Big Dig

A potato bug in a mining helmet, a maze of rock and diamond, and a lamp that is already burning down. The site is strewn with diamonds, gold coins, purses and the occasional chest, and none of it is buried — but you will only ever see what your lamp is shining on. Everything past the light is black. The ground is threaded with rock walls you cannot shovel through, so reaching a stone twelve cells away may mean going the long way round, blasting through, or bringing the ceiling down on it. The exit wants a share of the diamonds, not all of them. Once you have enough, everything still in the ground is a decision: leave with what you are holding, or push deeper into the dark for the bank. Gold is never required and never stolen — it just makes the number bigger. The way out is the one thing you cannot see. It moves every level and stays hidden until you dig alongside it, unless you have a survey map to read. Your lamp is the clock. It burns whether you are digging or dithering; diamonds top it up a little and spare cells top it up a lot, and as it fails the dark closes in around you until you are working in a three-cell circle. Let it go out entirely and it costs a heart. You are not alone. Moles are slow, aimless and indifferent to you — they chew through the ground wherever the mood takes them, carving tunnels nobody planned and pocketing any diamond they blunder into. Ants are the opposite: quick, deliberate, and hunting you. They come down the same shaft you did, one after another, and they can only travel along open tunnel — so every passage you cut is a road you have built for them. Which makes the one behind you a decision: fill it back in and leave them at a dead end. Deeper down, nests send up more until something flattens them. And the ground itself changes as you go. Topsoil gives way to clay that takes twice as long to cut, then shale seamed with sand that slumps back into the hole behind you, and finally the crystal caverns, where pockets of gas go up the moment a lit lamp reaches them — clearing four cells at once and singeing whatever is standing in them. Rock will not shift for a shovel. Bring TNT, or dig the ground out from under one and stand well clear: it teeters for a few seconds and then comes down the shaft, flattening everything in the column. It is the cheapest trap on the site, and it is perfectly happy to flatten you. Lift the last diamond and the place turns on you. The nests empty, everything moves faster, loose rock starts letting go on its own, and the exit lights up — and then it is just you and the way home. Three touches and the run is over. Between levels you spend the coins: a better shovel, a potion that doubles immunity, TNT, timber props, survey maps. Progress saves at the end of every level — purse and upgrades included — so you can climb out mid-run and come back to the same dig.