Welcome To A Review About A Game About Digging A Hole
You may be wondering whether the game’s title is taking the piss, and equally wonder if there’s more to the game than digging a hole. Well, yes, the title is taking the piss, and no, there’s nothing to do beyond digging a hole (singular). You can be very, very confident that you will be digging a large hole.
Where you dig the hole is a bit unusual. You’ve bought a brand-spanking new house on the promise that its back garden contains gold. Lots of it. There’s something adorably far-fetched about that premise, that you could realistically prospect in your own backyard.
In my case, I headed into my newly purchased yard and started digging with something that – frankly – could have been bigger. It was a trowel. Clearly I couldn’t afford a spade, let alone some Donkey Kong hands. In pathetic little ‘putt-putt-putt’ jabs, I made minimal headway. The only exception was when I hit something solid, like a stone. Things definitely start slowly in A Game About Digging A Hole.
It’s refreshing how it completely neglects to tutorialise anything. You learn by a) reaching some kind of limit, like the ceiling of your inventory or b) failing. I couldn’t carry any more stones, so I headed inside and a computer allowed me to pawn them off (I quite like the fantasy that someone’s sat on Facebook Marketplace going “ooh, I could do with some rocks”). A few dollars richer, I could expand my inventory.
Everything Is Improved By Jetpacks
The game loop becomes clear quickly. Dig down, gather ore, sell ore, buy upgrades, get better at digging down. It’s possible to upgrade your inventory and spade (bigger spades mean a wider radius of digging), which is the tempting stuff. But you have to weigh them up against a battery that needs upgrading, as you’re limited to the number of digging actions you can make. Even recharging the battery costs gold.
There’s a jetpack, which can be upgraded and runs on battery too. By the mid-game, it becomes abundantly clear that getting out of the hole is a priority, as an upgraded shovel takes you to places where jumping won’t help. And you lose your ore if the battery runs out. A Game About Digging is not only about Digging a Hole, then: it’s ‘A Game About Digging A Hole (and Getting Out)’, which is far catchier.
I spent way too much time worrying that I might not make it out. Had I travelled too far? Did I make the hole big enough to fly out from? Could I remember the twisting path out? Did I have enough juice for the jetpack? I made a chain of spotlights as a kind of breadcrumb trail – that’s how concerned I was that I wouldn’t be able to find a path back.
Oh yes, you can buy spotlights as the going gets dark. Dynamite will also be a necessity if you hit hard stone or magma. But aside from that, there’s precious little to buy.
More A Pebble Than A Boulder
Which is something that miners will have to come to terms with. For a game about digging there’s precious little depth to what you’re doing, and you can slot this in, start to finish, in about a couple of hours. Spelunky this ain’t. From trowel to punchline is basically the length of a movie.
But while it’s short, it’s transfixing. I wonder how many people finish it in one gulp. I reckon it’s a significant percentage. That’s mostly down to that game length: A Game About Digging A Hole can afford to rattle forward at such a pace that you go from iron to silver to gold and then diamond at a pace. The upgrades become viable at a similar cadence. Before long, you will have the best spade – or more appropriately a drill – that makes short work of soil.
There’s a sense that anything can happen. Digging into a wall, only to find a large, aching expanse beyond has a thrill that only Deep Rock can match. What’s going to be in there? A Game About Digging A Hole has a cheekiness and playfulness that means anything goes. We don’t want to reveal too much, but it works towards the smallest of stories.
The Mines of Moreishness
It could have gone further, actually. It’s hard not to play A Game About Digging A Hole and imagine a game with a bigger budget. More secrets to find, more moments of awe. A longer playtime, absolutely, and a more satisfying ending. You can count the secrets on a couple of hands, and that’s not a whole lot, even for a two-hour game. We had a taste of what A Game About Digging A Hole was capable of, and wished it was even more generous than what was released. It’s rare to play a game and wish a AAA publisher bankrolled more of it, but that’s the case here.
But instead of getting wistful, we refer back to the price tag. If it’s the length of a trip down the cinema, it’s priced less than one. And we’re fairly confident in saying that this will lodge in the memory for longer than most. Plus there’s the temptation of a new-game-plus-style experience once the game is finished.
If the worst thing we can say is ‘we wanted more’ then it’s doing something right. We were captive to A Game About Digging A Hole for two hours, and we just wished that there were more secrets to match the moreishness of the mining. We can always hope for Another Game About Digging a Hole.
Important Links
A Game About Digging A Hole Unearths Its Xbox, Game Pass, PlayStation and Switch Release – https://www.thexboxhub.com/a-game-about-digging-a-hole-unearths-its-xbox-game-pass-playstation-and-switch-release/
Download from the Xbox Store, through Game Pass if need be – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/-/9NGLST31DG26
