I've had this seemingly unremarkable game in my wishlist for a while, but when it was in a Steam sale I finally picked it up. Since no one else has reviewed it, I figured I'd share my thoughts...
It's a simpler cousin to the genre of games that includes the old Flash game Motherlode, Miner Dig Deep from the XBOX 360 (and re-released on Steam), and more modern/innovative versions like the Mining Mechs series, among others. I'd argue the more recent 3D games inspired by A Game About Digging A Hole are an offshoot of this game genre too.
The good news is, the game is perfectly functional, and seems to be a labor of love by, I'm guessing, a solo dev. I didn't encounter any bugs, and it runs fine on my Steam Deck. Controls are simple and sensible, but there's no remapping options. The game saves progress when returning to the menu, and I never had any problem going back to the game across multiple sessions. There are a decent amount of ore types, along with standard upgrades. Graphics are as shown in the previews, and while the light around your digger isn't useful near the top, it gets quite dark the deeper you go so light is needed. (Flares help with that too.)
It offers a few things not found in other games of this genre:
- Since you take fall damage, the "landing pad" is a one time use tool that can be repurchased which lets you fall an unlimited distance and take no damage.
- The contracts offered by one of the buildings give you a little more money for certain ores, but not so much money that it's all that useful. Since the contracts seem to be random, shuffling them to find a useful one is possible, but gets boring fast, and I found it easier to just go back to digging and get the normal payout for ores.
The bad news is, it's missing some features found in most other games in this genre:
- There's no way to return to the surface quickly. This isn't a big deal at first, but the mining area is ridiculously deep, and the only way to return to the top is to fly upward. Even with an upgraded engine, it took me three minutes of real time to get from the very bottom of the map to the top! You want to go deeper to get better ore, but you realize that it's a boring slog to get back, so it's... annoying. I thought there might be some sort of teleporter or elevator in the game because of the unused building on the surface, but I never discovered anything like that, so the only way back was to either die, or just hold the up button for 3 minutes.
- Dying only removes a percentage of your total money, and oddly, you don't lose the ore you were carrying! So an alternative to returning to the surface is to just... die. You'll be able to sell the ore you were carrying, and if you're already at the bottom you'll come out ahead anyway. This feature/cheat combined with the extreme depth of the mining area makes the endgame feel broken.
- Most disappointing of all was the lack of any ending. A highlight of both the 2D and 3D games in this genre is the notion that you find something (a giant gem, some kind of story element, your own doom... something!) when you get to the bottom of the mining area. Or maybe it's not the bottom, and it's hidden near the bottom. It's possible I missed it, but I got to the bottom, explored a little bit, and realized there was no ending to the game. I'm not even sure there is an ending to upgrades, since I never maxed any of them out. But it seemed pointless to go back to the bottom (with that long return trip) to try to find some kind of ending that was probably not there.
- It's also lacking music, which is unfortunate since it would have added to the "chill" nature of this style of game.
- I'm not really an achievement hunter, but the game also lacks achievements. This would have been another way to provide an "ending" for the game -- even if just hitting the bottom unlocked the final "you win the game" achievement, it would have felt like some kind of ending.
- There's no real threat or danger in the game, aside from falling too far and taking too much damage. No boulders that could fall on you, no critters, no lava, etc. I don't see this as a fault though, since it makes the game more chill, and makes the only threat completely player controlled, so you can only blame yourself if you mess up. Also, the stakes are low if you die anyway, so it's not really much of a concern.
I'm not sure what to think about the add-on content since it's an unusual choice that it exists at all, but since it's completely optional I felt like it isn't causing any harm.
It's still a reasonably solid game for the low price. But it honestly feels more like an unfinished game jam game, an early access game that was never finished, or someone's first game. If it's the latter, it's a very good effort, but the most disappointing things to me were the lack of an ending (which is essentially the reward for finishing the game), and the sheer amount of playtime it took to get to fall to the bottom (wait for a few minutes), or fly back to the top (wait for a few minutes). The travel time wouldn't require a teleport or elevator, but being able to do nothing (except maybe hold a key down) for that long just made me bored and not want to continue playing the game.
If you like these sorts of games (like I do), it might be worth picking up, especially on sale, It's different, not buggy, and has simple/charming art, but the lack of an ending and the sheer amount of travel time required as you get to the end game means that you'll never actually "finish" the game or feel any kind of closure. It was so close to being a good little indie game, but feels a bit more "meh" because of the few things it lacks. On the plus side, it looks hand made, and is not AI garbage or asset flips, and I hope the developer enjoyed making it and continues to make games in the future. I wanted it to be better than it was, but I appreciate it for what it is. For that reason I' give it a thumbs up, but if there was a middle option, I'd probably give that instead.
