Open Pit: Shift Boss
A 3D mine-management game: keep the whole chain moving from a surveyed floor to a loaded ship, one twelve-hour shift at a time.
About Open Pit: Shift Boss
Open Pit: Shift Boss puts you in charge of a fictional open-pit mine seen in full 3D - the benches and spiral haul ramp, the excavators and haul trucks, the ROM pad, crusher and plant, the dumps and ponds, and the railway or road out to a port where ships wait to be loaded. Every machine you see is doing the job the simulation says it is doing.
The orebody is hidden. The block model is only an estimate, so you decide how much grade-control drilling to buy before releasing blocks to dig, and what flitch height to mine each bench in (from 1 m to 5 m within a 10 m bench): thin flitches dig cleaner but slower. Trucks route by what the mine believes a block is; the plant finds out what it really was, and the reconciliation at each handover shows the difference.
Around the chain sit the systems that make a real shift hard: storms that fill the sump and flood the lowest floor, dump cells that must be opened before the last one fills, machines that wear and break down, geotechnical holds that need an inspection, plant water, a moving price, rail windows and vessel demurrage. Three mines play differently - Redgum Range blends iron ore to a contract grade, Wattle Creek follows narrow gold lodes, and Blue Ridge sorts lithium pegmatite from a dyke that dilutes it.
How to play
- Choose a mine and a campaign length. On Redgum Range, the 13-step induction walks you through the whole chain once.
- Tap a block in the pit to inspect it: survey it, order grade control, release it to the drill rigs, or send an excavator to dig a blasted block.
- Open a department from the strip along the bottom to change its levers - flitch height, dispatch, pile destinations, blend, pumps, dump cells, trains and maintenance.
- Speed the clock up when the chain is running. At each shift change, read the handover, then start the next shift.
Controls
- Touch: drag with one finger to orbit, pinch to zoom, drag with two fingers to pan, tap to select. Every control is inside the game area.
- Mouse: left-drag orbits, right-drag (or Shift-drag) pans, the wheel zooms, a click selects.
- Keyboard: arrow keys orbit, + and - zoom, Space pauses, 1 to 4 set the speed (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x), Esc closes the open card or panel.
The rules
- A block can be released only when its surface has a current survey, its model confidence meets your release standard (or it has grade control), and it can be reached from the ramp.
- Drilled blocks on a bench are blasted together once every readiness item is ticked, inside the day-shift blast window and outside weather holds. Blasting is shown only as status: there are no blast designs, quantities, timing or procedures.
- Revenue is paid when a vessel sails fully loaded (or, for gold, when a secure consignment leaves). Ships kept at berth too long cost demurrage.
- Running out of cash does not end the game; it shows on the scorecard and the handover tells you why.
Scoring, saving and limits
Each shift is scored out of 100 across eight weighted areas: value created (25%), plan compliance (15%), product quality (15%), equipment utilisation (10%), water resilience (10%), waste footprint and rehabilitation (10%), customer reliability (10%) and safety-state compliance (5%). A campaign of 15, 45 or 90 days ends with a review of the average; free play has no end.
Your mine is saved in this browser on this device at every handover and every few seconds while you play, along with your settings and best campaign scores. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account. The clear button in Settings, or clearing your browser data, removes it.
Needs a browser with WebGL 2. A recent phone runs it at a lower graphics quality. This is a fictional management game: the mines, people, prices and numbers are simplified and invented. Fictional management simulator. Not operational, engineering, safety or financial advice.
Accessibility
Every action is a real button or control inside the game area, with keyboard focus and screen reader labels, and blocks are marked by text tags and patterns as well as colour. Reduced motion stops the blast flash, dust and camera flights. Sound is off until you turn it on, and you can pause at any time.
Questions
- Do I need to know about mining to play?
- No. The induction explains each step as you do it, every locked action lists what is missing, and each department has a named team member and short notes on what its levers do.
- Is any of this real mining advice?
- No. It is a fictional management simulator. Blasting is abstracted into readiness, clearance and inspection states, and nothing in the game is an operational, engineering, safety or financial procedure.
- What changes between the three mines?
- Redgum Range is iron ore blended to a contract Fe grade and railed to port. Wattle Creek is gold in narrow lodes with oxide and fresh rock, poured into bars and sent by secure transport. Blue Ridge is lithium pegmatite cut by a waste dyke, trucked by road to the port.
- Does it work on a phone?
- Yes. The camera, the departments, the speed controls and every card are inside the game area and sized for touch. A recent phone with WebGL 2 is needed.