Hole is Mine

A failed expedition in Hole Is Mine still fills your pockets, since every trip into the Hole yields resources no matter how the run actually ends. That single design choice removes the usual sting of incremental games, where a bad run can feel like wasted time, and it is worth understanding before anything else about how the game wants to be played.

Genre	Incremental adventure
Platform	Windows (Steam)
Approximate length	Around five hours of core content
Reception	Very Positive, with roughly 90 percent of reviews favorable

Answering the Call of the Abyss

You play a mysterious, drill-wielding creature responding to a summons from a divine Hole, and the framing device barely wastes time before dropping you into the loop that defines everything after: dive, dig, rescue, return. Hole Is Mine treats its opening minutes as a pitch for the whole game rather than a slow ramp, which works because the loop itself is immediately legible even before any upgrades exist.

Beginners often try to dig with brute force, hammering at blocks without a plan for rescuing the villagers trapped between them. That approach works early, but it stops scaling almost immediately once deeper layers introduce tougher blocks that take several hits to clear.

The early screens are also where the game’s timer earns its reputation. New players frequently find the pacing unforgiving before they have unlocked enough upgrades to keep up, and that mismatch between difficulty and available tools is one of the most consistent points of friction reported by people trying the game for the first time.

Rescuing and Training the Mini’Ohs

The villagers you pull from the rock are called Mini’Ohs, and they are the actual engine behind Hole Is Mine’s growth curve. A rescued Mini’Oh does not just add to a headcount; it becomes a unit you can equip, train, and send back into the Hole to keep mining even when you are not actively digging yourself.

Equipping a Mini’Oh matters more than most players expect on a first run. Masks, helmets, pickaxes, and backpacks all slot onto different body parts, and combining them wrong wastes potential that a slightly different loadout would have captured.

Community discussion consistently circles back to the moment a player first mismatches gear across several Mini’Ohs and watches their mining output stall, since it is usually the first real lesson the game teaches about build planning rather than raw stat stacking.

The Bag, and Why Players Keep Arguing About It

Few mechanics in Hole Is Mine generate as much disagreement as the bag used to carry rescued Mini’Ohs back to safety. Early on it is a simple tool. By the time a player has dozens of Mini’Ohs to manage, some have described it as more of a burden than a mechanic, since it becomes an extra step layered on top of an already busy screen.

This is one of the more openly debated aspects of the game, and it is worth acknowledging honestly rather than glossing over: the same system that makes early rescues feel purposeful can feel like friction once the pace of play accelerates.

Over 200 Upgrades and What They Actually Change

The upgrade tree back at the Village is where the incremental half of the game truly lives, with more than 200 individual upgrades spread across mining power, Mini’Oh capacity, and equipment slots. A single upgrade rarely feels dramatic in isolation, but Hole Is Mine is built around the idea that small, repeated gains compound into the kind of explosive growth the genre is known for.

• Prioritize Mini’Oh recruitment upgrades before cosmetic or convenience options
• Save resources for equipment tiers rather than spreading them thin early
• Revisit the upgrade tree after every major layer of the Hole, since new options unlock steadily

Once the equipment pool opens up fully, with more than 20 equipment types and over 80 equipment-level upgrades available, players start experimenting with combinations rather than just chasing bigger numbers, and that shift is where the game’s “Very Positive” reputation seems to come from most directly.

Finding Secrets in the Depths

Beyond the main mining loop, the Depths hide secrets that reward players who explore rather than dig in a straight line. These moments break up the otherwise steady rhythm of numbers climbing and villages growing, and they are frequently cited as the parts of the game that stick with players after a session ends.

Completionist-minded players treat these hidden finds as their own secondary objective, separate from the main push to purify the Hole.

Rebuilding the Village Above Ground

Everything mined and everyone rescued eventually feeds back into rebuilding the Village, which functions as both the game’s hub and its visible progress marker. Watching a once-empty settlement fill with active Mini’Ohs is the closest thing Hole Is Mine has to a traditional reward screen, and it works because the growth is gradual rather than delivered all at once in a cutscene.

Idle-minded players tend to check in on Village growth between sessions rather than watching it happen in real time, letting Mini’Ohs work while they are away.

Lifting the Curse of the Abyss

The overarching goal, purifying the Hole and lifting the curse that created it, gives the incremental loop a narrative shape it does not strictly need but benefits from anyway. Players chasing the story-adjacent goal rather than pure numbers tend to push further into the Depths earlier than the upgrade pacing alone would suggest is efficient.

That tension between efficient play and curiosity-driven play is part of what keeps sessions from feeling purely mechanical.

Questions Players Ask About Hole is Mine

Is there a way to fail permanently?

No. Every expedition into the Hole returns some resources even if a run goes badly, so there is no permanent setback, only slower relative progress.

How long does it take to see the full upgrade tree?

With more than 200 upgrades and over 500 possible equipment combinations across Mini’Oh loadouts, most players will not exhaust the tree inside the roughly five hours of core content, especially if they are experimenting with builds rather than optimizing.

Do Mini’Ohs need to be actively managed to keep progressing?

Not constantly. Equipped Mini’Ohs continue contributing to mining output even during idle stretches, which is part of why the game accommodates both hands-on and check-in play styles.

Hole Is Mine earns its addictive reputation the honest way, by making every dive into the Hole matter regardless of outcome, and by giving players enough Mini’Ohs, equipment, and upgrades to keep finding new combinations long after the Village first starts to look like a real settlement again.