The bore camp surrounding a vast frozen shaft

Dredwork Field Notice / Build 0.1

The Numb Digger

A grim excavation survival game where every descent trades warmth for debt, truth, and things that should have stayed under the ice.

Surface office: closed Public build news will surface here

The Bore

Go down with tools. Come back with proof.

The Numb Digger is built around the quiet pressure of a run: choose a tool, read the ice, spend body heat, and decide how far you can go before the climb costs more than the find.

A laddered shaft descending into black ice
00 15 30 47
Tool: ice chisel Climb cost: high

Game Texture

Survival, bureaucracy, and awful little choices.

BODY

The cold writes on you

Warmth, breath, stamina, pain, morale, and numbness all pressure each descent. A good tool can still leave you too tired to climb.

6 survival states
CAMP

A settlement with a ledger

Between digs you buy rope, patch injuries, pay debt, hire help, take contracts, and decide who gets the things you drag back.

contracts, crew, debt
DEEP

Finds that change the story

Coal buys another day. Bodies carry names. Historical relics and impossible objects pull factions toward you for different reasons.

resource, human, historical, impossible
FACTIONS

No patron is clean

The Bore Guild, Chapel, Heat Syndicate, Claimants, and Surveyors all want the bore made useful. Their favors cost more than money.

5 powers around the shaft
The camp at night with tents, ledgers, lamps, and workers

Camp Return

The camp is not safety. It is accounting.

Sell finds, buy fuel, treat injuries, settle debts, accept contracts, and listen for which faction has started saying your name like a tool they own.

Recovered Finds

Objects with prices. Objects with consequences.

Frozen Letter
historical

Frozen Letter

Ink preserved by cold. It was never sent.

Warm Flower
impossible

Warm Flower

Sealed in ice, alive, and still warm.

Ringing Bell
impossible

Ringing Bell

You can hear it before you break the ice.

Forbidden Map
historical

Forbidden Map

Routes the Guild says do not exist.

Five Interested Parties

Every buyer wants a different version of the truth.

Your finds are not neutral. A body, a map, a fuel cache, a sealed letter: each one moves reputation, access, and suspicion around the camp.

Bore Guild

Quotas, permits, contracts, and the official right to underpay you.

Chapel

They pay for the preserved dead and call warmth a kind of violence.

Heat Syndicate

Fuel runners and tool dealers who know warmth is the only currency.

Family Claimants

Names, photographs, and specific bodies wanted from the ice.

Surveyor's Office

Maps, strata, relics, and records the camp pretends not to need.

The main bore descending through dark ice

NumbDigger.com

Coming soon.

The lamps are lit, the ledgers are open, and the bore is still taking names. Public build news, wishlist links, and release details will surface here.

Back to Surface