Coal Duty

Hello miners,

The mine is open. Coal Duty is out now in Early Access. Five of us started this as the co-op horror game we actually wanted to play. As of today you get to find out whether we managed it.

(Full operational capacity has been reached. The state thanks you in advance for your service.)

⛏️ What you can do today

Meet the quota Descend with up to four friends into freshly generated mines, fill the cart and come back up. Push deeper for a better haul and worse company.

Meet the locals The mines are home to dozens of distinct creatures. Some are blind. Some are fast. Some look like coal until they aren't.

Spend your tickets Between shifts there are the barracks, the workshop, the tavern and a certain smuggler in the restricted area. You did not hear that here.

Plan your escape The escape machine is real and the endings it leads to are in. Some miners have reportedly escaped. The state does not confirm this.

👷 If you played the demo

The six-descent cap is gone. The Easy and Hard mine floors are open alongside the Medium one you know, there are far more items and more variety in the chambers, and the creatures you have not met yet are waiting. It is around 5 hours to reach the first ending, with plenty more for anyone who digs deeper or chases the alternate route.

🗺️ Where this goes next

This is the start, not the finish. We expect 12 to 18 months in Early Access, and what you tell us decides what we build next. New escape routes and endings, new creatures, new biomes and expanded hub activities are all on the roadmap, but your feedback sets the order. We're in Discord every day and we read everything.

❤️ Thank you, genuinely

More than 5,000 of you asked for playtest access, thousands of you played the demo through Next Fest and you have failed the quota in ways we never predicted. This build is the shape it's in because of you, from difficulty balancing all the way down to the snow that was appearing under a table.

📋 Two things that really help this week

Leave an honest review. Reviews are how Steam decides whether to show a small game to anyone at all. Whatever you actually thought is what we want to read.

And come tell us what happened down there. The fastest way to reach us is Discord. Join the Union

See you down there.

Corecrew

Demo Update 0.2.24.1!

We’re hard at work on Coal Duty, with our main focus on the early access release. This update covers the latest demo changes, while work on the full game continues beyond what’s listed here!

• Added a new multiplayer lobby.

• Added new NPCs.

• Added new security cameras.

• Added new tutorials.

• Improved item animations.

• Improved multiplayer lockpicking reliability.

• Prevented locked loot containers from consuming a lockpick without providing loot.

• Added an inventory-full warning when picking up items.

• Fixed ladder detection while shrunk.

• Smoothed shrinking and returning to normal size.

• Adjusted sprinting so exhausting stamina requires pressing sprint again.

• Improved radiation warning effects and damage falloff.

• Improved melee and weapon impact sounds.

• Added hit feedback for creature corpses.

• Fixed explosive-rat damage passing through cover.

• Updated explosive-rat audio and explosion visuals.

• Allowed escape-plan materials to be deposited across construction stages.

• Updated footstep and environmental audio.

• Added a new miner note to the shop.

• Updated translations and UI wording across all 11 supported languages.
  

Thank you for playing the demo and sharing your feedback!