How to Play Strata

Strata is a mining descent arcade game in which you pilot a drilling pod down a destructible tile shaft twenty columns wide. Every trip starts on the depot pad at the top centre of the map. Gravity pulls the pod down; hold thrust to slow the fall or climb, and steer left or right in the air. Drilling only works with the pod resting on solid ground: you cut down through the tile beneath you, or sideways into the one you are pressed against. Ore drops straight into a cargo hold that starts at six tiles. Fly back to the depot pad and the whole hold sells automatically and your tank refills for free.

Fuel is the clock. Out of a starting tank of 100, thrust burns 6 per second, steering in the air 2 per second, driving along open ground 1 per second, and every tile you drill costs a flat 3. From row 110 down the pod also takes on hull heat at 8 per second, and from row 150 — the magma band — at 16 per second, while climbing back above row 110 sheds it at 12 per second. A trip ends one of three ways: you fly home and sell, you run dry underground (a strand), or hull heat reaches 100 and the pod burns. Both failures cost the same thing — the ore in your hold, never the credits you have banked — and both drop you back on the pad with a full tank.

Depth is gated by rock hardness as much as by fuel. Topsoil (rows 0–40) drills from the start; sandstone (rows 41–90) needs Tungsten Bit level 2; slate (rows 91–150) needs the Rockbreaker Head; basalt from row 151 down needs Rockbreaker level 2. Seams overlap as you descend — coal rows 4–30, copper 18–55, silver 45–85, gold 75–125, ruby 110–170, diamond 150–240, and the rare relic from row 180 down — so every rock rating you buy opens a richer seam. Press U at the depot to spend credits in the Pod Upgrades tree: Drill (bit speed, rock rating, Coolant Loop), Logistics (fuel, cargo racks, Surface Winch) and Salvage (sell price, ore scanner, Haul Insurance). Your deepest point, counted at two metres per row, is the score the leaderboard keeps.

Controls

• Left / Right (arrow keys or A/D): Drive along open ground, or steer while airborne
• Up / W / Space (hold): Thrust upward
• Down / S (hold while grounded): Drill the tile below
• Left / Right (hold while grounded against a solid tile): Drill sideways
• U (at the depot): Open or close the Pod Upgrades tree
• / — or the title screen's How to Play button: Open the in-game reference card with the controls and the ore price list
• Q: End the session and post your best depth to the leaderboard
• Touch: Four on-screen buttons — left, right, drill down, and thrust

Tips and Strategy

• Descend in a straight line. Drilling costs a flat 3 fuel per tile in any direction, but flying up an open chimney costs roughly a fifth of that per tile. A wandering, staircase descent leaves you re-drilling rock to get home.
• Turn around the moment DEPOT ▲ lights up. That HUD arrow appears when the hold is full. Anything you drill after that pops out as a loose ore blob that sits on the floor for ten seconds and then disappears — there is no way to pick it back up, so every tile you cut with a full hold is wasted fuel.
• Tungsten Bit level 2 is the purchase that matters. Level 1 (40 credits) is a prerequisite and nothing more — drill speed does not change until level 2 (90 credits), which adds 25% speed and unlocks sandstone, rows 41–90, where silver begins. A full six-tile hold of coal is only 24 credits, so budget two or three surface runs before that second level.
• Buy the tank before you buy depth. Auxiliary Tank (50 credits) adds 40 fuel to the base 100. Without it, reaching gold at row 75 and climbing back out again takes near-perfect fuel discipline.
• Haul Insurance sits behind the Assay Office. Assay Office (60 credits) unlocks the rest of the Salvage branch and pays +15% sell value per level. Insurance level 1 (120) then refunds half your cargo value on a strand or a hull burn, and level 2 (240) refunds three-quarters. A full hold of diamond is 720 credits at base price, so a single prevented loss covers the branch.
• The Surface Winch is the biggest single upgrade. 380 credits in Logistics, once Auxiliary Tank is at level 1. Once per descent a 🪝 WINCH button appears in the HUD; pressing it drops you onto the depot pad instantly with the hold intact, and the pad sells it. Fill up deep, winch out, skip the climb; the next descent recharges it.

What Makes Strata Different

Strata's drill loop is physics-first. The pod is not a cursor on a grid: it falls under gravity, stops dead against whatever tile it lands on — there is no bounce — and cuts rock only from a standstill. Lining up on a seam you can already see is its own navigation problem, paid for in thrust.

The economy is steep on purpose. Coal pays 4 credits a tile and diamond 120, so a player who invests in rock rating earns an order of magnitude faster than one who stays in the topsoil. What stops that from collapsing into a single fixed build order is the upgrade tree's inflation rule: every level you buy anywhere adds 5 credits to the price of every other node, so spreading purchases evenly across Drill, Logistics and Salvage costs noticeably more than committing to one branch first. Nothing is ever locked out — specialising is simply cheaper.

A Brief History of Mining Descent Games

The mining-descent genre traces back to Motherload (2004), a Flash game that established the core loop: descend, drill, sell, upgrade, repeat. Dome Keeper (2022) refreshed the formula by bolting a tower-defence layer onto the surface half of the loop. Strata keeps the loop and strips the surface threat away entirely, so the descent itself carries all of the risk — fuel, hull heat, and the climb home. Players arriving from Motherload will recognise the ore ladder and the upgrade tree; what is new here is the hard rock-rating gate on every band below the topsoil.