

Consuming sandwiches or resting helps to top-up your vitality, and prevent this from happening. You’re transported back to the surface in one piece, but all of the items you’ve collected are taken from you. Activities such as climbing ladders and smashing through soil reduce this gauge, and once it reaches zero you have no option but to wait for the rescue team to arrive. To round it all off, your actions are limited by a stamina gauge. Hazards such as water, fire, and choking coal gas make your life even harder. Digging down comes with its own dangers, as you only have a finite supply of ladders in your inventory. You’ll encounter dark and light rocks, the latter of which can prove deadly if you dig beneath them and fail to insert wooden supports. Using your trusty pickaxe, you’re able to cut through the earth in your quest for saleable items - which include coal, iron, and gold - but caution is highly adviseable. Taking its cue from the 8-bit classic Boulder Dash, Gem Miner 2 combines a simple premise with some surprisingly deep and engaging gameplay. Your character risks life and limb to burrow into the earth, hoping that behind the next wall lies untold riches or a highly sought-after relic. Gem Miner 2 is a continuation of this very human desire to acquire shiny and lumpy inanimate objects. Ever since humankind decided that a price tag could be placed on lumps of rock, we’ve dug deep and dug greedily.
