Deepcore Rivals

Deepcore Rivals is a free browser game from Good Matter Games on itch.io. You drive a drilling rig out from a hub into the rock, dig for ore, fight what lives down there and haul your cargo back to the pad before the fuel runs dry. Cargo only counts if it makes it home, so every trip is a choice between going a little deeper and turning back in time.

The mine is the daily part. At midnight UTC a new seed reshuffles the world under the hub, every player drops into the same mine, and the boards keep track of who cut deepest. The rival names on the in-game board are computer rivals set for the day, and an online daily board takes real runs beside them. You can run the mine as often as you like that day. When a run ends, one tap shares your score card as a challenge link, and banking cargo on consecutive days builds a daily streak.

The world has six layers, Copper Ridge, Glassrift, Cinder Mantle, Brine Hollow, Mire Vault and Abyss Crown, each with its own ore, creatures and hazards. Between runs you build your rig in the garage from drills, engines, hull plating, fuel cells, cargo holds, systems and mods, and something waits at the bottom that, the game says, nobody has reached yet.

It plays with WASD or the arrow keys on a computer and with touch controls on a phone, where the mine shows as a band across the middle of the screen between the gauges and the buttons. It suits players who like short roguelite runs with an upgrade loop and a daily score to compare.