Beyond performance issues that plague this game, there is a lot of boring, reused and overused mechanics that simply make this tedious and boring to play. I understand a lot of people like that genre, but if you're like me and have played a ton of these types of games, you wont find anything new here. It's also important to note there are no sim elements here. I see simulation in the tags and in some reviews. If you want a sim check out Gold Mining Simulator. This is story based crafting survival.

So once you figure out you can't play the game past medium graphics settings (at launch) you will find this:

- gold mining is just hitting rocks with an axe, placing a log to keep the mine from collapsing, and repeat.
- same story as so many playway games: your uncle leaves you a hotel to fix up.
- your axe will annoyingly break every 3 mins.
- chopping trees is just like every survival game
- picking up rocks and sticks just like every survival game
- running a hotel is much worse than every hotel management game (you hit a green box with a hammer to build with no custom placement of anything)
- gathering gold is worse than every other gold gathering game. no custom camps, everything is laid out for you.
- the dialogue had to be written by AI, its so needlessly wordy. as is the tutorial screens that pop up right after. You get told how to do everything 3 times over.
- its extremely grindy (which some people might like)
- the dogsled has some of the worst controls and physics i have ever seen.

There is a lot to do in this but it doesn't innovate or have anything new in it. its a typical grindy crafting survival game that relies on boring menus to do most things. A tired genre of game that needs something new to make it interesting, but there is nothing new here, just more of the same.

Alaska Gold Fever
5/10

First impressions
Loading in the graphical differences hit me like a train, not only is the optimisation poor, but the quality of the forestry around is less than impressive. Even on the highest performance selections, my FPS is fluctuating between 20 and 60. I had to lock my FPS low to manage this game.

I cannot shower it with as much praise as one would've liked due to the tremendous performance issues and a vast amount of bugs which asides from these, the core gameplay loop works alright. There's a lovely team working hard behind the doors of this game which means I'll be putting more hours into it than I currently have to make sure I'm experiencing what they have to offer thoroughly and then I'll come back and update my review! (if time allows)

Pros
- Who doesn't like gold mining? the gameplay loop is satisfying to earn gold through tough labour and rebuild that old hotel of your uncles.
- Lots of customisation for rebinding key controls, disable head-bob and camera shakes is a BIG positive for accessibility
- You can PET dogs
- There's additional tabs in your inventory for tutorials you may have forgotten
- The quests are nicely listed in a way that does not interfere much with your active screen.
Cons
- With the graphics being the way they are, they're often buggy or textures are flickering on higher performance lower quality settings. Although I did find even on 'ultra' quality and 'ultra performance' that things were still running poorly.
Now unfortunately the quality sacrifice for using performance mode is so large that the rocks look like clay blocks, the non-interactive stones blip in and out of render, lighting does not render properly and flickers as if clipping into the surface nearby. This is just a small list of the bugs that are present in this game.
- It lacks accessibility for resizing text and menus leaving me feeling like my health bar and money UI is far too large, but the numbered inventory far too small.

Starting off:
We are the heir to our uncle Ben's hotel in Alaska which is a drastic difference to our home in Eastern Europe. After getting kitted out with some basic supplies and far too many trips to all of the required NPC's we were finally off to experience our first mine. A few hits later and we're already filtering out our first nuggets of gold, jackpot!

With gold under my belt and a pep in my step (and likely hypothermia setting in) I'm back in the mines to get that precious golden stuff once more. The gameplay loop is simple early on. Chat your mouth off with NPC's offering you knowledge in exchange for your sanity, mine gold in exchange for money, and use your money to cry about single cloves of garlic being $1 each. But it drags you in for another dangerous day at the mines to see the gold shining through your sieved soil.


In terms of sound design, movements, and all that good stuff I'd say it's pretty decent. The movement takes a little getting used to as does the sounds being dramatized versions of the real thing.
Graphics asides from the before listed issues are also nice. I wouldn't say realism but it's definitely steering towards that way. The ocean is the biggest 'I'm real!' pointer I've found so far that looks good regardless of your quality settings.

I have not played enough to experience just quite all that this game has to offer but the first hour definitely made me want to keep going and see more. With the game in its current state then maybe give it a shot if it's on sale, but I would recommend waiting until they patch some of the bigger problems.

If you're wondering why I gave it a thumbs up despite a 5/10 rating It's because I believe with time this can become something much greater than a thumbs down.

Runs very poorly, pretty clunky and just doesn't seem like something i'd put any time into unfortunately