Coal Duty, the co-op extraction horror-comedy where the State sets the quota and your crew plans the escape, enters Early Access on Steam on October 27.
ISTANBUL, TÜRKIYE — October 13, 2026. The State has issued a start date. Coal Duty, the 1-5 player co-op extraction horror-comedy from Corecrew Games, enters Early Access on Steam on Tuesday, October 27.
The demo gave crews six trips into a single mine floor and two quotas to hit. Early Access opens up the rest of the operation: the Easy and Hard floors, mines generated across multiple biomes, the full creature roster and the escape machine the demo kept back. Two complete endings ship on day one. Corecrew puts the first one roughly five hours down, and the second is there for crews who dig deeper or take the other way out.
The premise is the punchline. The sky froze three generations ago, the State kept the mines running, and every miner gets the same instruction: make the quota. Whatever a crew does beyond that is between them and the dark. That includes loot that never quite makes it onto the report, tickets spent at the workshop between shifts, and quiet business with a smuggler in a restricted area the State does not officially acknowledge. Every one of those plans gets made over proximity voice chat, which means every plan can also be heard by whatever is waiting in the next tunnel.
Corecrew is a five-person team, and it is building the rest of the game in public. Around 2,500 players went through the studio’s community playtests before the demo went live, and Early Access is how that feedback keeps steering the build. The studio expects 12 to 18 months in Early Access, with a roadmap that already includes new escape routes and endings, new creatures, new biomes, expanded hub activities and a run of new tools and items.
Coal Duty launches in 13 languages, including Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese. Shift starts October 27. Until then, the Coal Duty demo is free to play on Steam as of October 8th and all through Steam Next Fest October Edition. Press and creators can request Early Access keys through the form below.
ABOUT CORECREW GAMES
Corecrew Games is a five-person independent studio based in Istanbul, Türkiye, formed by former colleagues. Coal Duty is the team’s debut title.
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