What kind of game "Deep Drift: Mine" is: rules, the economics of a trip and tips for 250 metres

There is a genre that never ages: dig, sell, upgrade, dig deeper. Here it is built into a single vertical shaft with no download and no dependencies — and, as usual, "one more trip" turns into an hour.

What this game is

Deep Drift: Mine is a mining arcade that lives inside one slice of rock. You get a tracked rig, a hundred litres of fuel and a hold for twelve pieces of ore, and you have exactly one problem: how many metres down you are willing to trade for how many dollars up.

How to play: briefly

1. Down goes the drill (▼), up goes only the thrusters (▲) — rock is not passable upwards, and that is the first law of the shaft.

2. Sideways the rig rolls on its own and chews the wall as it goes, so a lateral drift is mining too.

3. Rock changes band by band: dirt to 35 metres, common stone to 85, dense rock to 140, obsidian to 190, magma to 240, and past that the shell of the Core.

4. The hardness of a band decides which drill head gets there: iron takes dirt and stone, steel takes dense rock, carbide takes obsidian, diamond takes magma, and the Core shell answers only to plasma.

5. Prices climb with depth: coal is 15 a piece near the top, gold 400 at 150 metres, emerald 1600 at 215, diamond 3400, and aetherium 9000 — that one lives in the last few metres above the Core.

6. On the surface stand four pads: the market sells your haul, the depot refuels and welds the hull, the workshop sells upgrades, the supply hut carries consumables (a Recall Beacon, a 60-point Patch Kit, a 90-litre Fuel Cell).

7. There is no death in the usual sense: a wrecked rig is salvaged for 35% of the cargo value and a rescue tug lifts you to the surface for a quarter of your cash.

Controls

Controls:

• ◀ ▶ (or A D) — drive and drill sideways, ▼ (S) — drill straight down
• ▲ (W or Space) — thrusters: the only way back up
• E — use the pad you are standing on; 1, 2, 3 — beacon, patch kit, fuel cell
• R — call the rescue tug when the tank is dry; Esc — pause, H — help, M — sound

A few tips for the road

• Plan a trip from the surface: work out how many litres the climb from this depth costs and leave room for the work itself. Half a tank at forty metres is not a reserve.
• Do not spend the whole game on one column of rock: parallel shafts and side galleries feed you better for the same climb.
• Buy hold capacity and tank size before drill power: while a trip carries twelve pieces, an expensive head pays back badly.
• Green gas pockets detonate when the tile next to them goes — go around them instead of driving into them.
• Watch the demo mode on the game page: the rig works there by itself, and you can see in what order it buys upgrades.

Two hundred and fifty metres is not the finale, it is the exam in fuel arithmetic. Deep Drift: Mine