All Game, No Filter

Image credit: Official title screen from Keep on Mining! (via Steam)

🎮 Game Details

• Playtime: ~4–5 hours
• Completion: 100% (Full skill tree unlocked, all pickaxes crafted)
• Platform: Steam
• Genre: Casual / Clicker / Idler

🧠 First Impressions

Keep on Mining! is exactly what it sounds like — a click-heavy, incremental mining game where you smash rocks, gather resources, and upgrade your tools to mine faster, better, and longer. And honestly? It’s surprisingly satisfying.

From the get-go, it pulls you into a loop that feels instantly familiar: mine, collect, upgrade, repeat. There’s no complex story, no flashy animations — just a solid gameplay loop that makes it dangerously easy to say “just five more minutes.”

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⚙️ Gameplay

You start small — clicking rocks for basic materials like stone, iron, and copper — then slowly unlock pickaxes with special effects, automate resource generation, and climb through a pretty hefty skill tree. The sense of progression is solid. You really do feel stronger the deeper you go.

The artifact system adds a small layer of excitement, too — you never know when you’ll find something useful.

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⛏️ The Grind

Here’s the deal: Keep on Mining! starts as a zen-like idle game. But the deeper you go, the more that chill vibe turns into a slow crawl.

Late-game upgrades take a lot of grinding. You’ll eventually hit a point where your progress stalls unless you’re min-maxing. It’s not painful — just… repetitive.

If you’re the kind of player who gets satisfaction from watching bars fill up and numbers go up, this probably won’t bother you. But if you’re looking for meaningful decisions or strategy, it might wear thin.

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📝 Wishlist for Improvement

Keep on Mining! gets a lot right, but here are a few things that could make it even more satisfying:

• Middle-tier ores need more love
  Once you move past early materials like copper and iron, they basically become dead weight. A conversion system — trading up or recycling — would’ve made progression smoother and those resources more meaningful later on.
• Talent XP pacing feels off
  By the time I finished the entire upgrade chart, I still had a long way to go to unlock all the talents. The XP bar moves slower than it should, making talent progression feel disconnected from the rest of the game.
• The mines lack identity
  The mine looks like a major mechanic, but in reality, it only provides the first few bars and quickly becomes irrelevant. Worse, the cost of upgrading it doesn’t justify the return. It could’ve been much more useful — either by giving access to higher-tier bars or offering a passive bonus that stays relevant through the endgame.

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✅ Final Verdict

Keep on Mining! isn’t trying to reinvent the genre — and that’s okay. It’s a “close-your-brain-and-click” kind of game, and for a few hours, it does that very well. It scratches the same itch as Cookie Clicker or Melvor Idle, but in a much shorter timeframe.

You’ll get a few hours of dopamine out of it — and if that’s what you’re here for, mission accomplished.

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🔥 Clay’s Take

“A short, satisfying grind that starts out relaxing and ends with a soft thud. Worth a play if you enjoy idle games, but be ready for the pacing to dip toward the end.”

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — for what it is)
Recommended?: Yes — especially if you like idle/clicker games or just want something low-commitment to relax with for an evening.

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🗨️ What About You?

Have you played Keep on Mining!?

• What’s your favorite idle or incremental game?
• Do you enjoy the grind, or do you bounce off once things slow down?
• Are there any underrated idle games you’d recommend?

Drop your thoughts in the comments — I’d love to hear what clicker-style games keep you hooked (or make you uninstall fast).