Awesome Metal Detecting

I came to Awesome Metal Detecting looking for something weirdly specific: a low-stakes loot hunt with some multiplayer chaos on the side. What I found instead was a deeply rough 2017 indie that has all the structural bones of an interesting sim and almost none of the polish to hold them together. That's the honest summary. Everything after this is detail. The core loop has you sweeping various terrain types - beaches, fields, what passes for historical sites - with a metal detector, listening for signals, then crouching down to dig up whatever the ground decided to spit out. Most of it is junk. Bottle caps, bent wrenches, the digital equivalent of wet sand. That's actually realistic, and credit to the developers for not padding the loot tables with constant rare finds. The problem is the economy built around that junk is punishing in the wrong way. You need coins from selling finds to buy food, batteries, and better detector equipment. Early on, the starting area barely produces anything sellable, which means you're stuck grinding for enough cash to unlock locations that might actually reward the effort. A survival mechanic layered on top - your character needs to eat, and the diet appears to consist almost entirely of apples - adds friction without adding tension. The detector selection is one of the game's genuine strengths. There are multiple models with different sensitivity settings, which means there's a small layer of gear progression that actually matters. Veteran metal detecting hobbyists seem to enjoy that specificity. The maps are described as relatively large and varied, and there are vehicles to move between areas, which is a practical decision given the scope. Multiplayer supports up to 64 players, which on paper sounds like the most chaotic treasure hunt possible. In practice, the concurrent player numbers tell a different story - the online side is essentially a ghost town at this point. The camera is the other wall you'll hit fast. It misbehaves when you open your backpack, when you crouch to dig, and when you try to get a clean look at what you've just unearthed. The inventory UI has been compared to something assembled in MS Paint, and that's not entirely unfair. Controls in third-person feel disconnected from the character, and first-person is cramped. These aren't small complaints - they affect every single interaction in a game where interacting with the ground is literally the whole activity. Steam reviews sit in mixed territory, roughly two-thirds positive out of a few hundred votes. That split makes sense. The people who enjoy it seem genuinely into the niche concept and are willing to work around the roughness. Everyone else bounces off the UI and the survival system before the detector gameplay has time to click. If you are a real-world metal detecting hobbyist who wants a digital equivalent of the hobby, this might scratch that itch in a way nothing else on PC does - it occupies a genuinely lonely genre slot. If you're a shooter player like me looking for a chill multiplayer side activity, the dead servers and clunky controls will kill the appeal within an hour.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

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