Every coal seam gives you one plunge. Hold to sink the spinning drum, let go to bank the cut — the deeper you dare, the bigger the payout, until the drum bites the rock behind the coal. Past fifty points the drum starts to run hot.
👆 Hold to plunge, release to bank ← All gamesShear sits you at the controls of a longwall shearer rolling down a lamp-lit 3D coal gallery. Seams of coal slide up to the cutter one after another, each one separated from the next by a rib of hard rock, and every seam gives you exactly one plunge. Press and hold to sink the spinning drum into the coal; let go and the cut is banked and the drum swings back up. You cannot go back for a second bite. That single rule is the whole game, because the payout grows with the square of how far through the seam you went — a cut ninety percent of the way pays twice what a sixty percent cut does — and the drum speeds up the longer you keep the finger down.
The gauge on the left is a cross-section of the seam under the cutter: grey coal on top, an amber band where the rock is getting close, and the rock itself at the bottom. The gold line marks a flush cut. Release past it without touching rock and the cut counts toward your combo, which climbs a quarter at a time to triple pay. The white line just above the rock is the knife edge, and a cut banked beyond it pays half as much again. Release early and you keep the coal but lose the streak; hold too long and the drum bites rock and loses a tooth. Keep the drum down when the seam ends and it smashes into the rib behind it, and resting your finger on a bare rib grinds a tooth off too. Three teeth and the shift is over, but every six flush cuts grows one back.
At fifty points, or sooner on Chill, the drum starts to run hot. Cutting builds heat and resting cools it, and a drum that reaches the top of the gauge seizes, shearing off a tooth and losing the cut, the combo and the whole of the next seam. Thin purple sliver seams start to appear at the same time, worth three at most. From then on the question is not only how deep to go but which seams deserve a plunge at all. Chill, Normal and Hard change the gallery speed and how quickly the gaps between seams tighten, while the first few seams stay thick and slow in every mode.