Miner Depths
A mining game about going deeper than you probably should.
About
Miner Depths is a mining game where you control a drill, dig through layers of earth, collect ores, sell them, and use the money to upgrade your gear and go deeper. That's basically it — and somehow that loop is hard to put down. The deeper you go, the harder it gets and the better the rewards. Simple concept, lots of rabbit holes.
Overcome Underground Challenges
The deeper you go the messier it gets. Cave-ins, gas pockets, unstable ground — the underground doesn't make it easy. Good.
Explore Vast Underground Realms
Each layer has its own ores, obstacles and surprises. There's always something new a bit further down, which is basically why you keep going.
Upgrade & Customize Your Gear
Sell your ores, upgrade your drill, hull, fuel tank — and slowly turn your miner into something that can actually handle what's down there.
Utilize Special Items
Sometimes an upgrade isn't enough and you need the right tool for the job. Fuel boosters, better drills, useful gadgets — pick what fits your style.
Manage Resources Strategically
Fuel runs out. Hull takes damage. You can't just dig blindly and hope for the best — at some point you have to actually think about what you're doing.
Why Miner Depths?
It started with Motherload — that old browser game you'd open for five minutes and close two hours later. I loved it. When I went looking for something similar on mobile, I found… not much that hit the same way. So I did what any developer does when they can't find what they want: I built it myself. Perfectly normal response.
I'm a web developer who had dabbled in game development before — started a few projects, learned a lot, never finished anything worth publishing. The concept seemed refreshingly simple: a grid, a miner, some ores, fuel, a hull, a few upgrades. How hard can it be? I knew I was underestimating it going in. I was right. The devil is absolutely in the details, and as someone who can't leave things alone, those details ended up consuming most of the time — and honestly, that's where the fun was.
One thing that had always derailed my previous game projects was the art. I'd get deep into the code, hit the assets phase, and slowly lose momentum trying to produce anything that looked halfway decent. This time was different — AI image generation had become a thing, and suddenly I could generate sprites and edit them into exactly what I needed. I went through thousands of iterations until I was happy with them. Worth it.
The game is designed to be completed without spending anything. There's an optional IAP for emeralds — added last, after all the balancing was done, mostly to not miss the opportunity. There were also ads for a while, but they're gone as of the latest update. Ads are annoying. Even your own.
Oh, and a couple of things I learned the hard way. When I first published the game, Google sent me a free ad voucher — a little welcome gift. I thought, why not? Without really knowing what I was doing, I ran a max conversions campaign and watched the install count climb to 50,000. Felt great. Until I looked at the actual players. A "bad install" in mobile game terms means someone — or something — that downloads the game and immediately disappears. With max conversions you're basically inviting click farms and bots. 50,000 installs, ghost town. Lesson learned.
The other one: I didn't restrict the game to specific hardware requirements, which meant pretty much any Android device could download it. Seemed fine in theory. In practice it meant a chunk of players were running it on hardware that struggled to keep up, leading to performance issues and unhappy reviews. Also fixed now — but yeah, shipping a game teaches you things no tutorial covers. Or maybe it would, but I didn't read it.
The game is still actively being worked on whenever I can — fueled by coffee and the quiet hours after the kids are in bed. I recently upgraded from Unity 5 to Unity 6 — surprisingly painless, almost plug and play — and I'm currently working on an iOS port.
Support
Noticed any bugs, weird behavior, or something that just feels off? Ideas for improvements are also welcome — I'd love to hear it and will fix or add it whenever I can. Reach me at: [email protected]