Overview
Scherbenmark: The Old Mine is a single-player mining and management game from Stinky Cat Games, rendered in ASCII and built around a fragile settlement that keeps pushing downward. You recruit and organize a crew of miners, haulers, guards, carpenters, prospectors, and healers, then send them into tunnels that grow more hostile the deeper you go. It launched on November 10, 2026, and is listed as a paid title with an active discount on Steam.
The premise is simple to state and tense to play: every new chamber might hold valuable ore, forgotten structures, or something that has learned to wait in the dark.
Highlights
- A colony-sim loop built on excavation: mark tunnels for digging, set up supply routes, reinforce unstable passages, and haul ore back to the surface.
- A layered descent rather than a single map — from the Upper Tunnels into the Old Shafts, the Forgotten Halls, and eventually the distorted Rift Depths.
- Persistence matters: excavated passages, structures, hazards, and resources carry over as you go deeper, so your layout decisions accumulate.
Who It's For
This one is aimed at players who enjoy management sims where logistics and risk sit side by side. If you like assigning roles, planning routes, and watching a small crew survive against an environment that does not forgive sloppy planning, the structure here should feel familiar. The ASCII presentation and top-down perspective also make it a natural fit for anyone who prefers readable systems over spectacle. Steam user reviews are worth checking for the latest reception.
Game Info
- Developer / Publisher: Stinky Cat Games
- Genres: Simulation, Strategy
- Release: November 10, 2026
- Modes: Single-player
- Features: Steam Achievements, adjustable text size, color alternatives
- Languages: English
