Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

Rust, Dust & Droids is a top-down mining, base-building and automation sim.

A collapse has sealed your 'Cog' (a team of mining robots) deep underground, cut off from contact with the surface for who knows how long. Dig, build and power your way up through hostile environments with the goal of re-establishing contact - if there's anything left still...

Note: At time of writing this list is correct but will be regularly updated as new features are added.

Current Features

• Command a Cog of mining droids. They don't eat, sleep or tire. They run on power and wear out when the dust gets too much.

• Six types: Miner, Builder, Hauler, Rescue, Repair and Grinder. Each does their own specific work, although with a little overlap.

• Layers of procedurally generated underground levels, joined by shafts that offer safer travel. Ignored at your own peril.

• Each level is divided into biome regions by hardened rock. Upgrade your miner's drill heads to dig through harder terrain.

• Production chains from basic scrap and stone through to more advanced materials needed to be manufactured to progress.

• Power grids with generators, batteries, wiring and switches. Machines stop when the power does including the rechargers that keep the Cog alive.

• Simulated liquids and gases. Liquid flows tile by tile and gas spreads through caves and rooms mirroring simplified real world physics.

• Pipe networks with pumps, valves, filters, vents and taps can be placed to route and control liquid and gases to where they are needed.

• Build walled rooms with door variants to keep out liquid and gas you don't want flooding the base.

• Filtered bins with job priorities organise materials and components to keep the clutter down.

• Dust clogs your bots, sulphur, acid and chlorine corrode them, floods stop machines, the wrong gas can choke them. Manage the hazards to stay alive.

• A bot that runs out of power or health stops where it is, Rescue bots can recover it and take it for repair.

• Life can be tough. Lose a key bot that's the only source of something with none other to mount a rescue or repair, and the Cog slowly dies.

• Find Data Cubes and artefacts buried in the wreckage. Analyse them to unlock buildings, recipes and bot mods.

• Bot mods including sonar, heat plating, battery packs, radar and more let you customise each bot.

• Lamps and Klystron Towers reveal the rock around you. Full customisation of this in settings including Fog of war.

• Support for colour blind palette and further customisation of the display.

• Tutorials and guided play to help you.

• Autosave and multiple save slots.

• Basic Controller support.

• In-game Codex with interactive tech tree.

Planned Features

This is a broad but not exhaustive list of what's currently planned.

• The surface, and the final goal (end-game to be announced).

• Additional game mechanics.

• Additional sprite animations and polish.

• More materials, tech chains, buildings and bot mods.

• Further bot specialisation.

• Additional hazards to avoid.

• Extra levels to dig through.

• More new game customisation and win/lose options.

• Increased starting scenarios, and tutorials.

• Further Codex expansion.

• Steam Workshop and modding tools.

• Steam Deck verification.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Some of this game's 2D artwork including the logo and store page images — began as AI-generated images, worked up from reference art we own. Every image is hand-picked by the developer and retouched by hand as needed; nothing ships unseen. The music is AI-generated, created with Suno under a paid licence. Sound effects are royalty-free recordings or created in our in-house studio, not AI-generated. The game does not generate any content while you play — there is no live AI generation of any kind.