Gold Mining Simulator

I love this game and used to greatly enjoy it, but the devs have made a MASSIVE turn for the worst. In its infancy, there was a lot of bugs and inconsistencies, but still enjoyable. It was slowly updated for a couple years until the devs started this "New Chapter" thing where they completely rebranded the game away from its inspiration, then recently changed the music which I really loved and changed the lighting which makes the game look fake and it runs HORRIBLY, I mean eats up all your VRAM while being very choppy and having to load chunks of the map even though the graphics are subpar. I DO NOT recommend buying this game in 2025, maybe they can redeem themselves with the second one.

Old game that still runs like crap. It is SO DARK i literally cant see anything without constantly running a generator so i can see which is rediculous because theres no brightness settings in the game.... Other than that its a decent waste of time, which is what i use it for. Please! add a brightness setting, which it should have had years ago at launch...

Controls are jank. Not intuitive to just jump right in and play. Even with custom controls, the experience will be unworthy for most players. Feels too awkward.

Chunk loading, terrible. Whatever game engine is used for this game feels like it's from decades ago.

fun game but grindy plus if you like competition there is a leader board

It's a simulator so its spose to be grindy i guess, i do enjoy grind when its rewarding but i have 27 hours and only have tier 2 mining equipment. It's soul crushing seeing that after about 2/3hours of digging/shovels/panning you only have around 8k. But to upgrade or advance you need around 100k or more if you count fuel and rent aswell, this also isn't counting the parts that break down and need replaced so more money or the whole thief stuff, you just filled your tank up with fuel? Too bad timmy just nicked half off it. Maybe i should play it on easy? But you cant change the settings in game, you need to start over. So another 27 hours to get back to where i left off? Why? Why cant i switch between easy, normal etc? There is a $1 mode, but where is the fun in that? there is no challenge if everything can bought at the start, can't you just balance the money a bit more so its less painful to just buy a bloody trailer?

Most of these things can be turned off i think, like the theft of fuel or parts. So you are telling me to turn things off that YOU put into the game to enjoy it more??? Why bother putting it then? To make it more realistic? Yes theft is a part of life, so why every day then? real theft happens once every so often not 4 days a week every week.

Also why does some machines just disappear? like vanish completely? You just spent 90k on a sweet excavator? Too bad its just been thanos snapped, good luck finding it.
Or why does the game run so poorly? Like max 15ish frames on the lowest setting? I have a good pc so that isn't the issue here, it's the game.

I want to like this game, there is fun at the core of it, but the devs or whoever have just messed it up so bad its just laughable to try and enjoy it.

I hear this game gets lots of bad reviews. I believe that they did an amazing job with the idea that they had and I cant wait for the new Gold Mining Simulator 2!

This game needs work. As a fan of the series "Gold Rush", this game has got a few of things completely wrong. Way more controls for the excavator than an excavator actually has. After collecting the gold from the sluths and taking it to the separation units, instead of putting it through the water table, it wanted the gold put back into the sluths.

Sadly, I have a feeling the developers made their money and are moving on. shame really.

Installed after not playing for a few years. Started a new game. When to the store. Ordered more than I could afford. No way to remove items from the cart. Only option is to click the buy button only to be told I don't have enough money. Uninstalled and review left.

seems like it runs on an older game engine so not a "polished" game but for its time its really fun and realistic mining experience.

do not waste your money on this game. it has gotten to the point of been unplayable. I am running a 4080Ti, and the fps is that bad its unplayable. equipment will fall through the earth. Just did the update that is meant to fix it, instead I can not log in as it does not recognise the 4 DLC I purchased with the game. seriously questioning if I will purchase Gold mining sim 2. these issues have been around for sometime with no fix from the Dev's.
its a real shame as I do enjoy this game.

A little glitchy but i enjoiy this game alot and would recommend it to anyone

AWSOME GAME EVERY ONE NEEDS TO PLAY out of ore is better but this is good cant wait for 2

I do recommend this game. It's a LOT of fun to play, but it is not without issues.

