Another incremental game about mining, a concept that is becoming something of a genre stereotype by now. As long as the progression is fluid, though, I do not mind the repetition. Sadly, that is not the case here. While the gameplay loop is fairly standard, progression is slow and rarely satisfying.
Each run gives you a limited amount of time to crack ore tiles using a pickaxe attached to your mouse cursor. The pickaxe strikes at set intervals, so your job is simply to move it over an ore tile and keep it there until it takes enough hits to break. Every cracked tile is converted into money, which is then used to purchase upgrades.
As in many incremental games, you start with a single upgrade that expands into adjacent options whenever you buy something. This continues across the tree, gradually revealing more paths and upgrades as you progress.
The upgrade tree itself is extremely basic. Apart from a number underneath each upgrade indicating how many times it can be purchased, with each purchase increasing the price, there is very little presentation. Visibility could also be better. Upgrades that you can currently afford are marked with a tiny green border, while maxed out upgrades simply replace their purchase number with the word MAX.
The tree contains the usual upgrades, including pickaxe damage and speed, additional ore tiles, and more time per round. You can also unlock worthless dynamite charges, which can be placed anywhere to damage multiple tiles at once. There are also chances for special tiles to appear, including valuable tiles and multiplier tiles that increase the value of all destroyed tiles for that round. The multiplier is particularly useful because finding additional multiplier tiles keeps increasing its effect, allowing you to earn money much faster.
Unfortunately, you soon discover that the upgrade tree is tiny, and you can max it out in roughly half an hour. To progress further, you need to mine a required amount of ore across multiple runs and find an incredibly rare fire gem. Although its appearance can be unlocked through the upgrade tree, the chance of finding one is very low. Even worse, once cracked, the fire gem splits into four smaller circles, with the resource you need hidden under one of them. You get only one chance to pick the correct circle before the others disappear.
That means you effectively have only a 25% chance of getting the resource, and you need to succeed several times to progress. This quickly turns the game into a grind, forcing you to play countless runs while hoping the fire gem appears. To make matters worse, the fire gem has a frustrating habit of showing up just as you run out of time.
Once you have collected the required amount of ore and the rare resource, you can upgrade your pickaxe and move on to the next ore. You start with coal, then progress through silver and eventually all the way to diamond. There are five ores in total, which explains why the initial upgrade tree is so small, as each ore has its own separate tree. Unfortunately, all five trees are identical.
If you were hoping to carry over the fortune you accumulated while hunting for the fire gem, that is not possible either. Each ore has its own separate money counter. In general, all five ores follow exactly the same progression. The main differences are a larger playing field, higher upgrade prices, and significantly tougher ore tiles, which only makes progression slower.
However, while you technically can rely on luck and grind for the fire gem, that does not appear to be the intended way to progress. Instead, you are supposed to trigger prestige after fully upgrading the tree. Doing so wipes out all your upgrades and money but rewards you with a diamond.
The number of diamonds you receive depends on the ore, but there also appears to be an invisible mechanic preventing you from repeatedly farming fire gems within the same ore. I noticed this because the first ore produced several fire gem appearances. After finally obtaining one and returning to that ore following a prestige, I could not get a single fire gem to appear despite playing for another twenty minutes. In other words, each ore appears to allow only one fire gem.
Diamonds can be spent on permanent perks that survive prestige. There are four perks to unlock, meaning your first four diamonds are spent purchasing them, while subsequent diamonds are used to upgrade them. The perks improve damage, critical chance, multiplier chance, and fire gem appearance chance. Damage and multiplier chance are particularly important, with multiplier chance arguably being the most valuable. The fire gem chance upgrade, however, is pointless given the apparent limit on fire gems per ore.
Another thing that persists through prestige is your upgraded pickaxe. However, since you cannot obtain additional fire gems from ores you have already completed, you are effectively forced to keep pushing into tougher ores. That makes the later stages increasingly time consuming, especially since the permanent improvements are relatively minor.
Overall, the game has a simple and familiar incremental gameplay loop, but also slow progression, repetitive upgrade trees, excessive grinding, and an overly luck based progression system. The basic mining mechanic works well enough, but there is not enough variety or meaningful progression to keep it engaging for long. It does what it says, but in a very repetitive and boring way, especially if you want the final achievement, which is just a ridiculous waste of time.
