It’s a great time to get into Steamworld games, what with them having just concluded a deep sale on Steam and Heist 2 getting released soon. Dig 1 starts strongly and there is a lot to like about it. But there is one thing that ruined the experience for me as a completionist.

The game is literally about digging your way through vertically. You collect valuables to sell for money and you find orbs that can be used to buy items/upgrades along with the money you’ve accumulated. There are different things to keep in mind that force you to come back to town on a frequent basis. This slowly gets better with the power ups you find and the items/upgrades you buy. You feel pretty powerful near the end. There are 3 big caves that also contain smaller caves. The game has some random generated elements but not completely. When you enter a world for the first time, the lay-out is set in stone along with the valuables, orbs, enemies and the order you encounter the less important caves. So it can feel fresh with each new save.

The gameplay is addictive. You can play it in short sessions but I ended up spending long hours because I was getting so invested in the gameplay loop of exploring, finding stuff and getting upgrades frequently. The world created looks appealing in terms of style. The controls are fine for the most part. It’s of a good length when you take your time. The game is very polished, I haven’t encountered any bugs.

My biggest problem are the achievements ‘Master Prospector` and ‘A Fistful of Dirt’ to a lesser extend. The latter is a pure grind where you can think of completing the game around 3 times to dig 15000 tiles. You won’t ever get this naturally the first time, you’ll need a grind session but at least it’s only a time waster. The former is a time waster AND very frustrating. The game wants you to get over 20000 gold, 150 orbs, not die and do it within 2.5 hours in one save. The biggest issue is the requirement of 150 orbs. They’re not as plentiful as valuables, they’re random and there is no specific detector for them or a percentage to show you that you found all of them in areas. I can get all the other requirements except for this one because of the limited time you have. I’ve completed the game in 8 hours the first time, I’ve spent over 10 hours trying to get this achievement (with at least 2 new saves). My friend helped me get the last achievement to stop the stress. The 3 other requirements were challenging enough. If they wanted 4 requirements, then they should have done everything about the orbs better. RNG can really get in the way on rare occasions, you can die in unexpected and cruel ways. And lastly, I mentioned how the controls are fine for the most part. The reason I mention this is because you have to hold a direction when you’re digging (d-pad with the dig button). If you accidentally let go of the d-pad, then you dig in front of you. This causes you to unintentionally dig the wrong tiles. It happened too often with me.

Despite this, I’m still willing to give an overall positive with the promise that the next games will be better about this. I know that Dig 2 and Heist will also have a challenge to get 4 requirements in one save, but they appear to be more reasonable based on my research. The rest of the game is mostly good. It’s even impressive for a first game in the franchise. You’ll have a great time if you don’t care about getting 100% with the achievements or you’re very skilled/lucky with your save. I’m not sure if the game is worth the stress if you’re a completionist.