Popular Reviews
There's a very specific corner of the indie games world that most mainstream game discourse ignores completely. Let me place Rock Bottom inside it, because the placement matters.
The corner is "incremental mining." Games where you swing a pickaxe, ores turn into resources, resources turn into upgrades, upgrades let you mine faster or deeper, deeper mining unlocks new content. Every action is small. Every reward is small. The specific pleasure is watching the numbers go up over accumulated time.
The subgenre has a genuine lineage. Dome Keeper (Bippinbits, 2022) took this loop and layered arcade defense on top of it. To the Core (Astronaut Twins, 2023) took it to space and added drilling planet-cores in an arcade format. Deep Rock Galactic takes similar loop mechanics and turns them into a co-op shooter. Coal LLC and dozens of itch.io games use the pure incremental miner formula without adding action layers. There's a real audience for this that has grown steadily over the last five years, and it exists mostly independent of the mainstream games press.
Rock Bottom, released July 14, 2026 from solo developer Logan Games, is currently on sale at -10% and $7.19. It's the newest serious entry into the pure-incremental-miner subgenre, and it's one of the strongest. Let me place it against its peers.
Compared to Dome Keeper
Dome Keeper is probably the most famous game in this space. You mine downward from a dome you have to defend from periodic monster waves. Mining generates resources you spend on upgrades — better pickaxe, better weapons, better dome defenses. The specific tension of "mine deeper for better ore, but you have to be back at the dome when the wave comes" creates a compelling risk/reward loop.
Rock Bottom does not have the wave-defense layer. It's pure mining. This is a legitimate design choice — it strips the incremental miner formula back to its purest form and lets you focus entirely on the mining-and-upgrading loop. Some players will find Dome Keeper more compelling because of the arcade tension. Others will find Rock Bottom more satisfying because it doesn't interrupt the meditative flow.
Both games are legitimate expressions of the subgenre. If you loved Dome Keeper's specific tension, you might find Rock Bottom too quiet. If you found Dome Keeper too stressful, Rock Bottom offers exactly what you wanted.
Compared to To the Core
To the Core takes the incremental miner into space, giving you a drill-equipped spacecraft that mines planet cores in short-session arcade challenges. Each planet is a specific level. Completing a planet unlocks new upgrades and new planets to drill.
Rock Bottom's structure is more open. Instead of discrete levels, you have eight layers of a single procedurally-generated dungeon that you descend through gradually. Runs are longer. Progression is more accumulated across single runs rather than compressed into short session challenges.
To the Core is more session-friendly if you have limited time. Rock Bottom rewards longer play sessions where you can build momentum through multiple layers. Different pacing preferences for different play patterns.
The Actual Rock Bottom Loop
You swing your pickaxe at ore blocks. Ore breaks. Ore drops into your inventory. When your inventory is full, you return to your smelter, convert ore into refined bars, and sell bars for currency. Currency buys permanent upgrades from a skill tree — better pickaxe damage, more inventory capacity, faster movement, longer swing range, special abilities.
Upgrades let you go deeper. Deeper layers contain rarer, more valuable ores. Rarer ores fund more expensive upgrades. More expensive upgrades let you go deeper still.
The eight layers each have distinct visual character and gameplay properties. The starting Sunken Canopy is overgrown and lush. The Spore-light layer has bioluminescent fungal aesthetics. Deeper layers introduce environmental hazards, tougher-to-break blocks, and specific mechanics that require build adaptation.
The skill tree is genuinely branching. You cannot afford everything in a single playthrough. Choices matter — do you invest in damage per swing, or in stamina to swing more, or in movement speed to reach ore faster? Different builds create different play styles. The community has already documented several viable meta strategies.
Runs versus progression: each run is a session where you descend, mine, extract, and return. Between runs, your permanent upgrades persist. The game is not a traditional roguelike where death means starting over — it's a session-based incremental where each session builds on the last.
The Solo Developer Context
Rock Bottom was made by one person, Logan Games (a small studio branding for solo developer Zachary01). The game started as a browser prototype on itch.io that quickly gained a following, then grew into a full Steam release over roughly a year of active development.
This origin story matters because it explains the game's specific texture. The itch.io demo had a very active community that provided years of specific feedback — what worked, what felt tedious, what needed more upgrades, what needed different visual biomes. The Steam release incorporates that feedback. This is not a game built in isolation and released hoping for reception. It's a game refined against a real audience across a long feedback cycle.
The developer has been publicly engaged with players throughout development, responding to comments on itch.io, incorporating specific suggestions (a resource-trading system was added based on community feedback), and shipping regular updates. This is the model of small-studio development that produces genuinely player-shaped games rather than developer-imagined games.
The subgenre exists mostly independent of the mainstream games press. There's a real audience for this that has grown steadily over the last five years.
