories too—possibly in the vein of Red Dead Redemption 2’s points of interest (a game where I sorely missed the chance to do some gold mining).

Baked Games even goes as far as saying that Alaska is about people. And to be fair, the studio has already introduced a few NPCs in devlogs, including a chatty pastor and the main contact for the main questline and some side quests alike (prospector Cormac Sullivan). So no, you probably won’t die of loneliness in the Alaskan wilderness, but given the game’s limited budget, I do expect the open world to feel a little quiet here and there.

Verdict: Not perfect, but truly unique

In the Alaska Gold Fever playtests, the gold rush sim left a good—and at times very good—impression on me. All of its mechanics already felt polished and satisfying, and visually, I was especially taken with the areas around the mines. The weather effects looked great, and the tools, workbenches, and environments were all packed with detail.

One minor downside for me was movement in the open world, which could feel a bit clunky at times depending on the terrain. I also felt the NPC models didn’t quite blend into the otherwise realistic-looking Alaska setting. In places, they looked a little stocky and slightly cartoonish to me, though that may not be the final word on the matter. The last screenshot showing a bunch of bandits already featured much better-fitting character models.

What’s clear, of course, is that you shouldn’t expect a AAA open-world game with endless POIs and things to do here (otherwise this preview probably wouldn’t exist 😉). Even so, Alaska Gold Fever offers an impressive range of possibilities, and most of it seems to be executed at a well above-average level. So if you can feel the call of gold somewhere deep in your bones, you should absolutely keep Baked Games’ upcoming title on your radar.

At the moment, Alaska Gold Fever is only planned for Steam. And if, like me, you’d rather own a DRM-free version, your only option right now is the entry on GOG’s Dreamlist. You can upvote the game there to show there’s interest in a GOG release.

Alex Nitschke

I’ve been into video games since 1982, spending 12 of those years in professional games journalism. I’ve also been developing games since the early ’90s, starting with a humble C64. Outside of code and keyboards, I’ve been a musician since 1989. Man, I have no idea how I can still be alive...

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