Strata: how a small mining game became 1,400 metres deep
It started as a test of whether digging feels good. It ended up as the only game here that saves your progress and builds a new world every Monday.
Every other game on the site is a short run: a few minutes, a score, done. Strata grew into something bigger one fix at a time.
Does digging feel good?
The first version only let you dig, with harder rock taking longer to break. We wanted a world as wide as it is deep, and the question was whether tunnelling sideways would feel like exploring or like wasting time. It felt like exploring once ore came in seams you could follow, instead of single tiles scattered around.
Haul, sell, upgrade, go deeper
Then came money and six upgrades: drill, cargo, fuel, lamp, jetpack and hull. Each unlocks something different. A better drill cuts harder rock, but without a better hull you can't survive down there. The jetpack is the big one. Before it you can only jump; after it, the whole cave system becomes somewhere you can fly around.
Hazards that make depth matter
Water slows you down, gravel falls when you dig out what's under it, and gas pockets drain your fuel. Only lava actually hurts you. The other three make it harder to get home, which turned out to be scarier than losing health.
Too deep to play
When we made the world 1,400 metres deep, every session started with ten minutes of travelling down tunnels you'd already dug. The fix was a station every 100 metres. Once you've reached one, you can drop straight to it next time. Stations never skip a descent you haven't made yourself, and they don't help you carry anything back up.
Five Seals
A world that big needs a reason to cross it. There are five Seals, one in each layer of rock, each in a vault at a known depth but an unknown spot sideways, so you have to hunt for it. Collect all five and the Core Vault at 1,330 metres opens. What's inside has to be carried to the surface by hand.
Everyone digs the same world
With a random world per player, the leaderboard mostly measured luck. Now one world is made every Monday and everyone digs it. There's more on that in how we generate a fair mine.
What we'd do differently
Add the stations before making the world deeper, not after. For a few days you could barely test anything deep, because getting there took so long.