Deep Dig

Deep Dig is an idle mining game drawn as a warm cross-section of a mine, lit by lanterns all the way down. It starts with one rock face and one pickaxe: every tap knocks ore loose, spits chunks and dust across the screen and shakes the shaft a little. Keep the rhythm going and a combo builds; land a lucky swing and the whole face lights up for a critical strike. Eight good hits and the boulder shatters for a bonus, and a fresh one slides in from the dark.

Ore buys a crew that works while you watch. A miner with a helmet lamp takes a station in the nearest tunnel; a hand drill gets bolted to the wall next door; a cart line rattles along rails between the face and the shaft; the elevator cage runs up and down the whole drop. Later come blast crews, a tunnel borer the size of a house, a crystal harvester, a magma pump, an excavator brushing the dust off an ancient door, and finally a spike driven into the world's own furnace. Everything you buy turns up in the picture, so the mine on screen is exactly the mine you paid for. Upgrades sharpen the pickaxe, double a machine's output and add critical swings, and every ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred and two hundred of the same machine hands you a free milestone bonus.

Total ore mined is depth. The bands change as you go: topsoil and packed dirt, grey stone, gold veins, iron deeps, a crystal cave, black obsidian, a magma flow and the ruins of something very old, down to the core at twelve hundred metres. Each band brings a new kind of ore and opens the next machine. When a dig has run its course, cave the whole thing in: the roof comes down, the mine resets, and you keep the relics you pull out of the rubble, each one making every future dig faster. The crew keeps working while the tab is closed, up to eight hours, and a card tells you what they brought up. It saves itself as you play, so you can put it down mid-swing and pick it up later.