Gold Miner: Hook & Strike is a gold miner arcade game about one tap. A claw swings back and forth over a buried field. Tap, and it drops straight down along the angle it was on. Whatever it grabs, it hauls up and sells. You get sixty seconds and one money goal per level, and every choice in this mining game comes down to where that tap goes.

DIG

You know the loop: aim, drop, haul, sell. This field fights back, though. Next to the gold, diamonds and mystery sacks sit rocks, bones and live TNT. A big rock is worth $20 and eats the seconds you needed.

Moles carry their loot on their backs, so you can size one up before you spend a shot on it. Scare one and it runs until it's out of breath. When it stops to pant, that's your chance.

Armoured moles need the drill tip. Without it every plate takes three trips, and a boss won't give up a plate at all.

SPEND

Between levels there's a shop with dynamite, a strength drink, a lucky clover, a rock collector's book, gem polish, the diamond drill tip, and later a shock coil for the trap moles that grab your hook. Prices follow what each level is really worth, so the shop never gets ahead of the mine.

RISK

A run is split into acts. Finish an act and the money in your pocket goes into the vault, and the next act starts at $0. At a later checkpoint you can take some of it back out.

Miss a goal and you lose the act. You go back to its first level with empty pockets, keeping only the gear that carries over, and everything you hadn't banked is gone. That risk is the heart of the game.

BOSSES

Every act ends in a boss battle, ten in all, at levels 5, 20, 38, 59, 83, 110, 140, 173, 209 and 248. Each one is armoured, and none of them simply has more health. They change the board itself, and working out how is half the fight.

Beat a boss, hook it once more while it's down, and it joins your bestiary for good. You can even summon it to wander the surface while you dig.

THE MINE

This is a single-player adventure that goes underground one act at a time, ten places deep. It starts at a working mine at dawn and takes you down through flooded tunnels, a magma sill, old machinery that never stopped running, a layer of bones, a glowing fungus bloom and a salt cathedral, to a vein where the walls are made of gold, and finally to whatever owns the mine.

Detailed, retro-style 2D art, thirteen music tracks, and the whole game in English and Vietnamese.

PERKS

There are forty roguelike perks. At each act checkpoint you choose one of three, and it stays with you for the rest of the run. All but one of them cut both ways, giving you something and taking something else away.

GOOD TO KNOW

This is a casual gold miner game with no in-app purchases. Nothing is sold for real money.

Ads are optional rewarded videos, and they only show up after you lose a level. Watch one for twenty extra seconds, up to three times per level, or skip it. Nothing else changes.

It plays offline, so you don't need Wi-Fi, an account or a sign-up.

Portrait, one thumb, sixty seconds a level. It's the classic gold rush claw game turned into a treasure hunt that takes timing, nerve and the right upgrades. Swing the claw, haul up the treasure and see how many acts you can bank.