Drill Core Review — Diggy Diggy Hole

Drill Core is a mining tycoon game with roguelike elements and a satirical shine. The game is simple in its concept and very easy to get into, but that doesn’t mean it lacks replayability and longevity for players who latch onto it. How much longevity, however, will vary from player to player, and I quickly found that I not only had the hang of the game but had my fill pretty fast as well.

In Drill Core, your task is simple: lead expeditions of drillers into hostile alien worlds to harvest valuable ore.

In each mission, you land on the planet’s surface and deploy a drilling platform. You dig into the planet’s surface at increasing depths, and at each level, you have your crewmates mine the local resources, defending them from waves of alien monsters until you meet your quota and dig deeper. Eventually, you’ll get your fill of that planet and bounce, moving on to the next with heavier pockets and probably more than a few human lives on your conscience.

Mechanically speaking, Drill Core is a mix between a tower defense game and a tile-by-tile mining game, sort of in the vein of those old arcade mining games. This is done with the help of three workers: a miner, whose job is to manually dig out the blocks you command; a carrier, who flies around and collects the ore they drop; and the soldier, who defends your crew from attacks. Each one dies pretty fast and takes up a relatively small, yet eventually increasing, pool of active workers, meaning you must continuously replace them and strategically manage how many of each worker type you want active at once.

On the other end of the game is the tower defense mechanic. At the heart of your mining platform is the core; should this be destroyed by monsters, who attack every night, you’ll lose the mission. Surrounding the core are slots where you can build additional structures to improve your run, such as a barracks to produce units or a smelter to create iron (your main upgrade currency), and lots of other buildings unlocked as roguelike randomized buffs. You also build turrets along the walls to defend the core each night from the aliens who rain from above.

The game’s tower defense meta suffers from something of a self-imposed balance issue. As the nights grow longer and you move to more dangerous planets, the main way in which difficulty increases is through bigger health pools. When you pair this with the game’s two main turrets, which “deal more damage to low-health enemies” and “deal more damage to high-health enemies” respectively, it isn’t long before you figure out that you only really need one of the two. Spamming the latter turret essentially scales you up with the game’s difficulty and makes runs much easier—presumably because these turrets do max health damage? Instead of any flat rate. I can’t be positive on that, though.

The game’s tower defense meta suffers from something of a self-imposed balance issue. As the nights grow longer and you move to more dangerous planets, the main way difficulty increases is through bigger health pools. When you pair this with the game’s two main turrets—one which “deals more damage to low-health enemies” and another which “deals more damage to high-health enemies”—it isn’t long before you figure out you only really need one of the two. Spamming the latter turret essentially scales you up with the game’s difficulty and makes runs much easier, presumably because these turrets do max health damage instead of any flat rate. I can’t be positive on that, though.

Another complaint I have about the game is just how slow it moves. Even with your game set at the increased speed option, it seems to take so long for your crew to mine and gather materials. This is likely so they could make the crew speed upgrade something worth buying, but it still feels a little lame when the game’s increased speed feels rather like the default. Yet, the times the game does feel fast are when a sandworm or pop-up enemy essentially wipes your crew out before you even notice what happened. This is not due to the speed of the game but rather how much damage they do, which again is an incentive to buy upgrades, but often I found it just felt kinda lame.

The game’s satirical element reminds me a lot of The Outer Worlds, poking fun at a sort of 1950s capitalistic aesthetic set in space. It’s charming and works really well with the game’s art and sound design, which also feels very inspired by arcade games. Specifically, I would say that the art and sound direction remind me the most of Metal Slug, but I’m no expert.

Drill Core certainly has a lot to offer players with its fun aesthetic and simple, looping gameplay mechanics. If you vibe with what they’re going for, you can probably play the game indefinitely, continuously mining barren worlds with new procedurally generated elements each time. For me, however, I got my fill of the formula after about two hours of playing. Afterwards, it felt as though the game had no big secrets or unlocks to tide me over on the gameplay I had, at that point, more or less mastered.

Despite its shortcomings, Drill Core is the kind of game that succeeds best in short bursts, offering a few hours of engaging, bite-sized strategy that doesn’t demand too much from you. It’s easy to learn, easy to pick back up, and charming enough to keep you entertained for a while, especially if you’re drawn to its nostalgic aesthetic and tongue-in-cheek tone. Still, its lack of meaningful progression or surprising content might leave some players wanting more. If you’re looking for a mechanically light game to zone out with, Drill Core delivers, but it likely won’t stick with you for long.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Drill Core. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Drill Core is available on Steam.