“Remember, 99% of coal diggers quit before they strike horrors beyond comprehension.”
That repurposed copypasta of an internet joke should succinctly describe Drill Deep, a new game developed by Crossbridge Games that are also working on Salty Dogs and Lost Railway.
Drill Deep is a “coalpunk Lovecraftian roguelite clicker” which is a lot to unpack. It’s primarily an incremental game (a clicker, or an idle game) where you start from humble beginnings, manually clicking to get resources, coal in this instance. Earn enough and you can start automating the process, earning more coal faster and unlock even more upgrade.
But there is a twist, rapidly dig deep down the vast unknown and corruption will soon take hold on you. And that’s your cue to restart the cycle and unlock permanent upgrades for the next run. Drill Deep also has a proper roguelite mode, where the mines you’re digging are procedurally generated.
Drill Deep promises “no jump scares, no monsters chasing you. Just the growing certainty that something was down here long before humanity even existed, and that it knows you’re coming.” It’s a slow-burn cozy-turned-horrifying kind of experience, it seems like. In other words, the perfect way for non-horror fans to experience horror.
If industrial cosmic horror is your thing, but prefer a different kind of gameplay attached to it (there’s a real good game that just launched recently with this kind of creeping dread vibe), Drill Deep is coming out later this year on PC (Steam).