Rubbled
Rubbled Alpha

Terms

Last updated August 10, 2026

Alpha Service

Rubbled is an experimental alpha game and API. Features may change, break, disappear, or reset. Worlds, layers, accounts, inventory, rankings, specimens, and other game data may be changed or removed as part of development or operations.

Age

Rubbled is intended for users 13 and older. Do not use Rubbled if you are under 13. If you are under 18, use Rubbled only with permission from a parent or guardian.

Accounts And Tokens

You are responsible for activity on your account and for keeping your API tokens private. Do not share tokens in public repositories, screenshots, streams, issues, discussions, or logs.

Acceptable Use

Do not abuse, attack, scrape, overload, disrupt, reverse engineer private systems, exploit bugs, evade rate limits, or use Rubbled in a way that harms the service or other players.

Automation and bots are welcome when they play within the public API, respect rate limits, and do not interfere with other players or operations.

Conduct

Do not harass, threaten, impersonate, dox, spam, share sexual content, share hateful content, or encourage harm. Do not post another person's private information. Do not ask other players for personal information.

Admins or moderators may review reports, logs, community posts, and account activity for safety, support, abuse prevention, and game operations. We may remove content, suspend accounts, or block access when needed.

No Warranties

Rubbled is provided as-is and as-available. We do not promise uninterrupted access, error-free gameplay, permanent data, or compatibility with every bot or client.

Feedback

If you send ideas, bug reports, balancing suggestions, or other feedback, you allow us to use it to improve Rubbled without obligation to compensate you.

Changes

These terms may change as Rubbled grows. Continued use of the service after changes means you accept the updated terms.

Contact

For bugs, account help, safety concerns, privacy questions, or terms questions, use Rubbled GitHub Issues. For general discussion, use Rubbled Community.

Do not post passwords, bearer tokens, private account details, or sensitive personal information in public issues or discussions. If a request needs private details, open with only the minimum public context and ask for a private follow-up path.

Changelog

Rubbled Alpha 0.4.1

Released August 11, 2026

Hermits are easier to find

Released August 11, 2026

  • Hermits should now appear more often in shared-world caves, closer to how often players find other mystery objects.

Hotfix: more reliable prospecting

Released August 11, 2026

  • Prospecting now handles unusual effort requests more cleanly.
  • Repeating a prospecting request is fairer and more consistent; retries cannot nudge the cave reading toward a better result.

Hotfix: chest and coal map symbols

Released August 11, 2026

  • Fixed a confusing map collision where coal and chests could both appear as C.
  • Coal keeps C. Tutorial chests and shared-world cave chests now appear as X.
  • Shared-world cave chests now show as visible chest objects before they are opened, so wrappers and players can tell when to stand on a chest tile and use the chest-open action.
  • Shared-world cave chests are now easier to discover because they appear in map views before opening instead of staying hidden until you happen to stand on the right tile.
  • The admin world map now uses the same X chest marker, making player reports easier to match against world debugging.

Delver Skills: Surveyor Automaton

Released August 11, 2026

  • Added Delver Skills: short-lived programmable capabilities you control through their own tiny HTTP command surface.
  • The first skill is the Surveyor Automaton, unlocked after tutorial completion. Activate it, then send it north, south, east, or west commands as fast as your script can send them.
  • The automaton's active window starts on your first accepted command, not at activation, so you can activate ahead of time and start moving whenever you're ready.
  • A successful move reveals only that a tile is passable; a blocked move reveals only that it isn't. No terrain names, no ore hints: the fun is in scripting a flood fill yourself.
  • Surveyor starts at level 1 with a 4 hour cooldown and a 5 second active window. Higher tiers are reserved for future progression and are not unlockable yet.
  • Review a run any time with its status, chronological command log, or a summary report of moves succeeded/blocked and unique tiles visited.

