SteamWorld Dig (PC) Review

Arriving in the Wild Western town of Tumbleton after receiving a letter from his missing uncle, Rusty the robot makes it his mission to dig deep down into the mine below the village and uncover the mysteries lurking below. Uncle Joe was a bit of an odd one, but he seemed to spend most of his working days below the ground, bringing back traces of a lost civilisation and putting them to use for bizarre inventions. Humanity is gone, and the steampunk-like robots that reside above the ruins of the generations gone by are the main form of life now. Old Joe must have known more than anybody else about what was really buried far below the depths, and Rusty intends to find out for himself, too.

Cue the start of a very fun and addictive little adventure. Mining the depths with nothing more than a pickaxe to begin with, Rusty needs to search for minerals and gems, bringing them back to the surface, and selling them to upgrade and buy more equipment. Digging further into the ground will eventually reveal hidden caves that feature a few puzzles and platform elements, which hide further inventions and apparatus that will improve his digging speed and allow for more abilities to traverse the mines quicker and easier.

To give a little more insight as to the type of game SteamWorld Dig actually is, it has been likened to a mixture of Metroid, Terraria and Spelunky. In truth, the similarities are minimal. SteamWorld Dig's full explorable world is very small when compared to what Metroid has to offer, and for the most part, Rusty will simply be digging downwards, rather than doing much backtracking to reach areas that were previously inaccessible without the necessary upgrades as in Nintendo's title. The ties to Terraria are mostly due to the constant use of the pickaxe to dig into the earth, and Spelunky has a digging element, as well. SteamWorld Dig is much more toned down in these regards, where it really isn't the vast open world, non-linear game that many would think of when it is linked to Metroid, but all of these little correlations add up to make SteamWorld Dig the great game it is.

Unfortunately, very little has changed from the 3DS version. Yes, the game looks absolutely lovely in HD on a computer screen, but it's pretty much identical to the game on Nintendo's portable console. One of the complaints of SteamWorld Dig was that it was short game; a somewhat casual playthrough, without searching out every single piece of ore or puzzle cave, could mean seeing the credits in under four hours. Obviously, trying to upgrade and find everything the game has to offer would be adding a few more hours onto that, but it's a shame that not much else was added to increase replay value. With pretty much one boss to defeat in the whole adventure, perhaps some new areas or bosses could have been unlocked upon completion of the game.

Again similar to Metroid, SteamWorld Dig is the type of game that warrants multiple play-throughs in order to see how fast it can be cleared (such stats are displayed upon finishing the game), but for owners of the 3DS version, there just isn't enough here to make buying it again worthwhile; such people should probably wait for a future discounted price to play it in its HD glory on a large screen. Anyone that has not yet played it, though, should do themselves a favour and jump at the chance to play this on a PC screen with its gorgeous new graphics. It's simply one of those games that has to be played to realise how addictively fun it is.