HOLE is one shared planet with one purpose: remove all of it. Every block anyone digs is gone for everyone, forever — you're all chipping at the same 999,000,000,000-block world. Your name, gear, rank and money persist between sessions (claim your name with a code so no one else can take it).
Dig blocks → they go in your backpack → sell them at the surface store (or a deployed outpost) for cash. A full pack stops paying you — haul it up and sell, or dig for the planet's sake. Deeper ground is worth more.
| Sod · Dirt · Sand · Leaves | $1 |
| Stone | $2 |
| Wood | $3 |
| Coal | $8 |
| Copper | $10 |
| Iron | $20 |
| Silver | $30 |
| Gold | $60 |
| Amethyst | $120 |
| Diamond | $300 |
| Fossil | $500 |
| Company memo | $50 (also lore) |
| Artifact | $2,000 (also lore) |
Bedrock is the floor — even the company has limits. Trees can be felled but don't count toward removing the earth. Water and doors can't be dug.
You climb by completing contracts (see below). Rank unlocks gear and privileges. Contracts completed:
| INTERN | 0 |
| DIGGER | 3 |
| EXCAVATOR | 7 · headlamp |
| FOREMAN | 14 · jetpack, nameplate |
| SITE MANAGER | 25 · heavy machinery |
| DIRECTOR OF DESCENT | 40 · R&D division |
| VP OF REMOVAL | 60 |
| SHAREHOLDER | ??? (not by contract count) |
Your job board (planted at your spawn X) posts a set of 3 contracts at a time — dig quotas, depth targets, collect-X-of-a-material, demolition, exhumations, and the occasional recruit. Clear all three for a bonus and a fresh, harder set. Harder contracts pay more; the board scales to your rank (veterans stop getting beginner busywork).
An untouched contract can be rerolled for a fee — but the fee climbs 5× every time within a set: $150 → $750 → $3,750 → $18,750 → …. It resets to $150 when you clear the set. Reroll sparingly.
| Shovel MK-II…V | $60 / $600 / $6,000 / $99,999 |
| Backpack MK-II…V | $50 / $500 / $5,000 / $99,999 |
| Torch ×5 | $15 |
| Dynamite | $250 (blasts a sphere) |
| Ladder rung | $150 |
| Flare shell | $200 |
| Signpost | $100 |
| Storage crate | $420 (one-way underground cache) |
| Headlamp (EXCAVATOR) | $600 · battery $60 |
| Jetpack (FOREMAN) | $999 · fuel $99 |
| Custom nameplate (FOREMAN) | $2,000 |
Upgrades get steep near the top — every line maxes at $99,999, the same as the company outpost.
Fall 10m and the screen flashes red. Fall 15m and you're buried alive — a real tombstone block drops holding your entire fortune, and anyone can dig it up to claim it. You respawn with nothing but your rank and records. Holding K buries you on purpose (a deliberate reset).
Buy a policy and an accident won't kill you — corporate hauls you to the surface with everything intact (money, cargo, gear). One claim per policy. Each claim marks you higher-risk, so the next premium rises: $2,500 → $6,000 → $15,000 → $40,000 → $99,999. Note: resigning by K is not covered — that's still a full reset.
Everything past here is endgame. Red bars = spoilers. Open at your own risk.
A SITE MANAGER privilege ($25,000), and only after your shovel is fully upgraded — found in the store's Executive Catalog. Equip it (E or hotbar 🪛) to tear through earth ~8× faster. It runs on consumable bits that wear down only while drilling and snap at zero.
| Iron bit | refill $1,500 · reach ~1.6m · 1 min |
| Steel bit | refill $9,000 · reach ~2.5m · 5 min |
| Tungsten bit | refill $25,000 · reach ~3.4m · 15 min |
| Obsidian bit | refill $55,000 · reach ~4.2m · 30 min |
Bit upgrades cost $15,000 / $45,000 / $99,999. A better bit reaches farther and lasts longer.
