You’ve heard of the drill that will pierce the heavens, so introducing: the drill that is attached to an entire city that will pierce the earth. That’s the concept for CitaDrill, a roguelite city-builder where the city is encased in a big ole dome, a larger than life drill attached to its base that you dig through an infested planet. It’s a lot, of course, but it’s got some lush pixel art and a demo you can try out for yourself as part of this Steam Next Fest, too.

When you start things off, all you have is your humble drill, and a need to dig downwards. As you do so, drilling up different kinds of blocks nets you a range of resources, all dependent on the colour of the blocks you’ve crushed up. In typical city building fashion you use these to build up your domed city, with different fixtures providing various bonuses. Perhaps you add in a pressure valve to reduce a pressure buildup status, or you put up some power lines to get certain buildings and modules working. You may even decide to, uh, print a worker to get some jobs done.

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Of course what this is mostly all in service of is the drilling, but while you’re doing that, you also have all sorts of nasty, giant creepy crawlies to worry about that want nothing more than to munch up your city. This then begets a tower defence element, whereby you need to attach various weaponry and defences to your drill-city in order to fend off incoming baddies (which, while slower paced and less screen encompassing, does have some bullet heaven vibes). There are some nasty looking bosses to fend off too, so you won’t be starved of battles.

The game also has a whole cat thing going on? I think that’s just for a touch of quirkiness, though it does do that thing where a real-world meme is referenced that I don’t care for all that much, especially when it has so much style. Still, not offputting enough to not give it a go. Which, as a reminder, you can do! As it has a demo for you to try out on Steam right now ahead of its release before the end of the year.