A challenging Incremental Survivors-like game in which you mine ores for upgrades while also defending yourself from hordes of enemies. Has two modes: rogue-lite, where you can die and keep your progress, and a rogue-like mode, where you have permadeath. The rogue-like mode has challenging achievements.
Approximate time to 100%: 4h+
Estimated achievement difficulty: 8/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1x through the rogue-lite mode and multiple times for the rogue-like mode, which also has permadeath
Is there a good guide available: No
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Gamepad or mouse and keyboard: Keyboard
In Mining Survivors, you play as this character who has to mine ore for upgrades while also defeating hordes of enemies. You have permanent upgrades as well as upgrades that add new buffs to appear as upgrade options on level up during runs.
I had the most fun with the rogue-lite mode, where you want to win runs for more rewards, but it isn't the end if you fail. And where you grind for resources to buy more and more upgrades and become stronger to play on maps with stronger veins and more challenging enemies. At first, it was just barely surviving for a few minutes and just getting resources, but after a while, I got the hang of things and had nice upgrades to be able to get through the game. After finally finishing the first world, world 2 and 3 followed fast and weren't so challenging.
The rogue-like mode in Mining Survivor is very challenging. Not only because it has permadeath, but mostly because you can only find a few resources on each map, so you also have to be very careful what to upgrade. So it has more like a tactical element to it. You want to level up till the max lvl and destroy all the veins before moving on, but you can't take too much of a risk because it has permadeath.
What I like about Mining Survival is the incremental part, you get noticeably stronger with each upgrade. And I also enjoy that the runs are short. It is easy just to play a few runs and then come back later. What I missed was more explanations. It took me a bit to figure out if the cards were only for leveling up during runs (which is the case) and knowing what each buff does, as during a level up you can't see the explanation of specific keywords, you can see those when not in a level up menu but ones that popped you have to choose an upgrade. Another thing I didn't like is how the game can't be played with a controller, and it can't handle any pop-ups/notifications on your PC. If you get an email or a Discord message, you're screwed, as the game will change resolution, and only 1/3 of the screen (the left side) is available to click. Which also means that if you finish a run, you can't click through the rewards. The only option seems to be to close and reopen the game.
I got all the achievements for the rogue-lite part of the game, which took around 2 to 2,5 hours. However, I'm not skilled enough to get the last few achievements for the rogue-like mode with permadeath. Got the first of 3 difficulties, but have been struggling on the second difficulty, and I just don't enjoy that part of the game. The time it will take somebody to unlock all the achievements is very dependent on how good that person is at this game.
I give Mining Survivors 3 out of 5 stars.
3.5