The biggest issue to me is when you have to cable up a piece of equipment to an excavator, if you don't move at a snail's pace, and not bump into anything AT ALL, you just might make it to where you need to put it without cables breaking. I have actually rigged things in this way for work and I have never seen a cable break as easily as they do in this game. Sure, there should be some kind of skill involved, but its WAY overkill. I mean, if you happen to graze a tree, cables start snapping. That doesn't happen that easily. With heavy loads like this, the tree will give sooner than the cable (unless you guys coded in subpar cabling???)

Actually using the excavator is a lot of fun and fairly accurate except that when you close the wrist on a load, it gets stuck every time unless you're very creative. This doesn't happen either. I'm sure you've all seen the show. How many times do you see them struggle to grab a scoop of topsoil? Never. This only happens if they hit solid rock coming back up with the load, or if they're hitting permafrost. This thing won't dig up a full scoop unless you're very creative in how you roll the bucket and lift the boom.

The gold panning mini-game should just be removed. Nothing about this is fun at all.

The emergency brake - remove from ALL vehicles. I hate that thing. Or at least make it so it automatically disengages when you move the vehicle. This is a minor annoyance, but it definitely will annoy you.

Hiring people is confusing and kindof pointless. I have yet to hire someone to actually do anything. It would be great if hiring worked similarly to Farming Simulator 19... you get a vehicle where it needs to be then hit H to hire a worker to take over. The way it is setup now just sucks.

It sounds like I'm being overly negative about the game, but on the contrary... I love playing this and seeing how much gold I can find in a night. Setting up your plant and putting everything in place is my favorite part of it. I do wish that there was a function where you slowly filled a jar with gold through your season. Then have a 'weigh in' at the end of it similar to the show. But maybe that has something to do with why the game was renamed. I love that you can go to the shop with your truck, buy everything then you have to fit it all into your truck. The little details really do make you feel like you're working to get the gold.

To summarize... give us stronger cables, let the excavator dig topsoil like a real one does (not getting stuck in it when you're trying to pull a bucketfull up). The gold panning and hiring don't bother me enough to want anything done with those, I enjoy playing without those features.

The game is perfect if you want to turn off your brain and mindlessly dig dirt for gold, but if you are looking for more, you may be disappointed.

This game is seriously broken. Machines fall into the ground, They disappear even tho you can see the exhaust coming out where they were. Almost all the machines spawn into the ground so you cant lift them. This game seriously need a major overhaul.

fun game great time killer very good graphics

950 hours on this game over the years and the worst part of it has been the developers. Every bug fix they have issued has managed to create more problems than it has solved (like when they widened the entrance to rivertown parcel it made the next dirt road slimmer and almost impassable). Now they have made a new atrocity of an update where controllers are unusable, gameplay with keyboard and mouse is erratic at best, and even though my system is above their recommended system it will not move faster than 12 FPS making it lag. Congrats to CODE HORIZON!!! after all this time you have succeeded in ruining any and all faith in your abilities to be a decent game developer!!!!!

Response to developer: this review was written after the hotfix witch did nothing towards game play with controllers. Still running at 10-15 fps. Lagging is still off the charts and as far as joining your discord that is a service I don't (and wont) use. Just get your stuff together and start actually FIXING problems instead of shuffling them down the line until they make the game unplayable.

hoses are broken. new hoses, old hoses hose breaks as soon as i put it into water. pump can be 10 feet away or less. still broken. game is broken. waist of money and my time.

Great game i have played on steam and xbox. i love it. i cant wait for the new one. i would really love it if i could playtest the second game.

My game runs at hundreds of frames but it feels like 40... Hard to explain other than saying it's not very well optimized.

5 min in, Ute is stuck and can't go anywhere or move it. Uninstall.

very fun game. cant wait for gms2

This game is awful. I mean beyond terrible. It says I played 21 hours. WRONG. I must have left it on pause or something. I played less than an hours. Terrible.

Very interesting game, Lot of thought and work went into this. Well made. Fun challange , goal to make $$

Unfortunately, never got into the game, the excavator has a sticking point that makes the game unplayable.

That wretched machine is suppose to be the main focus on the game and the arm cant support the machine to help move it around and the scoop cant affect dirt unless you get its fiddly physics to dig by getting the scoop at just the right angle or whatever. Then when you do get the scoop full it gets stuck in the dirt and to free it you have to dump the dirt. AAAHHHHHH!

overall its a mess, I mean its pay to win the way the DLCs are and they dont fix the digging mechanics.

