Alaska Gold Fever is a gold mining simulation game set to release on April 14th, 2026. While gold mining is the main gaming loop, there are lots of other things to do as well. From running or supporting businesses in the local town to hunting down dangerous creatures in the Alaska wild.

First couple of hours of game play with very little editing. I wanted to showcase the true experience of starting out fresh. Lots of mining and running quests. Along with trying to work out how things are.

I really enjoyed the layout of the main town. It’s got everything from a general goods store to a bank. Areas to do resource processing. You even own the hotel that you end up having to fix up.

While you can buy all the tools you need. The different stores in the area also sell recipes to craft your own. Allowing you to save a lot of money and even having the ability to make upgrades.

The stores do have a limited supply of things. It is Alaska after all. Thankfully, you just need to step out of the store, go a few steps down the road, and head back in. These stores restock rather quickly. This is great, as I wanted to buy a bunch of mercury for gold processing later on, once I'm not so broke.

One thing that is quite different from what I usually see is how they deal with key bindings. While you use keys 1 to 4 and H. This game solves that annoying issue where you find yourself trying to key binding all the way down the keyboard. Instead, different items belong to different item groups. You then cycle through different item groups.

The pickaxe and the axe are tools and belong to hotkey 1 to switch between them, I just hit hotkey 1 to switch between the different tools I’d end up having assigned. This allows you to have quite a few different items that you can access. Which was quite needed later on when mining.

The map of the game itself has quite a few points of interest on it. While a few of them are mine, not all of them are. When you zoom in other things like bear claw prints show up. Which, at least from my experience, seems to indicate wildlife can be found in that area.

While the games map looks a bit massive. It’s not that bad getting around. Later on, you even unlock the ability to use a dog sled team. At least at the time of writing this, the sled was a little wonky to steer. I ended up just preferring to walk on foot. At some point, once I start getting out to the much further mines, I might have to give the dog sled another attempt. Hopefully, at release, that version will have the sled performing a little better. As it would get stuck on everything and had way to wide a turning radius to move around on the terrain.

The starting mine and the next one I’d unlock after that. Both ended up being just east of the town. The second mine I was still trying to fully clear out after playing for more than 14 hours. This game has a lot more than just mining. I was doing many other activities, such as questing along with lots of wood farming.

The hotel was not something I was expecting but with the way it was written into the storyline, it makes sense. It also provides some quest opportunities and passive income as well. Well, once you have it all fixed up. The place was quite run-down.

There are other businesses and opportunities you unlock along the way as well. There is even an entire system for hiring NPCs to do jobs for you. Up to the point I made it to in checking out the game. I just had people working in my hotel, including a bartender, a cook, and a receptionist.

The two mines I was also farming in did not have any employees I could assign. It seems, however, the biggest mine on the map might be a bit different. At one point, I was trying to earn enough to buy a farm. I can only suspect that would require some people working on it as well. Like a few of the businesses and opportunities I’d come across along the way. They were not cheap and require a lot of farming to have enough gold to sell to aquire them.

If this game were not about gold farming, it could have been about lumbering. As you need a lot of wood from starting fires to smelting to support beams in the mines. Along with even creating a railway system for a mine cart to be pushed along.

As anyone who knows me knows. I love mining in video games. The mines did not disappoint. While each of the mines is already predefined. You mine in them by removing rocks that are blocking the pathway.

Along the way, you need to put down support beams to keep the mine from collapsing. When things start to become unstable, the ground starts shaking, and you can start to see a lot of dust and debris fall from the ceiling.

I ended up being rather lucky and only had to deal with one cave-in. Anytime you end up being “defeated” in this game, either from rocks crushing you or being eaten alive by a pack of wolves. You just wake up at the mining camp after being “found.” You keep all your stuff, so no need to go looking for it either.

In the event of issues in the mine. You do need to mine out the cave-in area. The rocks from doing so seemed to be quite worthless. So this is clearly a situation you want to avoid. Even if it means putting down way to many support beams. Needing to farm a bit of extra wood to do so.

While the starting mine, you are a bit more limited on what you can do. Once you make it to the next mine, it’s a lot deeper. It was cool to see the track system for the mine carts. At the time of writing this, before the release of the game. You could only place them down on flat surfaces. There are even tracks you can unlock the recipes for in making forks for when the mine goes in different directions.

While, once in a while, you might spot a rock that has higher amounts of gold or iron. Along with finding gems in the mine. What you are really hoping to find are ore veins like this. You tend to get a small amount of gold from normal rocks on occasion. Finding one of these, you just hope you are finding lots of gold nuggets instead of just gold flakes.

Once you start to get some material to process, you haul it out of the mine and start sifting through it. The fun part I switching bits of gold and iron ores coming rolling out as you place more and more mining debris.

While you can sell the gold flakes and nuggets to the bank for some money. The rates are not so good. Early on, I ended up just farming loads of wood and processing it into planks to make some extra money as needed.

Once you get enough gold, you can start to smelt it down. It, however, requires 1k grams, which takes you a little while in the starter mine to acquire. You can then smelt it down into gold bars that sell for a much better price. Each process, however, takes 12 in-game hours.

While a lot of my time was spent mining in the mine. You also, at one point, unlock gold panning. After giving it a short try for the quest that gave it to me. I went back to just normal mining. There are other areas you can interact with for finding treasure, such as grave sites that you dig up with a shovel.

There are even things you can find inside some of the mines, other than more rocks to mine. I won’t spoil anything of what I’ve found so far. It’s nice to see so many little things in this game that give it a far more interesting and complex take on a mining simulation game.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had a blast, and this game ended up being more complex than I was expecting it to be. I can’t wait till I unlock bigger mines, the farm, and even have to defend myself from a bear!

For the time being, I still have further mining to do in the second mine. I’m shocked there are any rocks left to mine up at this point. While I could have just focused on trying to find ore veins. Some of them I’d have missed if I had not just fully cleared all the tunnels. Not to mention all the extra gold I would have left behind!

Information

Screenshots, and video were taken by, and content was created and written by @Enjar / Enjargames about Alaska Gold Fever.

Disclosure: screenshots, recordings, and personal experiences were from the pre-release version of the game.

Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.