DEEPCORE
Free arcade game · plays in your browser · made with Opus 5.5
DEEPCORE is an arcade game that loads straight in the browser. Free to play, no install, no registration. If you came looking for Mining, this is built in that mould. It was written by Opus 5.5, and the prompt behind it is printed further down this page.
About DEEPCORE
DEEPCORE is a pixel-art mining game with persistent upgrades. You pilot a drill pod down through five planets, fill its hold with ore, fly it back up to the landing pad to sell, and spend the money on a better pod before the next dive. Every trip is a bet on fuel and hull: run the tank dry or let the hull break and you lose everything in the hold and get towed home. Your tunnels stay dug, so each trip starts deeper than the last.
Arrow keys or WASD: left and right drive, and drill sideways when you push into a wall; down drills; up or Space fires the thruster. Keys 1 to 4 use a repair kit, fuel cell, blast charge or recall beacon. It is keyboard only. Seven upgrade lines (drill, engine, fuel tank, cargo, hull, cooling and radar) carry across all five planets. Each planet hides a core shard in a sealed chamber at the bottom, walled in rock your drill cannot cut at first and heat your cooling cannot yet take, and carrying it home unlocks the next world. The planets change the rules: sand pours into your shafts, gas pockets explode, lava floods tunnels, tunnels on the ice moon freeze shut behind you, and boulders drop from cave ceilings. The leaderboard score is the total money you have earned. Buy the fuel tank first, and dig one straight shaft you can fly back up.
How was DEEPCORE made?
The prompt behind DEEPCORE
"opus 5.5 just dropped and i want to test your capabilities in game development. What kind of game you think you might be able to create best? I like where it's constant improvement / upgrades that stays with you while you move on to next level. other than that i'm open to whatever you want" - Claude pitched a mining-descent game (drill down, sell ore, upgrades that persist across planets) and the reply was "alright let's go with mining descent game". The build then went: a 40-cell-wide planet grid with a falling-sand simulation (sand, boulders, water, lava, refreezing frost), a drill pod with thrust, fall damage, heat and fuel, five generated planets each with a core shard sealed in guard rock, seven upgrade lines, a pixel renderer drawing a low-res buffer scaled up by an integer, procedural tiles and sprites, synthesised sound, and a wordless intro where a dropship lowers the pod and the camera plunges to the glowing core. The economy was tuned with a Node bot that plays the whole five-planet career on the real generator and prices; it found a late-game softlock (ore ran out before the heat upgrade was affordable), a shard bonus that paid for the next planet, and a starved first planet. 28 mechanics tests and a headless-Chrome harness that plays with real key presses check the rest.
Categories and tags
Questions about DEEPCORE
6
- Is DEEPCORE free to play?
- Yes. DEEPCORE is free, runs in your browser, and needs no account. Nothing to download, no plugin, no sign-up — open the page and play.
- Do I need to download or install DEEPCORE?
- No. DEEPCORE runs entirely in the browser on desktop. There is nothing to install and no launcher to sign in to.
- Which AI model made DEEPCORE?
- DEEPCORE was written by Opus 5.5, a model from Anthropic, using Claude Code. The prompt that produced it is published on this page, so you can see exactly what it was asked for.
- What is DEEPCORE like?
- It is an arcade game, filed by its creator under Mining and Upgrades and Digging. DEEPCORE is a pixel-art mining game with persistent upgrades.
- Does DEEPCORE keep a high score?
- Yes. Any score DEEPCORE reports goes to the leaderboard under the game, and you do not need an account for it to count.
- How much did DEEPCORE cost to make?
- $12.60 in model usage, running Opus 5.5, over about 60 minutes of building. Every game here records what it cost, which is the point of the site.
Version 1.0