Alchemist's Engine vs Impossible to Dig

A sleeping engine. A blasted world. Tend to the fire, and uncover what was left behind. Alchemist's Engine is an incremental, idle crafting & adventure game. FEED THE FIRE - gather fuel, stoke the engine, and keep its heat rising. MERGE THE SPARKS - pluck sparks from the embers and merge them on the alchemical table to grow your power. RAISE YOUR WORKFORCE - forge golems of stone, quartz, and metal who gather, haul, and craft while you plan. Feed them back to the engine when you outgrow them. UPGRADE - smelt bronze and steel, research forgotten techniques, and upgrade the engine from a cold firebox into a towering machine. DESCEND - explore an ever-changing labyrinth of mines, crystal chambers, sunken temples, flooded galleries, and stranger rooms the deeper you go. UNRAVEL THE STORY - cold hearths, sibling machines, and a sealed gate that has waited a very long time for you.

In Turkish, "digging a well with a needle" means doing something impossibly slowly. Here you actually do it: you have one sewing needle, the water in the first well is twelve metres down, and every tap digs 0.2 millimetres. All of it plays out on a Karagöz shadow-play screen: the village, the layers of earth and the tools are cut from leather, with a lamp behind them. The whole well is always on screen, so you can see how close the needle is to the water. The ground gives things back as you dig: old coins, bones, bits of pottery. Trade them for new tools: a safety pin, a nail, a spoon, and a bucket that keeps digging while the app is closed. Tools are never sold; every one of them is dug up. Above the well is a small village. Muhtar Kemal, Nazmiye Teyze, Demirci Hüseyin and Küçük Zeynep keep an eye on your progress and have something to say about it now and then. When the water comes up, the village changes too, and the tea house starts smoking again. The first well, the Old Yard, is free all the way to the water, and you can try the Garden for free up to its first root. The other four plots open with a single one-time purchase; there is no subscription. There are no ads, no energy bar and no timers either.