The Gold River Project

What The Gold River Project is

The Gold River Project starts as a holiday. A chartered float plane drops you off at a remote lake in the Pacific Northwest for a camping trip: kayaks, hiking trails, a tent and a fire. The guide is supposed to come back. He doesn't, and it slowly becomes clear that the whole nature reserve is part of an experiment and that you are being watched.

The game comes from Fairview Games, a small studio in Vancouver, with Sightline Games as co-publisher. It entered Steam Early Access on January 23, 2026, and can be played alone or in co-op. Survival is part of it, with weather, seasons, food and crafting, but the hook is the mystery: substations that need power, keycards, bunkers, and a huge barrier wall that splits the forest in two. The free Mariner update later added kayaking to far-off camps, a hidden outboard motorboat and a fishing system.

What happens in this series

Season 1 (16 episodes) follows a first playthrough from the float-plane drop. It covers the first substation and the massive underground area beneath it, the cabins and the master key, an underwater structure, radio towers and an airdrop, and the long effort to bring down the wall. Later episodes chase a blue key card under the dam, a possible future bunker and, in the final episode, what might be the elevator the whole season had been searching for.

Season 2 (13 episodes so far) starts fresh with the Mariner update. It is more about the water: tracking down tents and storage, finding the motorboat and winter clothes, diving to unlock the fishing huts and the boat house, then pushing into a mountainside logging complex, a deep mine and cave, and the red bunker on the far side of the dam.

Because every new world shuffles substations, supplies and paths, Season 2 isn't a repeat of Season 1. Places you have seen before can turn up in a different order.

Where to start

Start with Season 1 Episode 1. The story builds on itself, and the first episode is still the most-watched in the series for a reason. If you already know the game and want the Mariner content, jump to Season 2 Episode 1.

Reviewed October 2026. Game details are taken from the official store page and the developer's announcements. Episode descriptions are based on the videos themselves.