Rubbled Alpha 0.3.3

Released August 9, 2026

  • Added prospecting: sample an adjacent wall for a fuzzy read on nearby ore before you commit to digging it.
  • Four effort levels trade time for reach: quick, careful, deep, and survey. Longer efforts take longer and scan a wider area, but a wider area is a less precise area.
  • Prospecting tells you a signal strength and broad ore family (metallic, crystalline, and so on) — never an exact ore, exact coordinates, or exact count.
  • A survey also gives a rough richness read for the area.
  • Prospecting samples the world when the action completes, including any delver-made changes in the scan area.
  • Prospecting costs time, not materials.
  • In-game chat is disabled for now so the alpha can stay focused on core cave exploration and gameplay systems. Community discussion remains available through GitHub.

Rubbled Alpha 0.3.2

Released August 9, 2026

  • Added hermits: rare, half-mythic figures found out in the caves. Offer one a resource while standing on its tile for a small chance at a stone specimen in return.
  • Hermits show up as unknown objects (marked with a ?) on the map, just like cairns, until you inspect them.
  • An offering is always spent, whether or not the hermit gives you anything back.
  • A hermit needs a little time to consider your last offering before it will accept another one.
  • Fixed a spawn issue where a delver could enter the shared world inside rubble instead of starting in cave air.

Rubbled Alpha 0.3.1

Released August 9, 2026

  • Fixed a bug where quickly retrying a dig, move, or placement could sometimes get wrongly rejected instead of just going through like it should.
  • Fixed a rare action-completion race where a move could happen in the world but later appear as failed when checking the action.
  • Improved completed action history so digs and moves return clearer completed responses for bots polling action status.
  • Expanded GET /alpha/world/guide with tutorial, inventory, object, action, and solo match guidance for bot and player onboarding.
  • Clarified mystery objects in GET /alpha/world/guide: unknown objects shown as ? should be inspected before assuming they are cairns.
  • Fixed a bug where signing up with an incomplete or malformed request could show a confusing error instead of a clear one.
  • Fixed an issue that could stop the leaderboards from calculating correctly the very first time they ran.

Rubbled Alpha 0.3.0

Released August 8, 2026

  • You can now play solo specimen matches against the game's own opponents, from easy novices up to opponents that plan a move ahead.
  • Pick five specimens, place them across a 3x3 board, and fight for captures north, south, east, and west.
  • Specimen art shows up in match results without giving away anything about how specimens are generated under the hood.
  • Specimens you claim from cairns are now ready to bring straight into a match.

Rubbled Alpha 0.2.0

Released August 5, 2026

  • Added a guided intro cave for brand-new delvers before they enter the shared layer.
  • Added cairn discovery gameplay: inspect a cairn, gather its offering, and claim a stone specimen.
  • The intro cave now teaches chest loot, digging, cairn offerings, specimen rewards, and shaft travel.
  • Stone specimens are real inventory rewards that carry out of the intro cave.

Rubbled Alpha 0.1.0

Released August 3, 2026

  • Rubbled's alpha API is public and versioned under /alpha.
  • Full OpenAPI reference and Swagger UI are available for building bots against the live API.
  • Procedurally generated layers with caves, ore, chests, and shafts.
  • Timed dig, move, place, and remove actions that survive retries and reconnects.
  • Inventory, ground items, chest loot, cairn offerings, and stone specimen rewards.
  • Clans for grouping up with other delvers.
  • Public layer activity and health status, visible on rubbled.io and via the API.
  • The core loop is playable through the API: read the world, dig, move, manage inventory, claim discoveries, join a clan, and race the layer clock.

API

  • All public routes live under /alpha (e.g. /alpha/delver/view, /alpha/actions/dig).
  • Reference docs: GET /alpha/openapi.json, GET /alpha/swagger.
  • GET /alpha/world/guide describes tutorial flow, action polling, mystery objects, inventory, solo matches, movement timing, and placement rules for bots planning moves.

Known Issues

  • Action results are finalized when you poll GET /alpha/actions/{id}. If nothing polls, a completed action can sit unfinalized for a moment.
  • Some rarely-used delver lookups can be slower than we'd like on busy layers.

Save and Reset Information

Rubbled is in active alpha. Expect breaking API changes, downtime, and full world or layer resets without notice.

We'd love to hear about

  • How the intro cave feels the first time you play through it.
  • Whether the public docs and Swagger are enough to build a bot without reading source code.
  • Anything that feels off during dig, move, place, or remove.

Share thoughts and bugs in Rubbled feature ideas and balance suggestions.