Pocket quarry

How to play Pocket quarry

Pocket quarry drops you next to a small floating island and leaves you alone with it. Drag to swing the camera around, pinch or scroll to zoom, then tap a block face to act on it. The toolbox under the island holds everything you can use: slot one is the pickaxe, so the block you tap disappears, and every other slot is a material that appears against the face you tapped. Tap a slot or press the matching number key, one to nine. Water, fire and ivy behave once they land: a block of water is a spring that runs seven blocks and finds the nearest way down, fire burns in the air beside wood and climbs it, ivy creeps down whatever you hang it on. Undo in the top bar walks back your last 40 changes. Everything saves itself, undo trail included, so you can close the tab halfway up a tower.

Tips

• Every block of water is a spring that runs seven blocks and heads for the nearest gap in the floor. Dig it back out and the stream drains with it.
• A single block of water beside a flame puts it out, which is the only way to stop a fire early. A flame standing on an ember block is the exception: that one burns for good.
• Bury ember blocks inside a wall, the light spills onto everything nearby.
• Glass passes that light through, so a glass roof over an ember floor lights the whole room.
• Grass creeps over any bare dirt that can see the sky, so a flat earth roof greens over on its own.
• Undo goes 40 changes deep and survives a reload, so a wrong tap is never permanent.

About Pocket quarry

Block-building sandboxes are one of the oldest ideas in games: hand someone a grid, let them take pieces out and put pieces back, and see what they do with it. There is no win state to chase, which is rather the point. People use them for shelters, sculptures, staircases to nowhere and small monuments to their own patience. Pocket quarry keeps that loop and shrinks it to something you can get a whole session out of on a phone. The island is deliberately bounded at 16 by 16 blocks and 12 high, so the whole thing fits in one glance and one small save file. What it adds is a world that keeps moving while you look at it: water finds its level, fire finds the wood, and the green slowly takes over anything you leave alone.

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