It's a good game for what it is. It doesn't take a huge amount of time to get all the equipment to mine on a large scale, but does take an allot of time to get most of the good DLC stuff (which sucks - I pay real money to buy it, then it takes a massive amount of time & game money to buy them again in the game). So if you buy Gold Mining Simulator, don't worry about the DLC stuff until you progress in the game.

And the game takes a massive amount of time to progress through all the different dig sites, so you'll get your monies worth with game-time buying this game.

On a side note, I totally dislike having to wait 5-7 mins of real time for the blacksmith to smelt my gold into bars. Yes realistic, but totally boring beyond belief. I seriously hope they don't do it again in GMS 2. Make it an option to turn on/off.

This game is so much fun!

DLC for equipment? Lame.

"rEmOVe mINeR gRiLL" How about not glitch out every new save i try, and if Im doing it wrong put some better damn directions

Fun until you get to heavy equipment. They are hard to operate and inconvenient

the game idea is great but the game itself is poorly made

Cant wait for Gold Mining 2!!!

This is an old game, so it has its flaws and didn't age very well (the chunk loading, weird driving, what to do with a gold bar once you have one). But that being said, it is a classic simulator game and some features were really great for the time. You have to shop your material, replacing parts, etc. No gaz? well, you gonna walk! Very relaxing to play somehow (even though some mechanics may be a little hard to get use too). Mining Simulator 2 is on the way. Very excited for that. Will be there for sure

Yeah the game is pretty good graphics are kinda mid but its a decent game with an overall good progression system even if its a little slow at first I am now at tier 2 and I can say it gets far better as you go on.

I have been playing this game for years. I still love it

the controls/power and mechanic of the excavator alone makes me cry in pain. horrible wate of time

cool game, weird mechanics but good machine controls, missing multiplayer for sure!

great game! having a total blast mining away!

Oh... close to 500hours already? Man time sure flies by, eh?
Okay. Time to review this old hunkajunk.

If you want to play a game to relax and enjoy digging up dirt, you won't find anything better. Neither older nor younger than this game. Period.

Buuuuuut, let's hop into our usual process:


We start with Graphics!

Does it look breathtaking and stunning?
Weeeell... yes, in a sense it does. If you expect a title this old to be on par with current gen GPU eyecandy, it sure will take away your breath while you gasp in horror.

For real, way back when it released, it looked pretty decent and even today it looks acceptable.
Sure, you see that it's old but so what? It IS an old game.
You play minecraft and enjoy looking at clunky cubes but complain over seeing edges in another game? Get lost, now will ya.

For how old it is it gets a solid 3/5 Stars in this department.


Next... next... Sound!

Do you love big machines? Yes? Well, you will enjoy them good over here.
Turning the excavator, digging up the dirt, scraping the ground with the teeth of it's bucket, it is all well enough designed to keep you diggin on with glee.
Ambient sounds are okayish, too.

The sounds of the working washplants and water are excellent, albeit too loud if you're too close to them while working.
Well, one could argue "Well, duh! Standing next to a jackhammer IS loud, no?" and indeed, it is a minor grape mostly due to dreaded realism! haha! didn't see that one coming in a simulator.

taking the age into account again...
4/5 Stars.


Off we go tooooo GAMEPLAY!!!

I have a glas of diiiirt! I have a glas of diiiirt!
Jack would jump in endless joy for sure.
The Dirtmechanics are top notch. There are a few problems with how the different layers of dirt work if you dig from the ground up and I dunno if the gripes with that ever got fixed, but overall despite loosing some of the gold because of it, terrain deformation, dirt transport etc all are god damn good.
I mean... I shovelled megatons of dirt for almost 500 hours by now so trust me, It either is god damn marverllous or I'm a bonafide Masochist.
Or both? You'll never know *grin*

Besides playing around with dirt... well... that's it. It is a dig around in dirt and get Gold Simulator. There's nothing else to simulate.

