Coal Duty Enters Early Access on October 27

Hello miners,

We have a date. Coal Duty enters Early Access on October 27.

Five of us started this as the co-op horror game we actually wanted to play. In a few weeks you get to find out whether we managed it.

(Full operational capacity has been scheduled. Attendance is mandatory and also voluntary.)

Before that: Steam Next Fest, October 19 to 26

Coal Duty is in Next Fest, and the demo is playable the whole week. If you have been waiting for a reason to drag three friends into a mine and find out how they behave under pressure, that week is the reason.

We will be around for the whole thing, which in practice means we will be in Discord watching you all fail the quota in new and creative ways.

What opens up on the 27th

If you have played the demo, here is what changes.

• The Easy and Hard mine floors, alongside the Medium one you already know.
• More creatures. You have not met all of them.
• More items and far more variety in the mine chambers.
• The escape machine, and the endings it leads to. The demo stops before all of that.

What Early Access means for us

There are five of us, and we would rather build this with you than at you. Early Access is how the game gets into real hands while it is still being shaped, so what you tell us changes what we make next.

We expect to be in Early Access for roughly 12 to 18 months. If it needs longer than that to feel genuinely finished then we will take longer. We would rather do that than rush a 1.0.

What you get on day one is the full core extraction loop, procedurally generated mines across multiple biomes, a persistent hub with a shop and progression and two complete endings to work toward. Roughly five hours to reach the first one, more if you go deeper or chase the other route.

What comes after that is shaped by you. On the list right now: more escape routes and endings, new creatures, new biomes, more to do in the hub and a pile of new items and tools. What actually lands, and in what order, depends on what you tell us matters most.

The price stays the same when we leave Early Access.

Come and help us build it

Early Access only works if the people playing it talk to the people making it. Ours is a small team and Discord is where that conversation actually happens, from feature polls to bug reports to arguing about whether the pickaxe swings too slowly.

Join the Union

And if you have not yet, wishlist the game so Steam tells you the moment it is live.

See you down there on the 27th.

Corecrew