Alaska Gold Fever

Review

A fun nugget buried under mountains of tedium

May 25th, 2026 by Alex Moretti

reviewed on PC

Comfort games tend to be hit or miss. While there can be small nuggets of fun in just walking around and doing basic tasks, very few of them tend to be able to keep your attention for long, and even fewer can justify spending dozens of hours on them by establishing fun gameplay loops that warrant it.
Alaska Gold Fever might peak your interest for a few hours, but only those with more time than they know what to do with, and the patience of a saint could possibly invest the 20+ hours that it takes to complete this game.

Setting up business

Upon starting, players arrive in a small area in Alaska where you have been gifted a run-down hotel building by your uncle that you must renovate to attract guests. Before you can do that however you must acquire enough money for renovations. I spent the first three hours performing the most mind numbingly boring tasks just to get enough money to renovate, hire staff, and upgrade my hotel. The game has some very basic RPG elements that you can use to upgrade certain features, but most of them seem superfluous.

You can craft and upgrade certain tools to make mining for gold easier, however the only real important upgrades that felt as though they made a difference were those that increased my inventory capacity. Other upgrades that you can buy never really felt as though they did much. After a few hours of mining in the same spot, I recommend buying the cheapest gun available at the gunsmith. There are multiple guns that you can purchase, however the cheapest one is the only one that you need to fight off enemy creatures that can inflict damage on you; that being wolves, and bears.

Your character is also apparently a cyborg, as falling off of cliffs doesn't do any damage. The only two things that can do any damage to your character are the aforementioned wolves and Bears. There are no human enemies to fight, and a very banal way of traversing. Later on in the game, you will unlock a bobsled that you can use to traverse the environment, however running is much faster, and you have infinite stamina, so there really is no reason to use it. You can also fast travel to certain locations on the map once you discover them, however you can only fast travel by going to a travel point in whichever town you are in, and paying for transportation.

Am I digging it?

The game is not completely without merit, I enjoyed the atmosphere, and getting immersed in the wilderness of Alaska in the late 1800s. The game has potential in the later parts where you can purchase different mines and operate them by hiring employees, however you're not going to have enough money or resources to do this until a dozen hours in. ADHD-riddled gamers who want to experience everything that this game has to offer in the first couple of hours should steer clear from this title.

While I can appreciate what the developers were trying to do, I really can't recommend Alaska Gold Fever over titles such as Minecraft, Animal Crossing, or any casual games with RPG elements that focus on travelling, exploration, and/or business management. Still, it's not too bad, if you just want to kill some time - or some bears.

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5.7

fun score

Pros

Wonderful atmosphere allowing full immersion of the Alaskan wilderness

Cons

Tasks are often mind-numbing and tedious