Steam Veil Games is a solo developer studio with big ambitions and intriguing ideas. Provided you’re intrigued by the prospect of managing a band of steampunk dwarves as they dig for mythrill in an inhospitable and increasingly dangerous mine. They’ve just announced their debut project entitled Drill Rift. You can find it on Steam here. The project is slated for a Q4 2025 release, with a playable demo set to go live on September 20, 2025 as part of the latest Steam Next Fest.
Positioned as a turn-based strategy game, Drill Rift’s key features include a dwarven outpost you have to build up and upgrade while managing your limited resources, a madness system that will attract terrifying hostile creatures to your operation, and a team of dwarven miners you’ll need to develop and send out on assignments where both their attributes and your dice rolls determine the outcome.
The announcement came with a trailer that highlights all these features and shows off a decent chunk of gameplay:
What to Expect When You’re Prospecting?
Right now we don’t know what the ultimate goal of the game is or how it’s going to be structured. Whether it has an extended campaign or instead favors bite-sized roguelite runs. We also don’t know if your dwarfs will form a more or less static team or if they’ll be expendable. All we know is it will have large drills, crafty dwarfs, tight deadlines, and horrors from beyond the veil. And that’s more than enough to keep us excited until the demo drops and we can check it out for ourselves.
We also know that Steam Veil Games’ sole developer intends to expand this setting with more games in the future. And if right off the bat we’re getting steampunk dwarfs and Lovecraftian horrors, we’re very much curious to see what we’ll be getting next.
Drill Rift Description
Build and manage a remote drill outpost in this turn-based strategy game. Upgrade strategic machinery and level up your dwarves. Balance resource management, strategic upgrades, and madness. If you drill too deeply, you may awaken what should not be awakened.
The dwarfs broke into a cave deeper than any before it. Inside it our scouts found an open rift, a portal to somewhere else. The King of the Mountain gave one order: send a crew, build an outpost, and extract everything you can. You arrive with four workers and just enough supplies to last the first few days. The rest is up to you.
Key features
Build your outpost: To keep your outpost running, you’ll need to build and upgrade key machinery. Choose your upgrades carefully; resources are limited, and every level could mean the difference between progress and collapse.
Face the madness: The deeper you drill, the more your madness will rise. Beware of the depths: some creatures will use your madness to locate your outpost, and if that happens, no amount of Mythrill will appease them.
Manage your dwarves: When you send dwarves to events, their stats will act as a modifier on the dice. Make strategic decisions on who you send, as if their health drops too low or they go mad, the outpost will be doomed.
Resident role-playing RPG game expert. Knows where trolls and paladins come from. You must fight for your right to gather your party before venturing forth.
