Forte Magazine | Music & Lifestyle | Clifton Springs developer strikes gold with Victoria’s goldfields VR game | Forte Magazine
Buried Worlds: Ballarat — panning river gravel. The pan is swirled by hand until the silt washes over the lip.
Clifton Springs developer strikes gold with Victoria’s goldfields VR game
A Clifton Springs game developer is taking Victoria’s goldfields on a virtual detour, with a little help from metal detectors, mining history and a can of Corio Bay lemonade.
What if the next gold rush happened from the comfort of your living room?
That’s the premise behind Buried Worlds, a new virtual reality treasure-hunting game created here on the Bellarine Peninsula by French developer Cyril Gaillard, founder of independent studio Bellare Studios.
After a year of independent game development in Clifton Springs, Cyril has brought a distinctly Victorian chapter of prospecting history into the virtual realm, inviting players to pick up a metal detector, excavate buried objects and discover what might be concealed beneath the surface.
Designed as a relaxing and immersive experience for Meta Quest, Buried Worlds takes players across five historically inspired destinations, where they can search for buried treasures, pan for gold, experiment with magnet fishing and carefully excavate a collection of intriguing artefacts. It’s much easier than rolling up your sleeves to sift through dirt and water for gold specks, and just as fun.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around the region here.
In Victoria it’s hard to escape the rich gold rush history. In Gaillard’s case, the home advantage helped with the research. A gold prospecting course with Geelong-based Lucky Strike Gold, alongside visits to Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, provided Gaillard with an experiential understanding of prospecting and helped inform the game’s tactile approach to discovery.
“I did a prospecting course in Maryborough and found a few tiny specks of gold, probably worth about three cents,” Gaillard says. “But finding them yourself is exciting. That’s the feeling I wanted to bring into the game: wondering what’s there, digging it up and seeing what you’ve found.”
In the game’s Ballarat location, players explore a historically inspired goldfields camp and repair a puddling machine, incorporating elements of Victoria’s industrial and mining heritage into the interactive experience. The virtual expedition extends beyond Australia, with further locations inspired by the distinctive landscapes and histories of California, France, England and Spain.
Every destination is a real place where treasure was actually found. Each carries its in-game expedition name. The first is closest to home with Ballarat, Victoria exploring the search for gold that drew the world to Australia, and where the expedition begins as you are transported by to the 1850s Victorian gold rush. Head to Coloma, California, USA to the River of Gold. James Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848 in what is known as the find that started the California Gold Rush. It’s across to France to Carcassonne, in Occitania to explore the Forgotten Relics. This fortified city has been UNESCO-listed since 1997 and is known for its wells.
Crossing to the UK, head to Hoxne, Suffolk in England for the Echoes of Rome. Here you’ll find a Suffolk field holding the largest Roman hoard ever found in Britain. In 1992 Eric Lawes went looking for a hammer his tenant farmer, Peter Whatling, had lost in the field, and found the Hoxne Hoard. The hammer was recovered too, and sits with the hoard in the British Museum, Room 49. The game recreates the hammer. The final spot is Bolonia, Andalusia in Spain. Titled the Secret of the Tides, here you will see an Atlantic shore that surrenders its ruins only at low tide.
Players can also try magnet fishing, brush dirt from artefacts and sell their discoveries to upgrade equipment and unlock new destinations, giving the game a progressive structure that rewards curiosity and methodical exploration.
There’s a little local humour embedded among the historical references, too. A can of “Corio Bay Sparkling Lemonade” is concealed within each scene, and finding one provides a particularly generous power-up, transforming the player’s pickaxe into an oversized tool capable of breaking through significantly more ground with a single swing.
Buried Worlds is an accessible meeting point between history and technology, offering players a contemporary way to engage with the enduring fascination of prospecting and the simple satisfaction of uncovering something for themselves.
Dig in now. The game is available now in Early Access on Meta Quest. Watch the teaser for a glimpse of the adventure here, or search for Buried Worlds in the Meta Quest store.
