Mining Mechs is a very simple but moreish gameplay loop that reminds me a little of idle games. In idle games you watch various stats and numbers rocket skywards and get the satisfaction from the rising figures. Mining Mechs takes that idea and applies it digging. Dig, collect, resurface, sell, upgrade, dig. Repeat.
I’ve summarised the entire gameplay loop in a few words because the core of Mining Mechs is extremely simple. Press down to dig and your mech will chew away at either dirt or resources. Both have containers that fill up which requires you to fly back up to the surface, deposit both and go again. As you earn cash from selling resources this allows you to buy upgrade slots to your mech. This increases the capacity to carry dirt and resources as well increasing the drill power and your movement speed to fly back to the surface again. Each mech has a limit to its upgrades though so you’ll be buying new ones repeatedly to get further upgrades and these require more cash.
There is one element of Mining Mechs that I really enjoyed and it was the mineshaft pipe system. This is a secondary mission you can choose to totally ignore in your attempt to dig 1000 blocks downwards but it is helpful to embrace it. Dotted around every 30-50 or so blocks down are mines spread across the 50 squares across world you dig through. If you can find them, you can dig a path to them from a central golden pipe which you can extend downwards and to the mine by buying extensions to your pipe. Each mine you connect generates a small bit of cash per second but these mines can be upgraded to generate more cash over time. It starts out quite insignificant but the more you discover, the cash mounts up. It doesn’t generate money when the game is turned off like an idle cash but I did do some AFK moments to let cash generate up when I was close to the next drill upgrade to pass the time.
There is nothing wrong with Mining Mechs as long as you don’t mind a simple, streamlined game loop. You can buy bombs to blast through rocks and there is a small overarching story that unfolds at 100 block depth intervals. If anything, because its so breezy I felt like I wanted more variety in resource types and pick ups but Mining Mechs because a very relaxed and somewhat satisfying brain calmer. If this looks and sounds like your kind of game, I’d recommend the DLC pack too for the complete version. It adds an Artic reskin with a separate quickly thin story but it adds another half of the game length again on top of the default mode. Will it change the world? No, but it does exactly what I expected with no frills. Co-Op is an option too. A generous 7/10.
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