The Machines work, the mechanics how the machines work are implemented well and albeit a tad bit tedious at times, the process of refining your paydirt into a sellable Goldbar over several Steps in between still feels rewarding after millions of times doing it.

Yupp, I'm doing it. Stop screaming, I'm doing it!

5/5 Stars! For what it claims to be and do, no other game reached a comparable good feeling about it. Yet!


Last but not least: BUGSSSSSSSS! *insert meme here*

Let's be honest folks.
Yes, the game is plagued by some bugs and those are like cockroaches. Is it bad for a several years old game to have bugs since ancient times plagueing it? yes.
But, to it's defense, the game went through several hands by now.
The new Devs try their best to mitigate what they can in a spaghetti code not even the original writer ever wanted to touch again after the game made it into a working version somehow.

So... I give the new Devs 3/5 Stars for their effort to straddle through this code swamp they didn't even produced and bring some QoL and Bugfixes as best they can, while working on the Successor with hopefully better maintained code and features.


Where does that leave us overall?

Well, The game is the best gold mining simulator out there. No pun intended.
It is old, clunky and not without bugs even after all its years in existence, but if you love mining, it is the undefeated King in its field.

We settle at not fully 4/5 Stars.

It is almost constant in a sale nowadays so go and get it.
If you encounter a bug, shrug it off. Happens and compared to current AAA Games, this old clunker is way less bugridden, then those abominations the big publishers call Releases anyways.

the fps is so bad but the game is so gd i like it

Very fun game it has its ups n dwns but so do all games but overall not bad

Ever wanted to ruin pristine landscapes for shiny rocks without going to jail? Then boy, do I have a simulator for you.

Gold Mining Simulator is that weirdly relaxing blend of digging, driving, and desperately hoping the gold scanner isn’t lying again. You’ll shovel dirt, rinse gravel, run machines, and question your life choices after spending 45 minutes lining up a sluice box.

The graphics are solid, the mechanics are surprisingly deep, and there’s something hypnotic about watching gold flakes swirl in the pan. Bonus points for the sheer satisfaction of finally finding a chunky nugget after hours of digital sweat.

✅ Feeds your inner prospector
✅ Machinery chaos = fun
✅ Legitimately educational if you ever want to mine in real life (why tho?)
❌ Your virtual bank account will cry. So will your patience.

Final Verdict:
10/10 – Made me want to buy a pickup truck and scream “THAR’S GOLD IN THEM HILLS!”

This is a simple and relaxing game. Could use more detail. Would also like to see some underground mines and more mining areas. But it is still a great relaxing game.

I really like the game play and how you have to connect so many things but id love tho this game was multiplayer.

Pros:
- Fun game mechanics
- Relaxing
- Satisfying

Cons:
- No multiplayer
- Kinda lonely game-play
- No NPC (Would not count if there was multiplayer)

It a fun game i like it has some bugs but the mining is fun i love it

i mean its alright, looking forward to the second one

It is a perfect balance of feeling like you are making so much progress but then being quickly humbled lol. It is somehow relaxing but stressful at the same time. Cant wait for a #2 to come out!

This game is a solid proof of concept, graphics aren't the best and this would be forgivable if it ran half as well as My Summer Car with similar graphics quality, however the intermittent game world loading is clunky. FPS dips are awful and I run a 4090 and 9800X3D. I gold pan IRL and this is the closest to the real thing you can get until GMS2 comes out. this game is better for simulating the whole mining process than Out of Ore which plays more like minecraft or planet crafter if thats what you're looking for and willing to put up with the bugs, if not stand by for the sequel.

Very realistic and diffuclt in the beginning,but when you get a hang of it, it is awesome and relaxing to play.Just watch the gold rush series and it will make you play this game

If you're a fan of realistic simulation games, Gold Mining Simulator is a must-play experience. This game offers an immersive and detailed look into the world of gold mining, allowing players to operate heavy machinery, refine techniques, and manage resources efficiently. The game does an excellent job of replicating real-world gold mining, from digging and panning to processing and selling gold. The attention to detail makes every step feel rewarding. You get to use different mining equipment, from excavators and bulldozers to wash plants and drilling rigs. Mastering these machines is both challenging and satisfying.