Deep Town by Rockbite Games is a space-themed digging simulator. Along the way, you’ll encounter boss fights, crafting, and inventory management. This game is equally as frustrating as it is addicting. Currently, I’m level 254 and on floor 674 (oil).

Story

Your spaceship crash lands on a deserted planet. Looking for resources and information, you dig into the ground. To thrive, you’ll need to upgrade your technology, craft tools and weapons, and synthesize chemicals.

Along the way, you’ll establish archeology explorations at caves. Venturing into these caves rewards artifacts from the previous occupants. Learn what happened to them as you dig.

Gameplay

The game’s core revolves around using spells to dig and fight your way deeper under the planet’s surface. When you’re at the lowest current floor, your spell bar appears. Click the lined button on the left for your available spells. Click “Deploy” to move that spell to your action bar.

Spells each have cool-down timers, so figuring out a consistent rotation is imperative. Some spells are best used for digging while others are pertinent to battle.

Laser Zaps: This is your default spell for both digging and battle. In later levels, you’ll use gems to power advanced versions.

Digging Bots: Disposable Bots and Pumper Bot are both used for digging. Pumper bots do a lot of ground damage and are great for setting and forgetting while you work on crafting and managing your inventory.

Utility Spells: This includes spells like Miracle Gas and Repair Bot. I’ve barely used them in my own game. The spells themselves don’t even explain well what it is they do. Use a laser zap during specific colors on the Miracle Gas. Laser plus red gas equals BOOM. Blue freezes the enemy, and yellow stops the enemy’s healing in its tracks. After testing, I still have no idea what Repair Bot does. if you do, feel free to leave me a comment below.

Blasts: This includes both the Fire Blast and the Ice Freeze. Ice Freeze is the single most important battle spell since it freezes enemies and stops them from healing.

As you dig, you can set up Mining Stations and Chemical Mining. Other stations are unlocked later in the game.  You can check the locations, levels, and statuses of all your Mine Buildings by clicking the line-dot-line sandwich circle mid-way down the left side of the screen.

You can see the breakdown of all mined goods from this screen and travel to each one from here without needing to scroll.

 

 

Combat & Leveling

Each section you dig through has its own theme. For instance, part one is coal, two is copper, three is amber, four is gold, five is oil, and so on.

Each area has its own enemies, which are an extension from the area’s final boss itself. Stones floors with runes on them are enemy battles. Not all spells for digging can be used for fighting. Enemies will one-shot all digging bots, for example. The best course of action is to freeze, bomb, use other damage, and repeat.

Some bosses can only be dealt with if you craft a specific quest item. Pay attention to your robot guide, and he’ll let you know what steps to take. Quest items appear as quests in your Quest Log and they will be at the top of the list in your crafting building.

If an enemy is able to heal more than the damage you can do to it, you’ll need to level up. While on the dig screen, click the arrow icon in the lower right. Most of the time, it takes currency to level. Every so often, a level may require mined goods or crafted items.

 

Quests & Crafting

The blue circle with the clipboard icon is your Quest Log. Quests guide you along gameplay and give you more insights into the story. It also provides side quests (such as large quantities of crafted goods) for more chances to obtain green gems.

All crafted materials are created using buildings. While you scroll down from ground level to fight and dig, you scroll upward to build your manufacturing center. Some of the buildings include smelting, crafting, farming, and chemistry stations.

My biggest pet peeve with crafting is that you cannot dictate a cut off on the goods you produce. Say you have 1,000 copper bars and you need 500 copper wire and 500 copper nails. If you set your crafting to copper wire and forget to check back, you could find yourself all out of copper bars and with 1,000 copper wire. I would love the option to set an amount.

Final Thoughts

While it feels rewarding to plow through layer after layer through the ground, maintaining the number of crafted items needed at any given moment becomes increasingly frustrating. I love seeing what mined material will manifest next and as what sort of monster, but absurd cost increasing for levels and mining stations gets tiring. Deep Town is worth a play, but you may find yourself, like me, burned out trying to balance keeping large amounts of items versus selling them off for your next cost progression.