The "Number Go Up" Pleasure, Which Is Real
I want to name what incremental games actually offer, because it's specific and non-obvious.
Traditional games offer challenge and mastery. You get better at the game. The game rewards your improved skill. Progression is measured in your growing capability.
Incremental games offer a different pleasure. Progression is measured in accumulated numbers rather than growing skill. You are not becoming better at Rock Bottom over time — you are simply accumulating more resources and unlocking more upgrades. The specific pleasure is watching accumulation itself.
This sounds trivial when described in words. In practice, it's a specific psychological experience that has genuine value. Watching your daily-per-swing rate go from 5 ore to 50 to 500 to 5000, over many hours of play, activates the same reward circuits that other games activate through skill mastery. The pleasure is real. It's just a different flavor of reward.
If you've ever played Cookie Clicker, Realm Grinder, NGU Idle, or any of the classic incremental games, you understand this pleasure already. Rock Bottom is a competent execution of the pleasure with better aesthetics and more explicit content structure than the pure-idle-clicker examples.
If you haven't played incremental games, Rock Bottom is a good entry point. It has enough arcade action (you're actually swinging a pickaxe rather than clicking a button) to feel like a "real game," but the core loop is genuine incremental progression.
Where the Game Falls Short
Content ceiling is genuine. Eight layers of dungeon plus upgrade tree gives you probably 15-25 hours of pleasant progression. Beyond that, you'll be replaying content you've mastered. This is standard for the incremental genre but worth naming.
Some late-game upgrades feel tedious to grind for. Community feedback in the itch.io days specifically requested more upgrade variety and less linear progression; the Steam release has improved this but not fully solved it.
Solo-developer scope means missing features. Multiplayer doesn't exist. Achievement variety is modest. Modding support is minimal.
The visual aesthetic, while appealing, is 2D pixel-adjacent. Players who specifically want 3D presentation should look elsewhere in the subgenre.
The mining action itself is intentionally simple. If you want mechanically complex mining (like Deep Rock Galactic's traversal and enemy engagement), this isn't it. This is deliberate — the game is meditative rather than action-driven — but be honest about your preference.
Should You Buy at This Discount?
At $7.19 discounted from $7.99, this is priced very fairly for the amount of quiet enjoyment it offers.
Recommend if: you love incremental games in general. Recommend if: you appreciated Dome Keeper's core loop but wanted less wave-defense stress. Recommend if: you want a game to run in the background while you're doing other work or listening to podcasts. Recommend if: you appreciate solo-developer projects with genuine community-shaped design.
Don't recommend if: you specifically need mechanical challenge or narrative content. Don't recommend if: you dislike the "number go up" incremental register. Don't recommend if: you want AAA visual production.
There's a broader observation worth making about the state of the incremental subgenre. Games like Rock Bottom, Dome Keeper, To the Core, and their peers are collectively demonstrating that "small mechanical loop endlessly refined" is a legitimate design philosophy that produces games people love. The industry has largely been chasing bigger, more elaborate, more expensive experiences. The incremental subgenre is going the opposite direction — smaller, tighter, more focused on the specific pleasure of a single mechanic done well.
At $7.19, Rock Bottom is a specific expression of that design philosophy at its purest. It's not going to be a landmark game of 2026. It's not going to change how you think about the medium. But it will provide many hours of quiet, satisfying, number-goes-up pleasure for a very small investment. That's an honest thing to offer, and the developer has offered it competently. Buy it. Swing your pickaxe. Watch the ore accumulate. Let the numbers go up. Sometimes that's enough.
There's a broader phenomenon in the incremental subgenre that Rock Bottom illustrates well. Solo developers, working outside traditional publishing structures, have been able to reach real audiences through direct itch.io release, YouTube coverage from incremental-specific channels, and Steam launches supported by demo-driven wishlists. This distribution model — build a browser prototype, get community feedback for months, refine based on that feedback, then ship to Steam with an audience already primed — has become one of the more successful independent developer pathways in the modern industry. Rock Bottom's launch was not surprising to anyone who followed its itch.io development. The Steam release was the natural culmination of a community-supported development process that lasted more than a year. Supporting solo developers who work this way, at prices under ten dollars, is one of the cleanest ways individual gamers can encourage the ongoing health of small-scale indie development. Logan Games got here through patience, community engagement, and specific craft applied to a specific mechanical niche. That's worth supporting for reasons beyond the immediate entertainment value of the game itself. At this discount, the support is easy to give, and the specific pleasure of the game is a genuine reward on top. Small games from small studios are how the medium keeps producing surprises. Rock Bottom is one such small surprise, and it's worth the seven dollars. The incremental subgenre will keep growing as long as players keep supporting the specific games that define its shape. This is one such game. It fits neatly into the subgenre's expanding catalog, offers its own distinct texture, and provides many hours of pleasant number-accumulation for a genuinely low price. That's the whole recommendation.