Diggin PC (Final version)

Can you uncover what happened to the Moles that came before you? It’s about 5 hours of some quite pretty and tactile nodeslop. If you’re not yet tired of the genre, it ranks pretty high. It’s not without issues, however. A lot of the balancing feels askew. At one point, the very expensive drones were about 5% as effective as the dynamite unlocked within the first 10 minutes. If they prioritized special blocks or the highest-rarity ores, they’d have a much clearer purpose. The “interactive” part of Diggin is quickly cast aside, as most upgrades focus on causing the ground beneath you (and everywhere else) to crumble, sending you falling away from whatever you were trying to mine.

The mouse-controlled abilities are severely undertuned, with minuscule charge even when fully upgraded. The overdrive ability lets you fly, but its slow recharge and low capacity mean you can only properly course-correct about three times per run, unless you’re willing to wait around and hope the time-recharged abilities don’t make you fall even further. It’s also frustrating that many nodes have to be upgraded multiple times before the ones beyond them unlock. The lack of lateral progression makes the pacing stagnate at times.

The gameplay of Diggin becomes absolute chaos once all the upgrades are unlocked. Some of the achievements are a bit grindy, but getting 100% completion only takes about 4 hours. The overall progression is well balanced. A little more grindy than some other incremental games. The main complaint is that, in the late game, you mine so fast that blocks requiring specific positioning are easy to blow right past, leaving them impossible to collect. It’s not even a skill issue—you might have 0.2 seconds to react, while your character’s movement speed is very slow.