Dig Night

Dig Night is masterful about its particular mood. The intentionally awkward dialogue paces itself with lots of ellipses and silence and subtle facial expressions. The game takes place entirely during nights. Your apartment is a mess, the streets are filthy, you rummage through trash to find better equipment. You're tired and your job sucks, and you save by smoking a cigarette. You should play this game at night to really feel it. Combat isn't random, but you can see the enemies coming and battles start when you make contact with them. Basically all fights other than bosses are 1v1. There is a weapon triangle sort of system with Rage > Bloodlust > Fear > Rage, and your weapons all have one of those three types and you can change mid-battle. But more importantthan the type is what kind of prompt it has. To do damage you might have to time a button press to a visual cue or press a sequence of buttons before time's up, otherwise you just miss. And there's one prompt of repeat timing that just wouldn't work for me, but it was rarely a problem. Exp is plentiful and enemies go down in 2-3 hits usually if you know the weakness. The game is divided up into four parts, four separate days. Each "dungeon" is rather heavy on puzzles that are for the most part simple. Find thing, move thing, use thing. However I did resort to looking up the official guide for something in the sewers on day 2, which is only in Japanese, and I still have no idea what the logic of one puzzle was because it seems utterly random or lost in translation. Sometimes it's frustrating not knowing what you're missing so you run back and forth through the same rooms. At 5 hours to reach credits, I am satisfied. The translation's a little iffy, the economy is unusual in that you get basically all weapons and equipment for free but have to spend on healing, and I don't know how you're supposed to heal status conditions. The 1v1 combat makes for factors of randomness to have a big impact on your success, but there is a retry system that I don't fully understand which you can use if the rolls are unfavorable. All in all, a worthwhile experience.