The free demo
Meet your colony.
Learn to dig, build and survive.
Free · plays in your browser, nothing to install.
DEEPER, a colony management and mining survival game with a free browser demo
Manage a colony and survive
beneath the surface.
Dig. Build. Keep the colony alive.
See how it playsPlay the free demo in your browser. Full game planned at $5.
You give the orders.
They dig and survive.
Mark mining zones, build ladders and light the tunnels. Keep food and beds nearby so the colony can continue working.
Your miners choose jobs and move on their own. Open new chambers, extract ore and prepare defenses against creatures and lava. Block a route and the work stops—or part of the colony may become stranded.
Your objective: reach the Heart of the Deep, 1,500 metres below.
Four biomes, new resources and different dangers wait below the surface.
Glowing mushrooms, new resources and creatures in the shadows.
Valuable crystals demand a safe route back to the colony.
Ancient halls filled with treasure and threats.
Rich ore, narrow routes and moving lava turn every tunnel into a risk.
Watch the colony in action.
Their fearful nature makes them terrible at combat. They will run away and even sacrifice their own friends in order to stay alive! That’s why they need an excellent strategist to manage them!
Choose how to start.
The full game $5
Explore the complete map.
More biomes, creatures and threats.
Planned USD price. Release date and supported platforms to be confirmed.
Before you dig.
What kind of game is it?
DEEPER is a 2D pixel-art colony survival game. Your colonists act on their own while you mark mining orders and plan ladders, lighting, farms, beds, and defenses. The current build sets your goal 1,500 metres below the surface: the Heart of the Deep.
Do I control each miner?
You plan the colony: mark rock to mine and choose what to build. Your colonists find reachable work and handle their own movement, meals and rest. Dig in stages, connect levels with ladders and keep supply routes open. An ambitious mining order is only useful if your miners can reach it safely.
What does the full game add?
The full game is paid and still in development, with a huge map, more mobs and a bigger challenge. The free browser demo reaches the Crystal Hollows; the full game’s goal lies 1,500 metres below the surface.
Can I choose the difficulty?
The current build has Easy, Normal and Hard modes. They change starting supplies, hunger, creature strength and how often threats appear. Choose a gentler descent or make every tunnel a harder decision.
Is this scenery from the game?
Yes. Explore the fungal depths, crystal hollows, sunken ruins and magma core in the gallery. The moving caves are drawn live using DEEPER’s own world, lighting and creatures. Each new region changes what you need to prepare for. Visuals and content may change before release.
Still curious about the caves?
Ask usAbout the game
DEEPER is a 2D colony management and mining survival game set underground. Mark the next tunnel, build ladders and light the way. Every new depth asks the same question: can your miners survive what you uncover?
Made by one developer
A solo project by Sterium, built with AI-assisted coding, TypeScript and the browser’s Canvas API. Vite powers the development workflow. The caves grow from a seed, while sprites, textures and lighting are drawn in code.
Little miners. Their own priorities.
The colonists’ AI combines needs, job choices and pathfinding. Hungry miners eat; tired ones look for an available bed. They claim reachable work, climb ladders and scramble over ledges. If a route gets blocked, they stop and choose again.
Why pixels?
We wanted to recapture the feel of the retro games we love: tiny characters you care about, bold colors and the excitement of discovering what’s just offscreen. In DEEPER, clear shapes help you pick out your little miners in a very big underground world.
That personality in a handful of pixels is part of the appeal. Nintendo’s story of Mario’s design is a lovely example: his hat and moustache reduced the need to draw hair and a mouth on a tiny canvas. Small, practical choices made a character instantly recognizable—the kind of clarity we want for our miners.
And a retro look doesn’t have to mean a smaller adventure. Shovel Knight kept the NES’s 240-pixel vertical resolution but widened the view to give its levels more room. That balance is what draws us to pixels: the charm of old games, with room for DEEPER’s sprawling caves and your next big digging plan.