The yawning abyss into the womb of the earth, the clang of metal pickaxes on stone, the flickering torchlight, keeping the absolute darkness at bay. This might seem like a nightmare to some, but to some people, it feels like home. Mines often appear in video games, from indies to triple-A titles, usually as levels to fight in.

Related: Games Where You Spend Most Of Your Time Underground

But lately, mining, the act of gathering resources by digging into the earth, has also been showing up as a mechanic in video games. There’s just something satisfying about digging, discovery, and using those discoveries to enable more digging. And these games capture that feeling best.

Updated May 22, 2023 by Christopher Padilla: It seems like mining and spelunking is a popular activity in gaming. We’ve added some more titles that might pique your interest, some because they’re familiar and some because they’re pretty different, but still capture that miner’s spirit.

10 Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley character mining with a pickaxe

Stardew Valley, the charming little life sim, is so beloved that it pretty much spawned a whole genre of games that combine farming, fishing, fighting, socializing, and mining into a holistic experience.

That last bit is the most relevant here. The game contains a few mines and while it skews more towards ‘mines as a level,’ there’s still plenty of rock-breaking and resource-finding to make the trips worth it. There are different mines to explore, with varying biomes within the mines, giving unique challenges and unique rewards.

9 Hydroneer

An example of a surface operation in Hydroneer

Hydroneer is a more granular take on the mining genre, with a core gameplay loop of mining for valuable loot, refining what you find, selling the results, and using the money to buy better mining and refining equipment. It’s basically Satisfactory by way of Minecraft, down to the production lines and voxel world.

Though the action starts on the surface and has you digging and panning dirt for pennies, eventually, your operation digs deep and you find yourself in pits and tunnels looking for the really lucrative loot.

8 Wall World

Defending against enemies in the Spider (left) and Discovering stuff while mining (right)

In many ways, Wall World plays out like a sideways Dome Keeper. You switch off between mining for resources to upgrade your base with and defending against waves of enemies. The differences, however, are crucial.

Related: Wall World - Every Base Upgrade, Ranked

Instead of a dome, your base is the Robospider, a Spider/Tank hybrid, and instead of one mine, you excavate several as you make your way up and down an allegedly infinite wall. The game is also a roguelite instead of a roguelike, so even failed runs are rewarding as you incrementally improve your situation.

Wall World also has a little bit more story and lore, so there’s more than just resources to dig up as you attempt to thrive in this vertical world.

7 Core Keeper

Railcars and torches in the caves of Core Keeper

Core Keeper takes place almost entirely underground, less a mine than it is a whole cave world to explore. But if everywhere is in a cave, then anywhere you dig up resources can be a mine, right?

The game plays out like Stardew Valley without the social mechanics, all set in a giant cave with different biomes to explore and bosses to fight. Though in early access, the whole game’s procedurally generated map is pretty huge. Much like anyone who’s been in a cave for a while, if you try to do it all in one sitting, you might forget what the sun looks like.

6 Deep Rock Galactic

Deep Rock Galactic: Rocky Mountain Beer And Increased Mining Speed With Team

Rock and Stone! Perhaps the mining game with the most terrain-changing capabilities, outside of voxel-based games like Minecraft or 7 Days To Die. Deep Rock Galactic is a class-based looter shooter that puts you in the shoes of a rough n’ ready Dwarf, dropping into the underground of a hostile planet, completing objectives for your mining company, and then going home to prepare for the next drop.

It’s a satisfying blend of fighting monsters, completing objectives, and of course, mining. You drop into a procedurally generated map and are given places to go and goals to complete, but how you get there is up to you. Sure, you can try to find passages that lead you to your objectives, but why do that when you can make your own? Depending on your class, you have tools to drill and explode tunnels, or traverse chasms to get where you’re going. The environment is very destructible, too. If nothing else, you’ll always have your trusty pickaxe.

You’re not limited by your mission, either, since you can collect all sorts of resources and use them back home for all kinds of upgrades, from cosmetic to practical.

5 Terraria

player near tin ore in an underground tunnel

Don’t let the color palette and the block-breaking gameplay fool you; Terraria is far more than a 2D Minecraft clone. Sure, you go through the familiar steps, dig, gather, build, and fortify bases, but things can go quickly off the rails, especially when you start summoning bosses.

The capabilities of the gear that you acquire can get pretty wild, too. There are gadgets like grappling hooks to help with traversal and big, epic, and flashy weapons to decimate your foes with, like the ridiculous 21-in-one flying bladefest, Zenith.

4 Dome Keeper

The titular Keeper bringing home resources in Dome Keeper

Dome Keeper is surprisingly zen for a game where you fight off hordes of aliens. It’s a simple experience that you could lose hours in, your time split between mining for resources and lost technology, upgrading all your stuff, and defending your Dome.

Related: Things We Wished We Knew Before Starting Dome Keeper

There’s a certain harmony to it that works, despite its simplicity. Whether you lose your rhythm and your Dome explodes into a shower of glass, or you escape with the Relic and prestige, it’s all too easy to start over and do it again.

3 Dig-Dug

Dig Dug bursting his enemy with his pump

An arcade classic, to be sure, Dig-Dug might be the oldest game in the ‘digging-through-the-ground’ genre. Unlike its successors, the goal isn’t to gather resources but to inflict violence upon an array of subterranean creatures.

Despite its age, this game had some advanced concepts at the time, like its use of gravity, where if you dig under a rock, it can fall and squish you. However, if you time it just right, you can use it as a trap to squish an enemy instead.

2 Minecraft

An extensive mining operation in Minecraft

Of course, we have Minecraft on here. Why wouldn’t it be? The game is a global phenomenon, and for good reason. It starts simple enough: you get your fists and an open world to explore. You punch trees, get wood, make tools, and suddenly there’s a whole wide world that you’re prepared for.

Related: Minecraft - The Best Maps To Play With Friends

You can dig down, get materials, improve your equipment, and make a base that will protect you from wandering monsters. Once you master your world, there are other places to explore. The experience is as simple or complex as you want it to be, with the Redstone mechanic allowing for some truly impressive feats of electrical engineering. Play alone or play with friends; the possibilities are endless.

1 7 Days To Die

Mining in a cave with a steel pickaxe

The Fun Pimps’ zombie apocalypse simulator is a pretty extensive Survival experience, but ‘mining’ isn’t likely the first thing that comes to mind when you start it up. Indeed, if you play your cards right, you don’t have to do much more than some surface-level mining to get your gear in top shape. You can scavenge most of your goods from the seemingly endless zombie-filled homes or as quest rewards, after all.

However, if you do get into mining, you’ll find that 7DTD might be one of the most realistic mining experiences gaming has to offer. Unlike other voxel games, blocks not only have weight but also bear weight. They can support the weight above them (and, to a lesser degree, horizontally). If they aren’t adequately supported, they can collapse, leading to fatal consequences and breaking down whole tunnel systems into an open pit if you’ve especially swiss-cheesed the ground.

You can shore them up, keep them reinforced and make sure you have stable tunnels, something you rarely have to think about in similar games. Plus, the rest of the game is pretty fun too.

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