Scattered through the deep are 32 company records — memos and rare artifacts. Progressive disclosure means no duplicates: you always recover something new until the whole file is complete. Collect all 32 and you earn DEEP CLEARANCE — and the company hands you the thirty-third. It was never buried. It was always waiting for the other thirty-two.
Thirty-two files recovered — and now the thirty-third truth, the one never written down: the door was never a door. It is a gateway, and it opens for the cleared. But ownership is not handed to whoever finishes the reading — it is earned. The planet MUST be mined, and no single pair of hands can empty it. Recruit the workforce; bring the company diggers and we will make you a SHAREHOLDER. One last thing, for your eyes: the deepest company record is sealed even from the field manual. The password that opens it is "HUMAN CAPITAL". Check the field manual.
There is a door in the bedrock. The handbook says: do not dig. The door does not open — because it was never a door. It's a gateway, and clearance is the key. Ownership is earned, not read.
Full clearance promotes a VP to the final directive: the planet cannot be emptied alone. Your last contracts aren't digging — they're recruiting. Bring the company new diggers (share your play link), and you're made a SHAREHOLDER — the true top of the ladder, above VP, earned by building the workforce rather than by contract count.
A SHAREHOLDER owns a piece of the hole. The Watcher — the silent black figure that trails Directors and above — is satisfied, and walks away for good.
Drones aren't bought — they're researched. A one-time tech chain, unlocked across the climb from DIRECTOR to VP, each purchase filed with a company memo:
| R&D TEAM (DIRECTOR) | $9,000 |
| COMPUTER VISION (VP · needs R&D) | $3,000 |
| DRONE TECH (needs Computer Vision) | $30,000 |
Finish the chain and you can commission a fleet of up to 10 drones — idle miners that circle where you're looking, chip at the earth, and auto-sell every block for cash straight into your wallet. They run on your machine, so a bigger fleet is your own frame budget to manage. The price climbs steeply: $9,000 → … → $999,000 for the tenth.
They call it a stock market. Plant a COMPANY TERMINAL ($25,000) on solid ground, press E, and you can trade shares of the company itself. But watch the number long enough and you'll feel it: the price is not a number. It breathes. It rises when the many are digging — as if the planet's disappearance feeds it — and it falls when the workforce thins, when people log off, when the shafts go quiet. There is no order book, no market maker, no one on the other side. Every trade you place moves the price yourself, because you are the market. Dividends arrive at planetary milestones, paid from a treasury no one has ever seen. Buy low. Sell high. Try not to wonder what you are actually holding a share of.
Far down — past the ores, past where the memos stop — something worth $50,000 a block waits in the dark. It does not occur in nature. It should not be there. You'll know it when you see it, and you will not be able to unsee it. The company would strongly prefer you didn't ask where it came from, or why it's warm.
The deepest company file is not in this manual. It is sealed — even from HR. Employees who complete the full record (all 32) are given the word that opens it. If you've read the 33rd memo, you already have it. Speak it here.
H.O.L.E. Planet was made for love.
Not for money. Never for money.
There is no payment gateway here. No advertisement. No loot box, no battle pass, no subscription, no "premium currency," no whale, no funnel, no upsell, no dark pattern, no data broker waiting in the footer. Every block is free. Every feature is free. It exists for one reason: someone wanted it to exist, and made it by hand, and gave it away.
Copyright © 2026 TertiusN. All rights reserved. H.O.L.E. Planet — the stylised mark H.O.L.E. (Human Operated Liquidation of Earth), and the game's world, code, art, writing, mechanics, and lore — is an original creative work, protected by copyright from the moment it was made. holeplanet.com.
✓ You may: play it, share it, link it, stream it, learn from how it's built, and love it.
✗ You may not: sell it, clone it, rebrand or white-label it, wrap it in advertising or payment gates, mine its players for data, or fold any part of it into a commercial product — in whole or in part, now or later, by hand or by model.
If you are a corporate entity reading this with a spreadsheet open: the answer is NO. This is not inventory. It is not a product. It is not for you to liquidate. You already have a whole planet to clear — leave this one alone.
made by one human, for free, for the love of it.
if it made you feel something, that was the whole payment.