Mining Mechs – PS5 Review 1

Mining Mechs is an exploration/mining game from developer Delayed Victory and it comes to us from eastasiasoft.  The game sees you digging down into the Earth searching for valuable minerals much like the Steamworld games or even Terraria.

Presented in the same 2D style as those games, Mining Mech offers a simplified experience.  You pick your miner, jump into your mech and press down on the left-stick to start digging.  You’ve been called there by a man, who acts as your guide and mission-giver, after he hears noises underground and he explains the basic mechanics of the game.

This is one of those games where, story aside, you’re really digging for digging’s sake.  You churn your way through the dirt aiming to find minerals.  Eventually, you’ll run out of dirt capacity or space for minerals and then you’ll need to return to the surface (which is easy enough as your mech can fly) to dump the dirt and sell the minerals.  You’ll continue that loop until you make enough money to improve things a bit.

A mech seller lets you upgrade your existing mech – drill speed, flight speed, dirt capacity, mineral capacity – up to the limitations of that particular model.  Or you can pay more and buy a new mech.  The more you pay, the better potential you have for upgrading.  As is typical in this sort of set up, we maxed the first mech, upgraded to like the fourth one and eventually saved up for the best mech.

There is also a shop keeper that offers up three types of explosive (for clearing dirt faster and getting past obstacles that can’t be drilled), a teleporter (for instant returns to the surface), a booster (that offers twenty seconds of faster drilling) and confetti (that seems to have no real use).

So, clearly the main driver here is money and while finding materials is a great way to get it (and, of course, you’ll find more valuable minerals the further you dig), the other way of making money is from mines.  Dotted throughout the underground you’ll find abandoned mines.  One of the NPCs allows you to buy pieces of a pipe that will automatically extend down into the surface.  When you find a mine, you can attach a left or right junction to the pipe to connect it to the mine.  That will then generate a passive income.  The more mines, the more money you get.  And you can also invest money in the pipeline to increase the rate of money gained.

This presents a little dilemma for you as a gamer.  You could just rubberband your controller and go off and just let the game passively fill up your coffers.  We thought about that but, to the game’s credit, we were actually enjoying Mining Mechs enough to stay legit with it.  Sure, the story is paper thin and the main conceit of the game isn’t really all that interesting but sometimes it’s just nice to have a simple game to potter along with.  This is definitely a good podcast game.  Drop the volume and listen to something else while you explore the depths.

We’re quite pleased that the width of the playing area isn’t actually all that big.  It’s just fifty squares across which means you don’t go off on too many wild goose chases.  Just a little diversion off of the main pipe route (which is set squarely in the middle of the area) should be enough to spot most of the abandoned mines.

The presentation is pretty simple, relying on that basic Steamworld/Spelunky kind of aesthetic.  The layout is nice and clear though, even if the retro look is pretty tired these days.  There’s no mess or complexity and that does help you just relax into the game and its repetitive but satisfying game loop.

There’s not much challenge to it all, even when you don’t ride the passive gains.  Progression is pretty much guaranteed and there are no threats in the game whatsoever.  But it does offer up a good few hours, definitely more than what you might be expecting from this publisher, of chilled out gameplay.  We had four long sessions with it before we nabbed the platinum and there’s even an free extra campaign (presumably a DLC campaign from the PC version) with some extra trophies.  Although it doesn’t meaningfully add anything to the overall experience, it’s still a nice addition.

A lot of gamers might find Mining Mechs a little too simplistic but we enjoyed it for what it was.  Trophy hunters will appreciate the doubled up trophy set (the PS4 version is also included as per usual with eastasiasoft) and gamers looking for a chilled out time will enjoy the game’s streamlined mechanics.  That said, the lack of a compelling story and the repetitiveness of it all might put off some gamers as there’s not much to discover once you dig beneath the game’s surface (sorry).