Treasure Hunter Simulator (THS) is supposed to be an archaeology game: go to different maps and try to locate historically significant artifacts. In reality, the gameplay was a mess, logically it made no sense, and programmatically it's a buggy mess. It was a failure in every sense of the word. The only good points are it has a relaxing pace, and when you turn up the graphics, the Unreal Engine makes the levels quite pretty.
You can read my full review on Steam here. But we're here to talk about the failures.
Gameplay Problems
THS can be accurately retitled as "hiking and metal detecting simulator", since all you do, except for the few "side jobs", is to hiking around the map, and use metal detectors all over the place, then dig holes all over the place finding the "treasures", which often turned out to be junk, like old nails, soda can tabs, etc. Only occasionally you will find something worth a little more. An old sawblade may be worth $10. A good condition Medieval helmet may be worth 350. But usually you find lame stuff like old medallions, old doorstop, old buttons that may be worth $5 on a good day.
You will need TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to afford the best metal detectors, which doesn't quite work the way you expect them to. You'd think detecting large objects is easier, but not in this game. Detecting large objects is only reserved for upgraded detectors. Your default model can only detect shallow and SMALL objects. Huh?
Frankly, with the amount of random junk lying about, there really is no sense of discovery, but drudge work, as you "grind" your way through more junk to find the few treasures in order to afford the better stuff. Having an artificial "delay" for "identification" when it's an object you've seen only the 100th time does not help with the immersion at all. And since most of the time you are looking DOWN at the ground to get the detection right, the beautiful vista and level design are wasted, except for the few who appreciate the graphical touches and take screenshots.
It also really makes no sense for some maps to charge an entrance fee... to a supposed archaeologist!
The job pays are also absurdly low. For example, one of the jobs on the Syrian Temple map, pays $380. However, the entrance fee to the map is $300! So your net pay is $80! And since they only give you one job at a time, you can't even queue them together, and thus save on the entrance fee! They had to be paid each and every time!
The side jobs are purely "make work". One of them is basically "run from location A to location B". As long as you don't get lost and take the most direct route, and you hold down the RUN key (SHIFT) you should make it with plenty of time to spare. The fact that there's an achievement for making 5 runs makes the achievement really lame. The other type of side job would be to 1) photograph something on the map, except the item is highlighted with a HUGE "camera" sign so you can't miss if if you have a line of sight to it. 2) dig up something(s), like "5 treasure on the map" or "10 pieces of modern crap" and something like that.
Occasionally the game will ask you to "recreate a shot" and give you a picture taken somewhere in the level, and you have to use the clues to figure out where was the picture taken. However, again, you are given a huge "camera sign" when you are within line of sight that there is no sense of discovery. It's visible in quarter of a mile.
In fact, usually the clue to the "legendary" treasure of the level is given this way, in a picture, when it makes ZERO sense. Which leads us to the next problem:
Nonsense Problems
Previously we mentioned that the legendary treasure on the map usually has a clue, but that clue was often explained as "someone in the research department found a photo of where the treasure may be" when it made absolutely no sense.
For example, Captain Cook may have hidden his spyglass on the Scottish coast. However, since Captain James Cook died in Hawaii in the 1700's... how can there be a faded photo of that location? WTF? Yet this was done repeatedly over several levels (the "Russian grenade" in Poland, the Viking sword in Sweden... ) when it made no f-ing sense!
In fact, the entire gameplay is absurd when you think about it. What sort of park would let you go in with a metal detector and a shovel and let you dig all over the culturally sensitive area, even in the middle of the walking path? Or in the middle of a Viking historical village display?
The map is also misaligned or the compass is misaligned, as the map's top is NOT north, as you'd expect! It's SOUTH! And the map is NOT zoomable! There is also no minimap! And why can't I access email for other assignments when I am out in the field? But no! You MUST return to the office!
Quality Control and Game Balance Problems
The program, to put it plainly, is buggy. Even the developers acknowledge that you can get stuck in certain corners on certain maps, because they included an "UNSTUCK" command, which resets your position to the starting position (teleports you, basically).
But even beyond that, you usually cannot play more than 3 field trips. You usually will CRASH upon returning from the field trip, where the program just closes (Crash to Desktop / CTD) with a small dialog box that you can only select OK. Fortunately, your progress is always saved, so it's just a matter of restarting the game and load the savegame, but it's pretty obvious it's probably memory corruption. And let me assure you my machine is a fully-spec'ed i7 with an RTX2060. It runs everything fine. It's obviously a memory corruption problem.
There are also numerous typos of basic English mistakes, as if nobody did a grammar check. Imagine seeing Sheer / Shear in the same dialog box, or grenade / granade, trepine / terpine. What's more, trepine is a BONE drill, not a hand drill as depicted.
And I just ran into a game-stopping bug... I was told to "clean up" the amphitheater in Palmyra, Syria (Syrian Temple level) but there is no metal in the amphitheater! I checked several times, every meter of the place, with the best detector available in the game! So now I am STUCK, as the game will not give me any more missions until I finish this one!
As for game balance, the game is simply not balanced right.
While the game meant to lock away the good detectors behind prestige levels, it gave way too much prestige for missions, and not enough money. And with the limited number of "jobs" available (they are scripted, not random) the income is fixed per map, and the only way to make more is the reset the map's progress (i.e. have it randomly reseed all the loot and junk you picked up before, now in new random distribution) so you can do it all over again.
As a result, you end up with way too much prestige, and not enough money to buy the metal detectors. When I made it to prestige level 8, which opened up the best detector available, it costs $10000. But I don't have that much, as I only have $3000 at the time, and that's after I skipped the $4000 machine and went straight to $6000 machine. If I hadn't, it would have taken EVEN LONGER to afford it! Right now, I already maxed out my prestige, and I STILL can't afford the uber detector!
TLDR: money and prestige are not balanced right. Too much prestige (which only has ONE use: to unlock better detectors) and not enough money.
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