s&box

14 July 2026

19 changes in this update

Grass now grows across the surface around the pit, thinning out at the rim and staying clear of the spiral.
A day and night cycle now sweeps the sun across the sky, so the surface shifts through warm daylight, golden dusk and moonlit dark while you dig.
Warm lanterns now hang down the pit walls, lighting the descent so a deep hole glows against the dark instead of falling into flat black.
Fine dust now drifts through the inside of the pit, catching the lantern light like motes in a shaft.
A loading screen now covers startup instead of showing the world assembling itself.
Diggers are a new vehicle you can buy at the garage: instead of carrying ore they mine the pit themselves, digging a chunk and then hauling the spoil back to sell. Pair one with a wheelbarrow in a convoy and the digger keeps the wheelbarrow fed for a hands-off mining crew.
Convoys let you group vehicles that then drive as one: lay them out side by side on a grid, and their lengths and widths combine, they move at the slowest one's speed, and they head back to unload together.

Geodes now glow softly in their gem's colour, so they read as jewels set into the pit walls and catch the eye in a deep, dark shot.
Digging a chunk no longer stutters the game on big holes: the terrain rebuild runs in the background and the next chunk is prepared while you dig, so the ground updates the instant a chunk breaks.
Haulers now drive real two-way traffic: everyone keeps to their own side of the path, and a faster hauler overtakes a slower one whenever there is clear room alongside for the whole pass - the wider the path, the more can run abreast. A hauler now needs a path twice its width (a lane each way) before it heads out, so oncoming traffic always has a clear lane.
Vehicles can now be sold at the garage, freeing the bay to buy a different one in its place; each bay keeps its own price, so an early, cheaper bay stays cheaper to buy back into.
Wall ladders are now built from stacked copies of the ladder at natural size instead of a single mesh stretched over the whole wall, so the rungs stay evenly spaced however deep the hole gets.
Big pits now stay round: the terrain adds more segments per turn as the hole widens, so the outer rings curve smoothly instead of facetting into long straight chords. Small pits are unchanged.
Digging the wide outer rings of a big pit now breaks into smaller, more even bites instead of one oversized chunk per swing, so the dig pace stays steady from the rim in toward the centre.

Pit wall textures no longer stretch, smear into flat colour strips, or run backwards as the hole gets deeper: the walls now tile evenly the whole way down.
Pit walls no longer show sawtooth steps where an old, deeper dig meets the current one: those hand-offs now land exactly on mesh seams, so the walls run clean and continuous.
Returning players now spawn exactly where they left off: the saved position is applied after the world finishes loading, so the load-time resizing can no longer drag it out of place.
Vehicles no longer queue uselessly behind one parked at the dig front when there is room beside it: a digger or hauler now pulls into a free lane and works alongside instead of waiting its turn.
Vehicles now reload in the lane they were actually driving in, so a saved game restores them on their own side of the path (or mid-overtake) instead of dumping them all onto the centre line.

The Mining Crew Update