Gold Rush: The Game

Great Game got interested in the game through the Gold Rush tv show and Graysillplays and Drae playing it back in the day

I bought this game 6 years ago, played it for a couple hours. HATED it. Was a buggy hard to play mess, gave me motion sickness too. Gave it another try yesterday and what a difference! Im only 8 hours in but loving it so far. and no motion sickness! Thanks for putting time into making this game so much better! Definitely a THUMBS UP from me!

Im not someone who usually writes reviews but reading some of the reasons why some people left a negative review, I felt like I have to write one.
First of all, I like the game and have a good a mount of fun. I bought it and all DLCs in a Sale and definitely cant complain. I havent explored everything in the game yet (havent even fully mined my first claim yet) so my opinion might change in the future. However there must be some serious bad thing happening to turn this review from a positiv one into a negative one.
That said I also want clarify that I dont "complain" about the experience of other people who didnt like the game and everything is meant as constructive criticism.
First thing: the game performance. Every PC seems to react different to games and even though you might have a strong Rig, some games just wont really work. My PC definitely isnt on the weak side but the last upgrade happened years ago and therefor isnt the War machine it could be. It was good some years ago and is okay today.
Many people complain about bad game performace and I have to say that I havent experienced anything bad so far. Just to make it clear: Im not saying that people who experience bad performance are lying. Im just saying that my "not so good anymore" PC is handling the game well.
The only real stutters or extreme frame drop happen when the game map loads. That mostly happens when I drive to or from the city and back to my current claim.
What I did notice (at least in youtube videos) no one seems to look their FPS limit. There isnt a specific option for that ingame, which hopefully will be included in the second game. Without a frame limiter, your GPU will likely run on 100% for the whole time when you are ingame. Im not sure if its the strain on the GPU or the heat built up, but that can be the reason why some experience bad performance, so here are my tips:
Activate V-sync in the game options. It syncs the frame rate to your monitors refresh rate. In my case im always on 60 fps instead of the 140-180 it was constantly jumping around withouth vsync.
Second tip is not reload a savegame too often during the same game session. I noticed that the performance got worse and worse after mutliple reloads of safe games and a restart of the game mostly solved that.
The second thing (the one I really couldnt wrap my head around) is what people expected from this game. And that is the "monotone grind" as well as "unnecessary complexity". Both of these things would obviously be a bad thing in most games... However... this game is called a Simulator for a reason. Its meant to Simulate a specific profession with all (or at least many) of its Intricacies. I have never been in this profession, so I cant say how realistic all of that is. But if you buy a Simulator then you should know what you are in for before criticizing certain aspects of the game.
Granted, since the Game "Goat simulator" came out we got plenty of "simulator" games that were no simulators at all and where just meant to be goofy. This wave of simulators also gave us some "casual simulators", that were simpler in design and thus appealed to people who seek a more casual playstyle in simualtors. However "Gold mining simulator" feels like one of the more old school simulators and thus has some gameplay elements that seem to be annoying or unnecessary to some people. And yes, the game would work without them but it just wouldnt be the same.
Some ingame options for less or more complexity would have been nice for those kind of players but leaving a negative review for complexity that is clearly described AND can be seen on the steam shop page for this game is just bad.
Now to the "monotone" gameplay: I could just repeat half of what I just written. Its a simulator about digging up Gold. I really have no idea what some people would expect to be the gameplay if they criticize that.
The gameplay loop is simple and easy: You dig up dirt, wash the gold out of it and then sell the gold. With the money, you buy better equipment to dig up more dirt faster and clean bigger quantities of it to get more gold to sell it for money. That is the gameplay loop. You dig, wash, sell gold and get bigger machines. Its not an automation game where everything will be done for you at some point. YOU have to do anything. The tools you have will just get bigger and more efficent.
Operating those tools and machines is where the complexity in this games comes from. DIfferent seasons mean different challenges. Your water source dries up in summer and freezes in Winter. Wear and tear will damage your machines and you have to maintain them by replacing parts that are broken. Leaving your Machines outside during the Alaskan winter WILL damage them, so complaining that you have to disassamble your Washplant during the winter is not a viable argument for a negative review. Excavators are no racing cars so it will take time to get to the place you want to be. Lifting heavy machines with your excavator should be difficult because they are... heavy and physics are a thing in this game. Obviously is can be frustrating sometimes, and since its still a game, there will be the ocasional jankiness but if a game has the tag "realistic" and then you have to do things that are realistic, you shouldnt be surprised.
At the end I want to say again that this is meant as constructive criticism towards people who dragged down the rating of this game with negative reviews for (in my opinion) unjustified reasons.
I also want to say that I can fully understand these people when they bought a game and hoped for something different. Or if their PC just doesnt want to run the game smoothly even though it should. So I DO understand some of the complaints and maybe even frustration of some of the players. Lets hope the Developer addresses some of these problems in Gold mining Simulator 2 so that a larger amount of people can enjoy this type of game without making concessions to people who liked the first game (like me).
I wish everyone who read all of this still a nice day even if you disagree with everything I said. I just want people to have fun playing video games and want a fair exchange between Developers and Gamers, thats all. Have a good day :)

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☑ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☑ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

---{ Author }---
☑

I found this game back when it was called Gold Rush, on YT and I watched every episode Drae put out. I loved it, I just love these types of games I guess.
After those years went by I remembered the videos and tried finding "Gold Rush" but the game had apparently lost the rights to the name Gold Rush. never the less, when I finally got the game I was so excited to play and get rish AF! But as you can see, my laptop couldn't run it without it being a slideshow. Even on the lowest graphics I couldn't play. Not to bad mouth GMS I love it, just need a more powerful machine lol.

great game first 2 tiers is very fun and the rest is just for people who are unemployed and want to feel like they have job

This game used to be Gold Rush game, licensed from Discovery Channel. All attempts to make games with Discovery Channel connections seems to have failed. Deadliest Catch: The Game, Diesel Brothers: Truck Building Simulator, Street Outlaws: The List, ...
Maybe Discovery Channel licensing options are horrible. Or just so expensive, that there is no money left for actual game development.
This game seems to have plenty on half baked features too. Controlling heavy machine with keyboard makes brain hurt, when not done properly. Even simple excavator has nearly dozen axles of movement. And user should be able to control most simultaneously and fluently, without looking at keys. That does not happen here.
First tier is gold mining is pretty much done with shovel, bucket and pan. That part was only bit grindy and mostly fun. Even second tier was still fun, just light machinery and bit better tools. And just one man, digging for gold. This game does feels fun for first 20 hours or so.
There is some open world element, but only limited. You have to dig in allotted area. And you can't go backpacking and prospecting in mountains.
After initial gold rush, game just turn into endless grind. Then you have purchased first larger machines, and try set those up. And find out, that even with all machines, you're still alone digging for gold. Just doing work of 5 people. And machine controls are really bad.
i stopped playing, since game did not feel fun anymore. Only bit over 20 hours feels quite low in game this big. But it was fun at beginning. And a go it well discounted. So bang for buck ratio is acceptable.
Game now has new developer. My playtime was with original version only. New developer seems to have made updates, so maybe this game has some hope.
Recommended if you have urge to rush for gold. And get it on discount, maybe.