DIGGERGUN Review

Welcome to the high-contrast world of DIGGERGUN. This pixelated life-sim platformer is full of real-life scenarios, like paycheques that have multiple deductions, making your net pay substantially smaller than what you started with. Work isn’t the only thing you’ll be doing: you are also required to be social and meet other residents living on the island and take care of your character. Eating and sleeping are very important, and you need to make sure you’re on time for your nine-to-five work shift.

After applying for jobs for months, Alex has finally received an offer to be an engineer on Bal Island, Cornwall. This is Alex’s first full-time job, but it’s quite remote, so you’ll need to travel by boat, through a storm, to get there. Once you arrive at your destination, you learn that you’re actually a miner who will be digging to find elements buried in the ground, such as pieces of lithium.

The first character you interact with is Greenmen, who warns Alex of a dark presence on Bal Island and cautions you not to dig any deeper, as something evil is moving through the Earth that shouldn’t be disturbed. When you leave the room, you see the glowing eyes of all the creatures that were watching you, and that was only at a mine depth of two. I guarantee you that things are going to get much worse as you move down.

Alex has a daily quota of lithium that he needs to find for each workday. To break through the blocks of soil, Alex won’t be using his bare hands; you’ll need a special tool. Luckily for our miner, something falls out of the sky and lands on the ground in front of you. When you pick it up, you learn that it’s the DIGGERGUN, a tool used both to break blocks and as a weapon against all the creepy bugs crawling around the mine. It’s apparently the same one Alex dropped on his journey here. 

How exactly it fell from the sky when you were underground, I don’t know, but thank goodness you found it, because these things aren’t cheap to replace! You can dig in any direction by using the thumbstick and pressing one button. Besides digging, Alex can jump to explore the different areas of the mine and collect the required resources located there.

At the top of the screen, you can see how much money you have, the amount of lithium you’ve found, the day of the week, and the time. You also have an energy bar with ten notches; whenever you perform actions such as leaving a room, using the loo, or having a shower, you lose one bar. There’s also an XP bar that you’ll want to fill to level Alex up by defeating enemies and collecting resources.

When you level up, you will earn Stat Points that you can spend on upgrading your stats like: Aim, increasing the amount of damage you do against enemies; Strength, which lets you carry more lithium and inventory items; Energy, increase your stamina total; and Luck, to improve your chances of finding lithium and resources while exploring the mine.

Once you have a collection of lithium, you can deposit it in the machine at the exit. Our miner gets paid to work from Monday to Friday, but you’ll only get money if you deposit the required amount of lithium or more. You aren’t paid until you go back to your flat and crawl into bed to sleep. You’ll then see your stats for the day. 

The amount of lithium deposited is your gross pay, but that’s not how much you actually earn, like in real-life, there are deductions for tax, insurance premiums, and student loan payments. Add on rent, electricity, and tool costs, and you’ll see how much you take home. It’s only £17! I had £92 before… this sucks. To make things even worse, if you’re late for work, they won’t pay you anything!

If you run out of energy, you pass out and the company will send someone to pick you up and take you back to bed, but they’ll also take half your money. It seems there are many ways to lose your cash in DIGGERGUN! As you progress, the difficulty ramps up fast, with quotas requiring you to retrieve 11 pieces of lithium each workday. The problem is, if you don’t meet your quota, you won’t get paid, and you still have bills to pay, leaving you in debt and unable to buy food. I felt so bad when my character was thinking of eating and I had no money to get him anything!

If you’re low on funds, you can take out a loan, but the interest rate is 15%. I could get a loan for up to £58, but since I was £134 in debt, that loan didn’t even get me out of the hole. Even going down to a mine depth of fifty, I still hadn’t managed to make money, meaning I couldn’t even feed my character. I’m pretty sure my only way out of this mess is to restart the game and do things differently.

DIGGERGUN is a really interesting game to play, especially when you’re exploring the mines with suspenseful music and creepy eyes watching you wherever you go; it constantly feels like a creature could attack at any minute. The steadily depleting energy bar adds tension as you search for the required lithium, making the experience nerve-racking. If you can’t find enough of the element to fill your quota, you don’t get paid, which means you can’t eat or pay your bills. I enjoyed the exploration elements a lot, but this game is incredibly stressful, especially when you fall into debt. It does an excellent job of channelling that real-life feeling of being trapped in an impossible situation.

If you want a game that captures real-life struggles, like working long hours but still not being able to pay your bills, then this is for you. What keeps me coming back is the challenge of figuring out how to make a living wage and get my miner off this cursed island and back home. DIGGERGUN offers a unique experience unlike anything else I’ve played before.