Rock Solid

Rock Solid is a 1998 Macintosh puzzle game in which the player engineers conveyor systems to haul mined diamonds from cave dig sites back to a central base. Equipment is placed one square at a time at fixed costs, turning each level into a careful optimization exercise of routing, digging, and budget.

Engineering puzzles

Players install horizontal and vertical conveyors square by square. Because digging costs nearly as much as a conveyor, every layout demands analysis of whether to tunnel through obstacles or route around them.

Optimization gameplay

The pricing of structures is tuned so that many situations have distinctly optimal solutions, rewarding players who develop rules of thumb for common design patterns.

Why it appeals

Reviewers note the satisfaction of starting up a finished network and watching piles of diamond dust travel through an intricate web of conveyors back to base, tapping into a love of engineering within tight constraints.

Platform

Listed under the Puzzle category with a platform perspective, the title runs on 68k Macintosh hardware.