The notion of ‘digging’ has carved out a niche little sub-genre
in recent times. We’ve had the indie juggernaut that is Minecraft, Super tough
Spelunky and Terraria to name just a few. SteamWorld Dig is, as the title
suggests, another game that wants you to dig. However, it’s certainly doing it
in its own way.
Playing as Rusty, a lone steamboat designed for digging, you
find yourself exploring a post-apocalyptic world where humans seem to have disappeared.
You arrive in the dustbowl town of Tumbleton after receiving the deed to your Uncle
Joe’s mine. The town is home to a few remaining robotic inhabitants and it’s up
to you to uncover the story of the mine and the towns folk.
Your initial forays into the mine will mainly be to find
gold and gems which can then be traded and used to upgrade Rusty. All manner of
items and upgrades are available and they continually expand as you find more
money to spend. Along with this you will gradually uncover more abilities that
Rusty can use to help traverse the depths. There’s an element of Metroid to the
character advancement but we wouldn’t go as far as to say that this is a
Metroidvania.
The game world sets itself out into three main sections. You
have the town where you can talk and upgrade, the main part of the mine and self-contained
rooms within it. For a large amount of the game you’ll be continually digging
downward in the main mine area. The goal here is to find cash, avoid critters
and find rooms as you uncover the truth of what happened to the humans and the
world. The deeper you go, the thicker the rock gets and the tougher the enemies
become. Unless you keep upgrading it can be a tiresome task to break through
the bedrock so you’ll need to be heading back to the surface to upgrade your
pickaxe and other mining gear often.
This is perhaps one of the few flaws with the game. While
there are a number of short cuts back to the surface, there really aren’t
enough of them for it to stop the game from dragging and getting repetitive on
occasion. It’s not so bad when going down the mine as you can normally drop
down tunnels you’ve dug, but going back up can be tiresome. It’s not enough to
take away from the experience in the long term and there are teleporters that
can be purchased, but a few more short cuts really wouldn’t have gone a miss.
The self-contain rooms within the mine provide a mixture of
both platforming and puzzle solving to negotiate. Plot related rooms lead to
power ups and boss fights while other hidden areas generally contain precious
gems. SteamWorld Dig really is a platformer at heart and these rooms allow for the developers
to show off how they have mastered the form. You’ll need quick reflexes and a
good understanding of how your powers work to succeed and the difficulty level
is pitches just about perfect throughout. Each room and boss is challenging but
you’ll always feel you know how you should be beating it - it’s just a case of
mustering the skill to do it.
There’s something really compelling about the game and as
you dig deeper (both literally and into the mystery), you’ll really want to
know what’s going on. It’s the sort of game you’ll start playing for a few
minutes and end up sticking with until your 3DS starts telling you it needs to
be charged.
We can’t think of another eshop game which has had that effect on
us and it shows a skill and understanding by the development team rarely seen elsewhere.
SteamWorld Dig may well have gone unnoticed by a lot of you, but we would
really recommend checking it out. It’s probably the best 3DS eshop title available
right now and it offers a fun, challenging and fresh experience for gamers to
test themselves with.
Overall 8/10
Lovely review, thanks guys! Btw, the game is called "SteamWorld
ReplyDeleteDig", not "Steam Dig World"... <3
Amended, sorry about that.
ReplyDelete