Scherbenmark: The Old Mine

Scherbenmark: The Old Mine is a single-player ASCII mining and management game about leading a fragile settlement into increasingly hostile depths.

Recruit and organize a crew of miners, haulers, guards, carpenters, prospectors, and healers. Mark tunnels for excavation, establish supply routes, reinforce unstable passages, and bring valuable ore back to the surface. Every new chamber may contain wealth, forgotten structures—or something that has learned to wait in the dark.

Your mine does not end at a single map. Descend from the Upper Tunnels into the Old Shafts, the Forgotten Halls, and eventually the distorted Rift Depths. Excavated passages, structures, hazards, and resources persist, allowing you to return to every level and expand your operation over time.

Manage a Living Crew
Every worker has a name, profession, experience, health, stamina, morale, equipment, traits, and personal statistics.

Set profession-specific priorities or intervene directly when needed. Select individual workers or groups on the map, assign them to different levels, issue movement and guard commands, and inspect their current tasks and planned routes.

Your workers are capable, but not disposable. Exhaustion, wounds, fear, darkness, unpaid wages, and prolonged danger can bring even a productive mine to a halt.

Shape the Mine

 
Excavate tunnels and chambers using draggable work zones and four priority levels. Build supports, ventilation systems, pumps, explosive charges, rails, stations, and moving ore carts.

The mine itself is a persistent threat:

 - Unsupported chambers can collapse.
 - Toxic gas spreads through connected tunnels.
 - Water blocks passages and slows movement.
 - Darkness reduces perception and morale.
 - Rift distortion makes the deepest areas increasingly unpredictable.

Good planning keeps the operation moving. Careless expansion can bury workers and cut entire levels off from the hoist.

Defend What You Build


Creatures roam the underground instead of existing only as abstract events. Guards automatically detect threats, protect workers, patrol assigned areas, hold defensive positions, and retreat when badly wounded.

On the surface, bandit raids unfold directly on the ASCII map. Raiders breach gates, attack workers, ignite buildings, steal resources, and sabotage the mine. Build palisades, barricades, guardhouses, and watchtowers, then organize guard groups and rally points before the warning bells stop.

Listen to the Stone
Echo Sense reveals impressions rather than perfect information.

Send an impulse through the surrounding rock to detect suspicious cavities, unstable stone, distant movement, unusual ore, or something breathing beyond a wall. Prospectors improve the reading, but repeated signals may also attract the attention of hidden creatures.
Sometimes the echo returns differently.
Sometimes it answers.

Trade, Research, and Survive
Merchant caravans arrive for a limited time with changing inventories and understandable market trends. Sell ore, purchase supplies and equipment, accept contracts, and decide whether rare discoveries are more valuable as research material or immediate profit.
Develop six research branches:

 - Mining
 - Logistics
 - Safety
 - Military
 - Trade
 - Rift Research
Research unlocks new tools and possibilities, including explosives, advanced rail transport, stronger defenses, improved hazard control, and access to the final depth.

A Clear Descent Into the Unknown
Your objective is to reach the Rift Depths, confront or evade the ancient guardian below, and recover a unique Rift Crystal—while keeping the mine economically stable and enough of your crew alive.

Successful expeditions can continue in Endless Mode, allowing you to preserve the settlement and keep expanding after the main objective.

Key Features

 - Persistent multi-level ASCII mine
 - Compact surface base building and defense
 - Six worker professions with traits and progression
 - Drag-based work zones and profession-specific priorities
 - Individual and group worker commands
 - Rails, stations, moving ore carts, pumps, vents, and explosives
 - Automatic tactical combat against seven creature types
 - Map-based bandit raids with distinct raider roles and objectives
 - Dynamic caravans, contracts, market trends, and research
 - Collapses, gas, flooding, darkness, and Rift distortion
 - Atmospheric choice-driven events
 - Echo Sense exploration system
 - Seeded procedural generation
 - Multiple save slots and autosaving
 - Keyboard, mouse, and controller support
 - Adjustable text size, high contrast, reduced motion, and ASCII-only glyph mode
 - Fully offline single-player gameplay

The mine remembers every passage you open. The depths remember who opened them.