Gold Rush: The Game

Gold Rush: The Game for PC is a realistic simulator offering the player with an opportunity to mine gold in Alasca. The game was created by the Polish studio called Code Horizon (Giant Machines 2017) and published by PlayWay (Farm Expert 2017, Helicopter: Natural Disasters). The creators launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter in order to gather money for the production process.

Plot

Since the open-world Free Mode is the main component of the game, Gold Rush does not feature any major storyline, and the player is free to shape their career of a gold seeker in whatever way they like. The four locations prepared by the creators contain unique stories inspired by Alasca itself – the player can discover those while exploring.

Mechanics

The core of the experience is exploitation of bonanzas in order to accumulate precious metal reserves. The player transports the equipment needed using a truck, controls heavy machinery from within interiors, and washes gold nuggets by carefully moving the material in a bowl of water. The gold gathered could be taken to the town, where a blacksmith is willing to turn it into ingots.

The immersive, first-person camera mode is the default way of observing the surroundings. This first person perspective allows the player to operate numerous devices with precision (connecting cables, pushing switches, replacing fuel filters, etc.). However, vehicles and heavy machines have additional view modes, such as a TPP mode that makes maneuvering easier, or another view that focuses on excavator's arm and bucket.

For example, a process of excavating gold can be as follows: using an excavator or a loader, the player pours a load of soil to a sifter. The material cleansed has to go through another device, which is the magnetite separator. The remaining material is then manually washed in a bowl of water to obtain particular lumps of gold. The player picks nuggets with tweezers or a suction bottle.

The sifter has to be connected to the water pump of course, the hose of which needs to be dipped in water. All the machines should be technically flawless and provided with a source of electricity if needed. A small generator can be quickly transported with a truck, but a huge fuel tank has to be attached to an excavator's bucket using steel ropes.

Gold deposits are generated randomly, so the player has to locate them each time they begin the game. What also makes the experience more difficult is that the weather is not always perfect. The game features a day-night cycle, as well as the division into four seasons of the year. Undesired weather conditions resulting from that can have a negative influence on the technical state of the player's machinery. One can try to fix damaged parts of machines themselves or buy counterparts in a store.

Game modes

Gold Rush: The Game for PC offers two gameplay components: the tutorial and the Free Mode. The first introduces new players to the mechanics, as it explains the basics of the game and instructs how to obtain one's first lumps of gold. The open-world Free Mode is the core mode here – in this mode, the player is free to develop their career on four different gold plots.

Technical aspects

Gold Rush: The Game utilizes the Unity engine. The game comes with high-quality audio – the experience is accompanied by calm, atmospheric music; hydraulic systems of excavators generate hissing sounds when using these machines; a sound signal appears when reversing in a vehicle; when dropping soil into a sifter, the material rattles as it hits the mechanisms. In terms of the visuals, the game stands out with realistic physical effects – for instance, digging and re-shaping soil with an excavator causes deformations in the geometry of the terrain. Also, what gets thrown into the truck remains there as the vehicle moves.

Last updated on 13 May 2021