Dig to the Weirdest World

This is the mining loop, and the mining loop is one of the most reliably compelling structures in games: go down, collect, come back, upgrade, go deeper than last time. Everything in it is a constraint you can buy your way out of. Energy limits how long a dive lasts, storage limits how much you can bring back, and power limits what you can dig through — so every run ends because one of those three ran out, and the run tells you which one to spend on. There are eight rigs to unlock and a set of tools on top, but the pull is structural rather than about any individual upgrade: you always know exactly what is stopping you, and exactly what would fix it.

Steer your drill downward through the ground, collecting whatever is worth money on the way. Watch your energy and your cargo space, because running out of either ends the dive. Surface and sell what you gathered, then spend it on power, energy or storage before heading back down. Deeper layers hold more valuable material and harder ground, so progress means alternating between diving and upgrading rather than doing either alone.

Upgrade storage before power early on. Power lets you dig faster, but if your hold fills after ninety seconds you are still surfacing after ninety seconds — capacity is what lengthens a run. Use the scanner before committing to a direction rather than after; digging blind wastes the resource you have least of, which is energy. Leave yourself enough energy to get back up, because a full cargo hold you cannot surface with is the single most expensive mistake available. And do not descend to a new layer immediately on unlocking it; do one more profitable run at the depth you can already handle and go down properly equipped.