I took longer to write my Hydroneer review than usual. Not because I didn’t know what to write, or that it wasn’t good. I couldn’t bring myself to write it, because it meant I would not be spending the time playing it. Hydroneer calls to me and wills me to return to it, armed with my pickaxe (or mini nuke) to keep digging. You might look at a patch of ground in an open world mining/farming game and go “what a delightful place to relax” I look at that same space and go “how quickly can I extract all the dirt from that space?”
Originally created by solo developer Max Hayon and his studio Foulball Hangover, with the PlayStation 5 version published by PlayWay S.A., Hydroneer is less about striking gold and more about engineering the most gloriously overcomplicated mining operation you can imagine. Full disclosure, I found Hydroneer because of the YouTube Channel Lets Game It Out and I highly recommend you give Josh’s videos a look as they are brilliant. I am someone who loves a good automation game and after playing the amazing Parcel Simulator, it was time for me to lose several dozen hours to Hydroneer. And I do not say that as a bad thing.
I must note, I played Hydroneer on the PS5, so I haven’t been able to play the PC version which has a bountiful world of mods to use. My PC coughs like a Victorian coal-mining child when I make eye contact with it, so when it comes to something with lots of objects and physics possibilities I didn’t trust my ancient setup.
You start your journey in Hydroneer in a small plot of land, with a shovel, bucket, pan and brush… and with just enough optimism to think that your first day’s money earned is a good amount at 43 coins. A little concerning when your first section of travelator costs several hundred and a better smelter over a thousand.
From those humble beginnings, however, comes an oddly addictive gameplay loop.
Dig up dirt. Wash dirt. Find shiny things. Sell shiny things. Buy bigger machines. Wonder why your beautifully organised mining operation now resembles a plumbing disaster held together by hope. Repeat.
Hydroneer is one of those games where I start to play, and think I have done nothing, and yet two hours have vanished.
I have been playing on the standard survival mode, where you have to walk and drive everywhere. Things cost money, and seem expensive and there is a day/night cycle. There are no enemies, I don’t have fall damage or anything like that, so survival is a rich term. I did try Creative mode, it has the same kind of limitations most of the time, but things are free, you can fly, have a hat that instantly copies any item you place, so you don’t have to fetch more, and a few other things to make your life easier if you want.
I, however, was born to suffer it seems.
The beauty of Hydroneer is in watching my little ramshackle mining camp evolve into an industrial marvel. Or in my case a total disaster waiting to happen. It’s good that these machines can’t explode. Quickly I found that I had conveyors all over the place, drills chewing the ground and pipes that criss-cross everywhere like you’ve challenged yourself to recreate the amazing Victorian London sewer system. Then the great machine grinds to a halt and I’m running all over the place trying to find why the water pressure (that powers everything) has stopped.
Automation is the real reward here for me. Every machine I added removed another repetitive task, replacing it with a deeply satisfying sight of my mining empire churning away. At least until I realise the water filters have broken and the machine stops again.
Now there are a couple of things I don’t like in Hydroneer, even with the amount of time I had under my belt. The Night/Day cycle does nothing for me, you don’t eat, so the only point in sleeping is to skip the night. But you wake up early enough that it’s still dark for a long time, so it feels pointless to me. You have no inventory, so you have to carry things one at a time, unless you use the slow pallet of the trucks/carts. You pay for things by dropping your money in the basket and pushing the buy button. I reloaded a save once and thought my money was all lost, but it was just in a different place as my save reloaded me to a different location to where I ended. I feel just giving players the option of an inventory would be a huge improvement.
There are also some things you cannot automate. I really like making swords and necklaces in the game. But you cannot automate that, the best you can do is automate the production of the metal bars and gems. Then you heat the bars again, put them on the anvil and hit them with a hammer.
As Automation is the main reward, for me my endgame in these games is to fully automate the whole process. My ideal is to maintain the machines. Like in the amazing Factorio. Hydroneer makes most things easier, but then with making weapons and jewellery to sell the game is no different 100 hours in than it was an hour in. Just how you get the raw materials is easier.
The logic components do help with automation. In all honesty, you can’t do much more than automate basic digging without logic circuits. You get all kinds of logic switches, hooks, gauges and smelters. I spent a good number of hours automating my smelters with a very complex series of wiring that made my second base look like the inside of my brain. Messy and full of chaos. The game itself offers no help with this, so it’s up to you to experiment, or hit the internet.
There is one area of the game I have a love hate relationship with, and that is Iceforge. You go there to make new auto diggers and dirt munchers. The setting is very cool, it has a very Erebor feel to it. But the issue is, there is no really good way to get resources in its small mining area (which is also where dumped resources from the surface appear) up to the forge. I just wish there was a way to build the travelators up to the forge section so I wasn’t lumping it up and down so many stairs. The thing that I LOVE about the forge is that you spend resources mined to get the better diggers. So you have to play the game and invest time in to get the cool gear. I don’t even think in creative mode you can just build the best diggers. This is brilliant. Money is easy to make once you start to automate, but needing the raw materials, and some are hard to get, was brilliant. Great mechanic, terrible area.
Now, it might seem like I don’t like the game. Hydroneer is far from perfect, but trust me, its gameplay loop is so good that even with the things I don’t like, mere moments away from my PS5 and my controller would start to whisper to me.
I spent more hours I am comfortable thinking about digging a massive pit. I was trying to get down to the best resources at the bottom level. I tried digging with my pickaxe and realised it would take me about 24 hours to dig the space out. I then saved up the earned tokens from doing the small quests people give you. I bought the digging vehicle with that, and boy was that a total waste of time. It’s slow, hard to control and its actual ability to dig is rubbish. It’s great for going down, but then you are stuck there. Don’t bother. I then however, got my favourite thing:
The mini nuke. I spent a lot of my fortune on the very expensive bombs. I wish they were maybe double the power as they are not much better than the TNT barrels, but I was able at one point to make my PS5 freeze for five minutes as I set off too many of them at once. It was great.
The PS5 version also comes with the expansion Journey to Volcalidus. Rather than simply giving you another patch of land, it gives you a whole new region. What I really liked is that it didn’t make the original area feel obsolete. It felt more like a natural upgrade once I’d done everything in the base game. It gives you some nice new mechanics, like no water, so you have to melt ice to get the water to run most of your machines, but also the now plentiful lava will run your new gear. There are new vehicles to drive around, as though roads are not a thing, and you can interact with the local town in the area much more than in the base area.
Hydoneer is one of those games that understands that watching a painstakingly built machine finally spring into action is so very satisfying. Even if in my case it then exposes six other problems I now need to tackle. By the time you stop playing (if you ever do) you will probably have forgotten what you were doing with your original hole, as you stand watching your own sprawling automated mining empire and wondering if it needs one more conveyor.
It does, it always does.
I just need to remember where I left that curved water pipe.
I think I left it around here.
Hydroneer is available now for PC.
