Developer Crossbridge Games Studios has revealed what’s described as their “coalpunk Lovecraftian roguelite clicker” in Drill Deep. Coming to Steam later this year, horror doesn’t chase your in this game. Rather, the dread ratchets up ever so slowly as you approach something that has existed long before humanity.
The story sees you saved from the gallows for a fate worse than death: the mines. Given your expertise in excavation, you’ve been assigned to oversee operations at a new imperial mining facility. You will optimize, automate, and upgrade. The empire expects results: coal, ore, or whatever else the earth is hiding down there.
The process in Drill Deep starts simple: Click away at the blocks while also managing the operation by expanding the surface base, optimizing and upgrading. The surface camp grows, smokestacks rise, progress charts tick upward. It’s almost cozy out there. Yet there is something else down there. As you descend, the rock gets older and the reality warps. You start finding unusual formations, otherworldly fossils, even inscriptions in unknown languages. The workers don’t comment on them. At first, neither do you.
However, you soon realise that whatever is down there is slowly corrupting you, your canary and all the operation on the surface. Take what you can, and use it to craft permanent upgrades for the next run. From there, the cycle begins again, as does your descent.