Video Game / Manic Miners

Manic Miners is a Fan Remake of Lego's Cult Classic Real-Time Strategy game Rock Raiders.

The story is the same as the original PC release, a company of Space Miners known as the Rock Raiders find themselves stranded in another galaxy after an incident with a wormhole and need to mine the nearby planet's energy crystals to power their ship and find their way home.

The game comes with four campaigns:

• Standard: The original scenarios with tweaks and adjustments for a better play experience.
• Remastered: 25 levels from the original remixed to take advantage of Manic Miners' new features.
• Baz's Mod: The popular community mod with 33 new maps.
• Original: The original scenarios exactly as they were, frustrations and all.

Not to be confused with Manic Miner, the prequel to Jet Set Willy.

The game is available for free from itch.io

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Manic Miners provides examples of:

• Achievement Mockery: Having 10 miners "teleport to safety" unlocks the Skull face print.
• Action RTS: Just like the original, you can switch from giving orders to an over-the-shoulder or first-person view of one of your Rock Raiders, and you can drill, shovel, transport materials, and drive vehicles.
• Adapted Out:
  • The original tutorial missions are absent with three new maps taking their place. The new campaigns still have the map slots where the tutorial missions were supposed to be.
  • A lot of upgrade options are absent from vehicles, most notably the ability for the Loader Dozer to transport cargo.
• Anti-Frustration Features: There have been several quality of life improvements.
  • There is now an option to make vehicles not respond to automatic commands, very useful for keeping track of cargo vehicles which are liable to track over the whole map for ore.
  • The Electric fence option is marked with a red cross if it won't connect to the power grid, taking out the guesswork.
  • Rock Raiders will automatically train if they require more than their current tool limit.
  • Rock Raiders will only use Studs to make Power Paths if an Ore Refinery has been upgraded to its maximum efficiency, preventing the loss of ore.
  • The HUD has a new panel with more information, such as how many energy crystals you have, how many you can spare, how many Rock Raiders you have teleported down (and if there's enough air for them), and other options.
  • There's even a set of options in the game menu to change the frequency or strength of in-game events should it not be to your liking. You could turn down landslide or monster spawn rates and slow down a lava erosion...or you could crank up all of the hazard frequencies all the way.
• Arrange Mode: The Remastered campaign is designed to change up the levels from the original game to add some unique twists on the gameplay. For one example, Explosive Action now has two more vehicles to find and return, one of them being a Granite Grinder, with the map being designed around its new jump ability.
• Artificial Stupidity: Downplayed: The AI of your Rock Raiders is significantly better, but you still have the odd hiccups of Small Transport Trucks deciding to pick up a piece of ore across the map while it's ferrying resources to a building site from the tool store, or your base defenders deciding that the rock monster that just appeared across the map is more important than the Slimy Slug draining your power station.
• Balance Buff: A lot of vehicles considered not worth the investment in the original release have received improvements.
  • The Hover Scout no longer requires pilot training to use, making it more useful as a personal transport.
    • The Hover Scout and Tunnel Transport also allow the Rock Raider to carry one resource with them, giving them limited, but useful, cargo carrying ability.
  • Several vehicles^note Hover Scout, Rapid Rider and Granite Grinder can now leap over two tiles or between diagonal ones, making it useful for navigating tight caves, and over/between small bodies of lava and water.
  • Mining Lasers have an indicator to show how much energy they'll use per shot with them having a generous free shot range, and the Mobile Laser Cutters will move into free-shot range when blasting walls. On new maps, Recharge Seams are much more common than they were in the original.
  • The Loader Dozer can now scoop up several piles of rubble before doing its extended dumping animation, and a player-controlled Loader Dozer doesn't play the animation at all.
  • Sonic Blaster charges are no longer used solely for taking on Slimy Slugs, they are now capable of stunning all monsters and don't need to be manually deployed by the player.
  • Pusher Beams deal more damage and always push monsters in the opposite of their target destination.
• Character Customization: In addition to the vast legions of identical Rock Raiders, players can now create their own troupe of custom miners. More options to do so can be unlocked by collecting energy crystals for credits, encouraging the player to continue playing scenarios.
