⛏️ Pixel Dig
Dig for resources, craft better tools, build a shelter, and watch out for creatures at night.
How to play
- Move with the arrow keys (or WASD, or the on-screen arrows). Walking into dirt, stone, ore, or a tree mines it instead of moving.
- Tap a resource in your hotbar to arm it, then press a direction to place that block next to you.
- Open Crafting to make a Wood Pickaxe first. You'll need it (and better ones later) to mine stone and ores.
- At night, creatures appear. Bump into them to fight, or wall yourself in and skip the fight entirely.
- Your world, tools, and resources all save automatically on this device.
The site's biggest sandbox, with a genuinely small save file
Pixel Dig is a full mine, craft, build, and fight loop in a fixed-size 2D world: mine dirt, stone, ore, and trees just by walking into them, craft progressively better pickaxes to unlock harder materials, place blocks back down to build shelter, and deal with two types of creatures that appear once the day-night cycle turns to darkness. One unified "bump" interaction handles movement, mining, building, and combat, so there's no separate set of buttons to learn for each action.
The technical trick behind it is what makes it work as a browser game at all: the world is generated by a seeded pseudo-random algorithm, so instead of saving the entire map, only your seed plus what you've mined, placed, and collected gets saved. Reload the page and the world regenerates pixel-for-pixel identical from that seed, with your changes layered back on top exactly where you left them.
Combat is forgiving, no permadeath, just a lost heart and an instant respawn with everything you're carrying intact. Free, no download, no account. See more open-ended games on the Sandbox Games page.
Frequently asked questions
Does Pixel Dig save my whole world?
No, and that's deliberate. Only your seed, mined tiles, placed tiles, inventory, tools, and position are saved. The world itself regenerates identically from the seed every time you load the page, which keeps the save tiny.
What happens if I die at night?
Combat is forgiving with no permadeath: you lose a heart and respawn instantly, keeping your tools and resources.
How do I mine stone or ore?
You need the right tool tier. A Wood Pickaxe (craftable early) unlocks stone; better pickaxes unlock iron and gold.
Can I start a completely new world?
Yes, with New World, which asks for a two-tap confirmation first since it clears real progress.