Fossil Clicker: Idle Digging

Tap the rock. Break it open. That single motion is where it all starts.

■ Crack stone, find nodules
The dig site is scattered with boulders. Swing your pick and they shatter. Most are just rock. But every so often, one splits to reveal a nodule with something buried inside. The crack of stone, the scatter of debris, the numbers leaping off the screen. Simple actions that stack up until you cannot put the phone down.

■ The real work: careful extraction
A nodule takes you into the dig view. A mass of stone sits on the pedestal, and somewhere inside it, a fossil waits.

Your job is to chip away the surrounding rock and expose it. But strike the fossil itself and its integrity drops. Integrity sets your payout and gets stamped permanently into your codex entry. Pulling one out at a flawless 100% feels very, very good.

The matrix is not uniform. Pale sandstone crumbles in a hit or two, while dark rock and white quartz veins take far more work. Hard material runs through the block in seams and layers, so you start thinking tactically: leave that vein alone, come around from the soft side.

And as you dig, any stone that loses its connection to the fossil collapses on its own. Whole chunks tumble away at once and the full shape of the fossil is suddenly there in front of you. That moment alone is worth the digging.

■ 26 fossils to collect
Ammonites, trilobites, crinoids and petrified wood to start. Then tyrannosaur teeth, triceratops horns, pterosaur wing bones, a full archaeopteryx skeleton. At the very top sit rough diamond, emerald, an amethyst geode and a fragment of meteorite.

Every fossil is sculpted in 3D. Your codex displays the actual models, tracking your best integrity and how many of each you have found. Fill all 26 and you will have built yourself a proper museum.

■ It keeps going while you are away
Buy mining drones and they keep breaking rock even when you are not watching. Hit the AUTO button in the header and your digger runs to the rock and works it himself. He stays on one boulder until it breaks, then moves to the nearest one, clearing the site without wasted steps.

Eight upgrades to invest in: pick power, a blast radius that carries force into neighbouring blocks, drone count and drone speed, a lucky compass that pulls rarer fossils, a fossil sensor that raises nodule odds, a critical strike for triple damage and coins, and an appraiser's contacts that lifts all income. What you level first changes the whole rhythm of the game.

■ Five dig sites
Start at the grass outcrop, then push on to burning dunes, a frozen valley, volcanic black gravel and finally a sunken deep-sea structure. Each site changes the sky, the terrain, the plants and even the key and tempo of the soundtrack. Deeper sites mean harder rock, but they hold fossils you cannot find anywhere else.

■ Contracts and medals
Three museum contracts are always open. Break rock, gather fossils, pull something rare, and collect coins and gems for it. Fifteen medals mark your progress as a field digger.

Gems open geode crates, which guarantee rare or better. Handy when there is a stubborn gap in your codex.

■ You might enjoy this if
- You like the feel of a job well done
- You like filling in a collection
- You play idle and incremental games
- Dinosaurs, fossils or minerals appeal to you
- You want something you can pick up for a few minutes at a time

Japanese and English, switchable with one tap.

Grab your pick. There is an era down there that nobody has seen yet.