CitaDrill puts an entire city inside a drill. You captain a round, dome-topped machine that grinds its way down through an infested planet, and its cat crew lives, works and dies inside. The official demo trailer runs just over a minute. It opens with a many-eyed monster crushing the dome and a “YOU DIED” screen with a cat skull on it, which sets the tone for what comes after.
Quick answer: CitaDrill is a single-player roguelite city builder from Studio Moka and CobraTekku Games. Its demo is free on Steam now, and the full game is planned for 2026 with no exact date yet.
What kind of game CitaDrill is
CitaDrill combines three genres. You mine for resources, you build a settlement, and you hold off waves of enemies as you would in a tower defense game. Montreal-based Studio Moka develops it, and CobraTekku Games, an indie publisher in Munich, is publishing it. It is a 2D game for Windows PC with stark, high-contrast 1-bit pixel art. Color shows up only for hazards and parts of the interface, so radiation glows and warnings stand out against the black and white.
The game is pitched as an office job gone wrong. You are a “remote operator” hired to steer the drill, and the onboard Drill O.S., a terminal called C.A.T., acts as your guide and your boss. Its first line in the trailer is “Another initiate so soon? HQ must be desperate.” That joke explains the structure. Runs are procedurally generated, an expedition can end in disaster, and another operator is always ready to go. Over many runs you unlock new captains, new city layouts and more of the planet’s backstory.
Building the city under the dome
The building happens inside the drill, on a circular tile grid beneath the glass dome. In the trailer, sectors unlock for a price, with one costing 500. You place modules in the free space and assign workers to stations. Housing does more than give cats a home. Its tooltip says it “prints 1 worker which you assign in a module,” so every new building trades space for staff. Blueprints you collect during a run add more options.
The trailer’s build menu shows how much of the city exists to cope with the environment outside. The modules fall into a few groups:
- Power: Power Node, Polluting Power Node, Radiation Engine, Radioactive Heater
- Living space: Housing, Lead-Lined House, Camp
- Radiation and air control: Radiation Scrubber, Small Radiation Scrubber, Pressure Valve
- Food and greenery: Catgrass Farm, Radioactive Mushroom, Small Tree
- Storage: Emergency Warehouse
- Ritual pieces: Ritual Candle, Altar
Several of these modules depend on each other. A polluting power source next to a radiation scrubber suggests you will often have to choose between more output and a crew that survives. The layout also counts in combat, because the city’s arrangement shapes how well it handles waves and bosses.
Digging through hazards, shrines and shops
Outside the dome, the drill bores through destructible blocks that hold minerals, uranium and catgrass, while a radar sweep pings the area around it. Each biome has its own hazards. The store page jokes about operators who have experience being stretched, squished, set on fire, frozen or gassy. The trailer shows glowing radioactive zones and frozen caverns. In one shot a “Uranium storage at max capacity!” warning appears, a reminder that the drill can collect resources faster than it can store them.
Other inhabitants live underground too. The drill finds a shrine, and an NPC named Ocelli greets the crew as “Deep-travelers!” and welcomes them to the temple of the Crawling Convergence. Further down sits a shop called the SLOP SHOP. A notification reading “New entry unlocked: capacity” points to an in-game codex that grows as you play. Your cats can also wear hats, which the game advertises as a feature.
CitaDrill combat: Waves, weapons and bosses
The game alternates between calm digging and sudden fights. When “Wave Incoming!” appears, burrowing creatures close in from every direction, and the drill fights back with the weapons mounted on its hull. The trailer’s HUD lists these systems:
| System | Role shown |
|---|---|
| ENGINE | Drives the drill |
| SCANNER | Radar sweep for terrain and threats |
| RAD BUBBLE | Radiation protection |
| ARTILLERY | Mounted cannon fire |
| CRYO GUN | Freezing attack |
| LASER | Beam weapon |
| MISSILES | Ranged weapon |
| SAWS | Close-range blades |
An empty slot labeled “INSTALL ME :3” shows that the hardpoints are modular, so you fit weapons as you find or build them. All of these systems can be upgraded, and workers staff them in the same way they staff buildings inside the dome.
Bosses are much bigger. The trailer shows two with health bars, AMOEBA and CREATURE FROM ABOVE, and both have multiple phases. The game also describes colossal citapedes, the giant centipede-like creatures that serve as early boss fights. The trailer ends on a second “YOU DIED” screen, a fair warning about how runs tend to go.
CitaDrill demo on Steam during Next Fest
The demo is free to download now. CitaDrill is taking part in Steam Next Fest, which runs from October 19th to 26th, 2026. A demo update released on October 19th made these changes:
- A new tutorial that starts you in the action quickly
- A few new enemies
- A reworked leader layout selection screen
- Chinese, Portuguese and Russian language support, with French to follow
- Better support for different screen resolutions and smoother transitions
- New and updated art and sound, separate dialogue music and more main menu songs
- A large batch of bug fixes
CitaDrill release date and PC requirements
The full game is planned for 2026. Studio Moka has said a release date announcement is coming but has not set a date yet. The project has passed 15,000 wishlists. You can wishlist it on the CitaDrill Steam page, where it is listed as single-player with Family Sharing support. The interface and subtitles are listed in English, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese. The game has no voice acting.
| Spec | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit) | Windows 10 (64-bit) |
| Processor | 2.5GHz or better | — |
| Memory | 2 GB RAM | — |
| Graphics | 1GB dedicated card, 1280×720 | — |
| DirectX | Version 11 | — |
| Storage | 1 GB | — |
The requirements are low, so nearly any PC that can run Steam can run CitaDrill. The Steam client itself now needs Windows 10 or later, which makes the Windows 7 and 8 listing mostly a formality. The demo is the best way to judge the game while it still has no release date.
