Mine Over Magma FAQ

Mine Over Magma is a single-player, family-friendly mining game for iPhone, iPad and Android from Cryptology. You play a dwarf who climbs down a rope into an old volcano to dig for iron, silver, gold and diamonds. The richest ore lies deepest, and whatever you haul back up the rope counts double, so every dig asks the same push-your-luck question: how deep will you dig?

We're still digging. Store links will go up on our home page when it's ready.

Mine Over Magma will be free to download from the App Store and Google Play.

Yes. Mine Over Magma is a mobile game for iPhone, iPad and Android, built for touch from the first swing, with layouts made for iPad too.

Before each dig, you spend your coins on gear at the trader's shelf. Then it's down the rope from the headframe to fill your pack with ore, and the deeper you go, the better the ore. Down there, a pack of gold is just a heavy pack, but climb back out with it and your haul counts double. The trick is knowing when to turn back.

No, Mine Over Magma is single-player: one dwarf, one rope and more gold in the volcano than a dwarf can carry. Every call on when to climb back up is yours.

Yes. Mine Over Magma works offline, with no Wi-Fi or account needed, which is handy, since nobody gets a signal that far underground. Your progress and settings stay on your device, and iCloud or Android backup can keep a copy.

Yes. Mine Over Magma is family-friendly, made so children can play it, and its words and pictures stay kid-friendly from the headframe down. There's no chat or messaging and no account to make, and the game never asks for a name. A grown-up can turn off its usage data and crash reports in the game's settings.

One swing of the pick cracks the earth and a second breaks it, but cracked earth left alone slowly heals back, so finish what you start. Gray hard rock rings under the pick and won't chip at all, so dig around it or blast yourself a door with explosives. And mind what you dig out from under, because cracked earth with nothing beneath it falls.

Rust-red iron turns up everywhere, top to bottom. Dig deeper and silver joins it, then thin, stingy veins of gold, then diamonds, scarce and only far down. Deeper ores are rarer and worth more, and each keeps turning up below where it starts, so deeper ground holds a richer mix. That's the reason for every "just one more swing".

Before each dig, you spend coins at the trader's shelf, which stocks a lamp, a helmet, explosives, a scanner, breathing gear, a gas mask, a drill and climbing hooks. The drill keeps you digging with nothing under your boots but water or thin air, and the hooks turn a sheer wall into a ladder. One bag of coins never buys the whole shelf, so what you leave behind is half the strategy. And finders keepers: earlier miners left their lamps and hooks in the old workings, still down there for the taking.

Open a flooded pocket and the water pours down into your tunnel. Gas pools under ceilings, where one stray flame lights the whole cloud, and oil floats on water, turns every step into a slide and burns, too. It's a physics sandbox down there: water, gas, oil and fire are simulated and react to each other and to your pick, so look before you swing.

You play Hartley, a dwarf with a big copper beard shaped like a heart, a navy tunic and a teal helmet with a brass lamp. He's warm, a little greedy and braver than he feels, which is exactly the wrong mix for knowing when to stop.

Buy for the trouble you expect and trust your pick with the rest. Check for gas before you light a fuse, and don't stand around under cracked earth: a helmet helps, but moving helps more. Good ore hides below the waterline, so breathing gear earns its keep. Above all, remember that nothing counts double until it's back up the rope.

Your pick goes where you aim, so a stray tap won't bring the ceiling down. Controls will be adjustable, and hazards are colorblind-safe.

Only usage data and crash reports, which Mine Over Magma sends to Google so we can see how digs go and fix what breaks. None of it includes your name or anything you type, and we never sell it or use it for advertising. In the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland the game asks first, and anyone can turn both off at any time in Settings > Privacy > Help Improve Mine Over Magma.

Yes, please do. You're welcome to stream Mine Over Magma and share videos and pictures of your digs, even with ads on your channel, as long as you don't suggest we endorse you.

Email contact@cryptologyapps.com. If something went wrong, tell us your device, its OS version and what happened, and we'll dig into it.