Gemporium: A Cute Mining Sim Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
A cute mining sim where you play an anxious little mole digging, polishing and selling gems to pay off inherited debt. I
Gemporium had me skipping the mine two days running so I could stay home and polish gems, and I am usually the first to bounce off a cozy game. I found it on Twitter, liked the look of it, and grabbed the demo without realising the full game had been out since last August. You play an anxious little mole who has inherited a gem shop from your Grandmole, along with the debt that came with it and a loan shark who wants paying. So you mine, you refine, and you sell, and you try to turn a profit before the clock runs out on the day.
My verdict is a play. I went in expecting to potter about and come away flat, the way cozy games usually leave me, and instead I was sat there planning the next day's polishing while the game told me my ten days were up. The loop is mostly clicking and it is not deep, but the debt and the clock give it a spine, and for me that was enough. I would like the full game to open up past just selling, with more gems and a few side quests, and I would happily take a little roomba to help me down the mine, though I know that is me nudging it towards a factory sim it may not want to be. Worth knowing the full game is already out on Steam at $9.99 if you want the whole thing rather than the free ten-day slice. Either way, the demo won me over on its own.
Pros
- The timed day gives the pottering a point, which is the exact thing that usually loses me in cozy games
- Refining turned out to be moreish; I built a backlog of rocks and skipped the mine a couple of days just to keep polishing
- Every customer names a gem they love and one they hate, so selling becomes a small puzzle of who to hold what back for
- Charming the whole way through, from the anxious little mole to the pigeon in a cape
Cons
- The clicks did not always register, most noticeably coming off cracking a rock into polishing, and I would lose twenty or thirty seconds waiting for it to catch up; in a refine that only lasts about a minute, that adds up when it keeps happening
The daily loop
This is a mining Simulation with a shop attached, and the day runs on a clock. In the morning you head into the mine, at lunch you refine what you dragged back, and then the shop opens for a set window and you sell. Run out of time and the shop closes on you, so there is a real bit of Management to how you spend the hours.
If that pressure is not for you, there is a cozy mode that switches the timer off entirely and lets you potter. I left it on, and I think the clock is doing more work than it looks.
Mining and refining
Down in the mine, stars on the wall mark where a gem is buried. You tap to chip the rock away, but tap the hammer too hard right on top of the gem and you crack it, which knocks its value down. There is a drill you can buy that mines far more gently and will not crack anything, but it is slower, so you are trading time for quality. You turn up odd things down there too. I dug out a dinosaur skull and an old flip phone, and I want to know what those are for.
Refining is two steps. First a quick timed bit to knock the outer layer of rock off, then you mouse around the gem like you are polishing it up. An unrefined lump sells for far less than a finished stone, so it is worth doing. Most of the game is clicking, mining clicks and polishing clicks. It did not bother me. It is a small, tactile job and it feels like the point rather than a shortcut around one.
Selling and upgrades
Selling is where it gets a little more interesting. Animals wander in and each one tells you a gem they love and a gem they cannot stand. Sell them the one they love and you get double the value, sell them the one they hate and you get half, and anything else sits somewhere in the middle.
There is a TV you can unlock that tells you which gems will be popular that day, so you can dig with a plan. Other upgrades speed the grind along, a bigger cleaning wipe to polish quicker, the gentle drill, and so on. At the end of each day it totals up how many gems you found, what you sold, and what you made.
Why it holds attention
By the time the load truck turned up to end my ten days, I was properly invested. I had built up such a backlog of rocks that a couple of days I never went into the mine at all and just sat there refining. When the demo ended I was already planning which gems I would polish the next morning.
I have been hard on Cozy games before when they have no sense of purpose and you are just enjoying the calm. This one hit my achievement drivers because you are building something towards paying off the loan shark. That debt plus the clock keeps a bit of tension under it, and they have judged that well.
Developer: Merge Conflict Studio
View on Steam
Tags: Simulation, Management, Cozy, Cute, Casual, Relaxing, Indie
Related Reviews
- Bottled by Bears: Bottled by Bears is a cozy honey farm demo that hides a real processing game under the paw-rubbing bears.
- A Little Age: A cozy village builder where your workers walk supplies home on little legs, the temple drains what you send, and the la
- Sludgineers: An active incremental cleaning game where vacuuming sludge feels good until you hit ninety-five percent clean and run ou
- Muri: Wildwoods: A gentle, visually appealing platformer that lacks challenge for those who need more than casual exploration.
- Lawn Mowing Simulator 2: Stripes do not affect your score in the Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 demo, but I still mowed properly for myself, then surviv
- Pigeon: A Love Story: A life-size London pigeon dating sim where you coo at one hundred and seventy thousand birds, collect landmarks for nothing
Browse all Steam demo reviews