Overlooked Studio
STEAM / COMING TO EARLY ACCESS
The Nugget
A first person gold prospecting and survival game set in the Australian outback. Tune your detector, dig up targets, wash paydirt and keep your camp running. Alone or with up to three friends.
The demo is free on Steam. The full game is coming to Steam Early Access in 2026; the price has not been announced yet.
Early Access: The Nugget is still being built. It already has metal detecting, gold panning, digging, claim leasing, gold sales, a pickup and caravan, wash equipment, basic camp and survival systems and online co-op. Bugs, performance issues and uneven balance remain, especially with bigger equipment and in multiplayer. Saves may not carry over between versions. Try the free demo first.
The next signal could change everything.
The Nugget starts with a pickup, a caravan and a few tools. You drive out onto the red dirt, sweep the ground with a metal detector and decide which signal is worth digging. Not every beep is gold. Learning to tell the difference is the game.
Small finds pay for better gear, a lease on promising ground and, later, machines that move more dirt than you ever could by hand. A pan at the water, a small wash plant, then a trommel fed by an excavator.
Between trips you look after yourself. Food, water, heat and fuel run out. You sleep, cook over a fire and keep your camp supplied, because the outback does not care how close you were to the next nugget.
What you do
Read the signal
Sweep with different detectors and settings, narrow down a target, dig it up and recover it. Decide which patch deserves more work.
Pan and wash
Pan promising dirt by hand at the water. Then set up wash equipment and connect the water and power it needs.
Dig bigger
Move up to a trommel wash plant and load it with an excavator. More capacity only helps if you can keep it supplied.
Claims and town
Lease claims, sell your gold in town and buy fuel, supplies and better equipment.
Camp and survive
Build your camp with foundations, walls, doors, roofs and fences. Sleep, light a fire, cook and keep water and fuel ready.
Play together
Prospect with up to 4 players in online co-op, which is still being improved. Play with mouse and keyboard or a gamepad.
Screenshots
Captured in the current development version with the German interface.
From the TV couch to the outback
Shows like Gold Rush and Aussie Gold Hunters made gold prospecting something a lot of people want to try. Gold Rush follows big mining crews in Alaska. Aussie Gold Hunters follows prospectors with metal detectors in the Australian bush.
The Nugget sits closer to the second one: one detector, one signal, a long drive and a camp to keep going. It is our own game and has no connection to either show.
Coming from another gold mining game? See The Nugget vs Gold Rush: The Game and The Nugget vs Gold Mining Simulator.
System requirements
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 11 64-bit |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 | Intel Core i5-12400 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 |
| Memory | 8 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB or AMD Radeon RX 580 8 GB | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600 |
| DirectX | Version 12 | Version 12 |
| Storage | 6 GB available space | 6 GB available space, SSD recommended |
| Notes | 64-bit processor and operating system required. Vulkan-capable GPU supported. | 64-bit processor and operating system required. |
As listed on the Steam store page on 7 November 2026. Early Access requirements can change.
The Steam page also lists macOS requirements (macOS 13 Ventura, Apple M1, 16 GB RAM, 6 GB storage). The macOS version is not out yet; this page will say when it is.
Languages
The interface is available in 31 languages: English, German, French, Spanish (Spain and Latin America), Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Italian, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Malay.
Before you start
New to prospecting? The help page walks you through your first day, the detector, panning, your camp and co-op. The controls page lists every key and controller button.
DISCORD
Talk to the developer.
Questions, bug reports or ideas. Find me on Discord.