Historically, mining on distant planets has never been a sound career choice, especially in video games. Promises of reward are overshadowed by the hazards, both geological and biological. The same can be said of Drill Core, but this time the hazards are mostly caused by the gaming controls.
I want you to understand that this is a solid game, because I’m not going to make it seem that way from the start of this review. This is because the game itself didn’t seem that way from the start. From the outset, it’s a mess of instructions that aren’t very helpful, UI elements that overlap each other, and controls that often seem broken. If I weren’t reviewing Drill Core, I likely would’ve abandoned it.
The premise is that you’re operating mining platforms on various planets, gathering resources for a corporation that is obviously exploiting its employees for profit.
Oddly, that theme doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s more of a gag than a political statement.
To dig down into the planet, your platform needs coal. So, you generate miners who can dig beneath the platform to obtain it. This is the first part of the game loop. The areas beneath the platform are randomly generated mazes of resources and hazards, and you must navigate them to get the items you need. You tell the miners where to dig, and they’ll automatically move there to mine the resources and get them back to the platform. These resources can then be used to create more miners, unlock upgrades, and build various structures for enhancements and defense.
Although the miners act on their own, they require plenty of babysitting. Some mining blocks contain hazards that must be avoided or eliminated before they can become deadly. Creatures that roam the mines can quickly destroy your employees. And you’ll certainly need to help the miners locate and dig up the good stuff. If miners are killed, you’ll need to use your resources to create more, and those resources would be put to better use on the platform and above.
You see, mining is done during the daytime. At night, hordes of enemies will descend down the tunnel you’ve dug. Your only defense against them is the numerous turrets you built, placed, and upgraded at the provided locations down the sides and on the platform. If your defenses weren’t enough to repel the attack, your game is over.
So, that’s your gameplay loop: mine, reinforce, defend, dig deeper. Once you get into the flow, it’s quite fun. The descending enemies are numerous and varied, and there’s even the occasional boss fight. Repelling them is satisfying. The mining is engaging, and there are various races available to keep things mixed up. Humans are probably the easiest to work with. Dwarves are more efficient with their explosives, but less precise and more costly to generate. Swarnids are like mass-produced worker bees or ants who are useful in numbers, not skillsets. Each race comes with its own unique defenses, too.
As you can imagine, it’s a pretty stressful process. That’s obviously what you want from a resource management game with tower defense and roguelite elements, but you don’t want UI and control issues to compound that stress. Sadly, they do.
I earlier mentioned that instruction text overlaps itself, making it hard to read. It gets worse. Numerous times, large blocks of explanatory text would pop up, but not go away. I had to finish numerous levels with nearly 1/4 of the screen obscured by these tips. Thanks for nothing, employers.
Controls are awkward, too, and not well explained. This is definitely a game that would be better played with a computer keyboard and mouse, but the same could be said of many console ports. What really hurts here is that the cursor often bounces away from the section you want to see when switching from mining to viewing the top area, and drops to the very bottom of the dig. If you’re in a hurry to build a structure or change an assignment, you have to scroll all the way back up to the area of interest. This also affected night abilities; the aiming reticle would seemingly disappear from the map, and I’d have to slowly move around the screen to find it and move it back up.
Getting around these issues was annoying, and they definitely need to be cleaned up. In the meantime, I just attributed it to corporate cost-cutting. That allowed me to overlook the issues and instead look at the rather attractive graphics. These mines are dark, sure, but very colorful and nicely detailed. It’s easy to spot the resources and hazards, and the tower defense elements have some excellent effects. Visually, Drill Core is a blast to take in.
So, I want to recommend this game to fans of resource sims and tower defense, but I do so with caution. The poorly explained gameplay and the interface issues are going to frustrate many employees into quitting even before their dental kicks in. Those who stick with Drill Core long enough to get past the new job learning curve will find themselves with a rather fulfilling career.
