Hole is Mine

In Hole Is Mine, you start as a mysterious drill-wielding creature answering a call from something buried far beneath a Village that has no idea what’s actually down there, and that single detail sets the tone for everything the game asks you to do next.

Mini’Ohs Are the Actual Workforce

You don’t do the mining yourself so much as launch Mini’Ohs into the Hole to do it for you, extracting impurities and rescuing trapped villagers along the way. Early on this feels almost incidental, but the game quickly reframes it as the entire point once equipment enters the picture.

Beginners tend to under-invest in Mini’Oh gear early, treating the drill as the priority instead. In practice, a handful of well-equipped Mini’Ohs mining efficiently outperforms a stronger drill pushing through resistance alone.

By the time you’ve rescued enough villagers to notice the Village filling back out, the loop of diving, extracting, and returning has usually become second nature.

Shelly and the Descent Into the Hole

Shelly is your drill, and using her to break down the Hole is the first action every run comes back to. She doesn’t do this alone forever, though; the entire equipment system exists to turn a slow descent into something considerably faster once you’ve invested properly.

Once you reach the deeper sections of the Depths, resistance increases noticeably, and relying purely on Shelly without supporting Mini’Oh upgrades tends to stall progress hard.

This is one of the clearer difficulty curves in the incremental genre, since the game telegraphs exactly where you’re expected to stop and upgrade rather than push forward blind.

Equipping Mini’Ohs Without Getting Overwhelmed

With more than twenty types of equipment and upwards of eighty equipment upgrades available, from masks and helmets down to pickaxes and backpacks, the customization here is deep enough to intimidate players used to simpler idle games.

1. Prioritize gear that improves mining speed before anything cosmetic or situational
2. Match equipment loadouts to whichever region of the Depths you’re currently working through
3. Save rarer gear combinations for Mini’Ohs assigned to the toughest mining routes

Players chasing efficient builds treat this system as the real endgame, mixing and matching across more than five hundred possible combinations to squeeze out marginal gains once the early Village upgrades are exhausted.

The Village, the Depths, and What Growth Actually Looks Like

Resources brought up from the Hole don’t just vanish into a currency total; they visibly rebuild the Village over time, which gives the incremental numbers a physical presence most games in this genre skip entirely. Over two hundred upgrades exist across the Village alone, separate from Mini’Oh-specific gear.

Casual players tend to treat Village growth as a passive reward for progress made elsewhere, while completionists chase every available upgrade specifically to see the Village reach its fullest state.

Secrets hidden within the Depths add another layer for players who enjoy digging past the point where resource gains alone would justify continuing.

What Players Openly Criticize About Hole Is Mine

The bag mechanic, used to break certain blocks by throwing it and retrieving it repeatedly, draws consistent complaints for having no upgrade path of its own. Players don’t mind the mechanic existing so much as feeling like it becomes a bottleneck the longer a run continues without ever improving alongside everything else.

A smaller but recurring issue involves an NPC squid encountered while descending, whose dialogue prompt reportedly stops appearing consistently for some players after showing up reliably earlier in a run, which several reviews mention as an inconsistency worth fixing.

Neither issue undermines the core loop, but both come up often enough in player feedback that they’re worth knowing about before a first attempt.

Common Questions

How do you use the bag in Hole Is Mine?

Throw the bag into the Hole, then pick it back up and throw it at blocks to break them. It currently has no dedicated upgrade path, which is a common point of frustration among players in the later stages of a run.

What do Mini’Ohs actually do?

Mini’Ohs are launched into the Hole to mine resources and rescue trapped villagers, and equipping them with gear across categories like masks, helmets, pickaxes, and backpacks grants them new abilities that directly affect mining efficiency.

How long does Hole Is Mine take to complete?

The core gameplay loop runs around five hours according to the game’s own estimate, though the depth of the equipment and upgrade systems naturally extends that for players chasing full Village growth.

Hole Is Mine turns a simple premise, purifying a Hole with a growing crew of Mini’Ohs, into something with real staying power once Shelly’s drill stops being the whole story and the equipment system takes over, and watching the Village fill back in run after run is the payoff that keeps most players coming back down.