Reach new depths in Mining Mechs – Review

One of my first-ever reviews was for Dirt Inc, an idle game on Android where you dig ever deeper for increasingly valuable dirt. Now we’ve come full circle and I’m back to digging the dirt, but this time there’s ore and mechs.

Mining Mechs (available on PC and recently released for console) does find some common ground with incremental idle games. Dig, make money, upgrade mech, dig deeper and greedier and repeat. It also quite nicely fills the same brain space. Want to pass five minutes? Mining Mechs. Want to play something without much cognitive overhead? Mining Mechs. Want a quick hit of progression-related dopamine? You guessed it, Mining Mechs.

There is more depth and interactivity than those idle games though. You’ll dig each grid square button press by button press like a 2D Minecraft. But unlike Minecraft, digging straight down is the path to profit, not danger. Part of Mining Mech’s zen-like appeal is the lack of any kind of threat, no environmental hazards or subterranean beasties.

There’s still some opportunity for strategising. Finding the best route past junk and obstacles and picking out valuable ores, knowing when to upgrade which stats and there’s a pipeline you can lay for passive income (there’s a joke in there somewhere…). Some unscrupulous people could potentially abuse the pipe with a bit of good old-fashioned AFK farming for some low-effort upgrades and progress towards the platinum trophy, but I wouldn’t know about that.

I was surprised to find Mining Mechs has a storyline (there are two actually) and some nicely written humour. The plot is pretty thin and, when you dig into, it amounts to mostly “mine deeper to uncover the mystery”. The humour is general silliness about lost chicken wings, a secret jazz fascination, and that one guy and his dirt disposal technique, but I appreciated it.

The graphics and sound are non-offensive. The pixel art is pleasant enough and I enjoyed the different mech designs, although it would have been nice to upgrade to larger machines capable of mining more than one grid at a time.

The music was perfect for fading into the background as you work, and I even found myself stopping to listen to it a few times. I’m sure I heard a Lost Vikings reference in there and was going to say how that’s relevant until I remembered Vikings and fantasy Dwarfs are not the same thing. Still, it’s a fitting soundtrack when you want to diggy diggy a hole.

I blasted through the main story in a matter of hours of active play, but the AFK shenanigans did speed things up. With procedurally generated maps you can always replay just to pass time, maybe try out different mechs and strategies. There’s also a second storyline included in this edition with a nice snowy environment, new resources, new mechs and a new game plus option that makes subsequent playthroughs more efficient.

Mining Mechs is not a particularly deep or lengthy game but it fills its own little niche with enough charm that I had a very pleasant time with it. If you enjoyed mindlessly mining in Minecraft with the soothing sounds of a pickaxe on stone and the satisfying pop of a block dropping, then Mining Mechs is for you. Plus, there are no Creepers in sight.