Coal Seam Bores

Every maze in this game is one you cut yourself.

This is a side-on arcade dig through twelve layers of earth. Your machine chews straight through loose strata and leaves an open tunnel behind it. Hard rock seams are darker, and no amount of pressure will cut them, so every route has to be planned around them.

The catch is the one that gives the whole game its shape: a tunnel is a two-way street. Burrowers cannot move through solid ground at all. They sit in sealed pockets in the strata until one of your own corridors reaches them, and from that moment every metre you cut is a metre they can run down. Dig greedily and you build them a highway straight to you.

There are two honest ways to deal with one.

UNDERMINE A BOULDER. Boulders hold as long as there is ground underneath them. Cut that ground away, watch the boulder wobble, and it lets go and falls until something stops it. Time the last cut so a burrower is standing in the column and it is swept out of the layer in a puff of dust.

COLLAPSE A CEILING. Press SEAL and the loose ceiling drops into the tunnel tile directly behind you, turning open corridor back into solid ground. Shut a burrower inside a small dead end with no way back to you and it gives up and pops out of the level. You get three collapses per layer, so they are worth saving for the right moment.

WHAT IS IN IT
- Twelve tuned layers, from topsoil down to the coal seam, each one carrying more gems, more boulders and faster burrowers than the last.
- Every layer is generated from a seed and proved solvable before you see it: every gem and the shaft down are always reachable by digging.
- A layer picker showing your best gem haul on each layer and everything you have unlocked.
- A bore log tracking depth reached, gems recovered, burrowers outwitted, boulders dropped and ceilings sealed.
- Twelve awards to work towards, from your first shift to the full column.
- An illustrated field manual that draws the boulder support rule and the two-way tunnel rule with the same shapes the game itself uses.

COMPLETELY OFFLINE
- No internet connection, ever. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is downloaded.
- No ads and no in-app purchases.
- No sound at all. The game speaks entirely through visuals and optional short haptic buzzes, so it plays exactly the same in a silent room or on a loud bus.
- No accounts and no sign-in. Your progress is stored locally on this device.
- No permissions beyond vibration.

The graphics are drawn as vectors while you play: banded ochre and umber strata, cream tunnels carved out of them, one coal-black seam running behind the work. Nothing here is a photograph or a stock asset, so it stays crisp on any screen.

Family friendly. There is no gambling, no money and no violence. A burrower that gets caught simply pops out of the level in a cloud of dust, and the shift carries on.

Portrait only, one hand on the pad and one thumb on SEAL.