About Mining Champions:
Galactic Mining Corp is one of those games where I don’t really know why I like it, and I probably should be doing something better with my time, but I still find myself addictively playing it. Put on some music or your favourite Netflix show, chill out, and start drilling. A solid 90% of the game is drilling down (or occasionally sideways, maybe even back up if you’re feeling fancy) through blocks of many different types of resource on a variety of planets that have different creatures trying to eat you and different damage eroding your ship. The other 10% of the game is clicking upgrade. Galactic Mining Corp is a fun chill game where you need to mine astroids, moons, planets and gas giants for materials, items, experience, research and cores. Gameplay is extremely basic and repetitive. You fly a drilling craft trying to get to the core of each astronomical body on any of the three maps by drilling through all sorts of interestingly colorful square blocks. Bodies can have a certain dangerous element (like fire, cold, radiation) which increases in strength the closer you get to the core. There are also monsters following you around or moving in sometimes predictable, sometimes very chaotic patterns and you can find powerups like headlights, temporary elemental resistance, health restores and booster packs. Everything you find can be upgraded. Your crew, the company’s building, the rooms, bonus stats from sucessfully drilling cores and even the materials and items themselves. And a few other things outside on the three space maps. Since you’re constantly upgrading things, the reward ratio is extremely high and works very addictive. Graphics are nice too and I really liked these drum’n base music tracks. Now the bad part: The last stage of the game turns into a monumental grind of biblical proportions and you’d have wished armageddon started yesterday. Getting to 100% on the achievements was already pushing it to the limits, but even that pales in comparison to actually finishing the game. Some of the blocks on the last few planets/bodies on the final map are so hard, your drill gets destroyed instantly if you even touch them slightly. Even with hours of farming for extra upgrades I just couldn’t get through to the final core. Almost 50 hours in and I couldn’t do it. My eyes are now bleeding from the grind. So, do I recommend it? Yes, for several hours of chill gaming with colorful graphics and cool music. No, if you are a completionist. That said, I did enjoy most of the time, so, Final verdict: yes? sort of..