• Checkpoint Starvation: There are no mid-mission saves, just like the original.
• Construct Additional Pylons: Each Support Station can provide air for up to 10 miners. You can teleport in more, but then you start running out of air.
• Dancing Mook Credits: Your mooks! Complete the final mission in the Remastered Campaign and you're treated to the credits, where the Rock Raiders and your custom mining crew march across the screen to a jaunty tune.
• Developer's Foresight: In the tutorial where you must mine four energy crystal seams, there's not much stopping you from mining them ahead of time via deploying miners or zapping one with the Mining Laser early. When the tutorial comes around to explaining the objective, it will note if you mined any seams early and compliment your diligence.
• Endless Game: There is now an option to play scenarios past the goal, letting the player harvest more energy crystals to spend on customization options.
• Exact Time to Failure: The oxygen meter now has a timer that not only tells you how much air you have left, but also updates depending on how many Rock Raiders you have active.
• Giant Mook: Giant Rock/Ice/Lava monsters appear in the Remastered missions, with higher HP and damage to match. And the giant Slimy Slugs in the Remastered version of Back To Basics.
• Guide Dang It!: Steps have been taken to avert this with new tutorials covering the functionality of all buildings, vehicles and weapons, especially with some not-so-obvious mechanics such as firing vehicle-mounted lasers while they're being transported.
• Money Sink: Chief's Shop has two hat options hidden behind 200 and 1000 Energy Crystals.
• Nerf: For the sake of a balanced gameplay experience, a few elements from the original game have been weakened, both in and against the player's favor.
  • The prices on vehicles have been adjusted, with many of the heavy vehicles being much more expensive than they were in the original game.
  • Slimy Slugs are no longer immune to all damage but Sonic Blast charges, while still maintaining their weakness to them.
  • Laser Beams will no longer kill Rock and Ice Monsters instantly, while Ice Beams slow monsters down instead of outright freezing them.
  • To address the problem of Geologist training being redundant in the original game, all vehicles, with the exception of the Chrome Crusher, no longer have scanner upgrades.
• New Game Plus: The Remastered Campaign's description states that it's intended as the "New Game Plus" to the Standard campaign.
• No Fair Cheating: Averted: for the most part, you have free reign to "cheat" by turning down gameplay settings, as well as temporarily unlocking customization elements and even levels. The only thing the game will explicitly won't let you cheat is unlocking the credits sequence.
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: The first time the game starts, a disclaimer screen stating that this is a fan project not sponsored by LEGO will appear, and the player must check the "I understand this is a fan game and I want to play!" checkbox before proceeding.
• Refitted for Sequel: The Tunnel Transport and Canteen were both cut concepts from the original game but have now been fully implemented.
  • The In-Game Level Editor was also brought back as a separate mode.
• Rise to the Challenge: The Remastered version of Hot Stuff does more with the volcano mentioned in the briefing:Get far enough in the cavern and you'll trigger an eruption, forcing you to scramble for higher ground before resuming your energy crystal search.
• Suddenly Voiced: The "Unique" miners of the original toyline also have new voicelines when working in the mines, and the voicelines are available for your custom miners.
• Shout-Out: Most of the customisation options are based off other Lego themes from the 90's including Lego Adventures, Time Cruisers, Lego Racers, and even some from LEGO Island.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Sonic Stunners were changed from deployable bombs that had to be placed like dynamite to grenades that your miners chuck at the enemy.
• Timed Mission: It's often a scramble to set up a Support Station as quickly as possible to prevent the air running out.
  • Some missions will have lava eroding the ground, requiring you to get your mining crew to quickly stem the flow before you're out of usable space or cut off from critical resources. The timer in this case is how fast the lava erodes the cavern away.
• Unlockable Difficulty Levels: A variation in that only the Standard and Remastered campaigns are available from the start. Baz's mod and the "Classic" campaign (which is listed as "frustrations and all") are unlocked when the player completes either the Standard or Remastered campaigns.
• Utility Weapon: Or Weaponized Utility: with the changes made to the laser weapons, the lasers on the Mobile Laser Cutters and Chrome Crusher and the Mining Laser building can be used as both wall-busting tools or as base defense armaments, especially useful to zap Slimy Slugs slipping through your electric fences or Rock Monsters trying to chow down on your recently-excavated Energy Crystals.