CoreWard

Descend. Survive. Restore.

The drill only goes one way: down. Everything else is a decision.

CoreWard is a vertical-descent arcade puzzler about reading a shaft before you
cut into it. Every block you remove takes support away from the blocks above it.
The rock always warns you before it falls — the whole game is whether you saw it
coming.

FOUR ROCKS, FOUR CONSEQUENCES
• Basalt — filler. Fuses and vanishes.
• Cinnabar — fusing releases heat. The one you route around.
• Cryolite — fusing vents coolant. The one you detour toward.
• Pyrite — fusing pays a score multiplier. The greed play.

Heat is the clock. Cinnabar drives it up, cryolite pulls it back, and the drone
cooks if you stop paying attention. Every route down is a bet about how much
heat you can afford on the way.

ONE THUMB, PORTRAIT
Tap the left or right third to shift a column, drilling through whatever is in
the way. Hold low to drill straight down. Swipe up to climb back out. That is
the entire control scheme. An optional d-pad is in Settings if you prefer it.

EIGHTEEN TIERS, TWO STRATA
Work down through TOPSOIL and SEDIMENT. Each tier sets an objective — reach the
tap line, break seams, extract pyrite, set off a chain — and three markers to
chase: reach it, recover the buried artifact, and make the pyrite quota. The
artifact is never on the middle column, so a drone that only ever drills
straight down will never find one. Difficulty spikes at tiers 8 and 16, and both
are marked on the map long before you arrive.

DEEP DIVE
Endless, from the surface, no boosts, no safety net. Ranked on a weekly board
that wipes clean every week, so a good run is worth something and then it isn't.

A GARAGE WORTH COMING BACK TO
Fifteen drone chassis, from the Standard that every other frame argues with to
the Legendaries that reshape a run outright. Rarity buys volatility, not raw
power: a fully fitted drone is about 30% stronger than base, not 300%. Upgrades
fit to the chassis, not the account, so a new frame arrives unfitted and has to
earn its place.

STANDING CONTRACTS
Three at a time — break seams, recover artifacts, fuse cryolite. They never
expire and they carry across runs, so nothing you do underground is wasted.

WHAT WE WILL NOT SELL YOU
Nothing in the economy extends the fall delay. Reading a collapse is the skill
this game is built on, and it is not for sale at any price. Boosts compress a
run's hardest stretch; they do not delete it. You can equip two at most, and
Deep dive refuses them entirely.

Plays offline. Portrait only. No account required.

Recent changes:
First release.

Sixty tiers across five strata, down to the Core at 4,992 metres. Fifteen drones, each with its own upgrades. A daily shaft generated from the date: the same rock for everyone, one attempt. Deep Dive: an endless shaft ranked by depth.

Settings > Shape Markers gives every mineral its own silhouette.

Plays offline.