A Game About Digging A Hole

I might be the only person, though I doubt it, who sometimes after going from one great game to another (especially for me, who tends toward games that last over a hundred hours) needs a shorter experience as an interlude. You know, something that is short and concise and doesn't ask too much of me mentally. At other times I would take the opportunity to unlock new skills or resources in roguelikes and roguelites, but as soon as I heard about A Game About Digging A Hole, I knew my next "appetiser" was ready to be served. What I didn't know was that it was going to be such a well-rounded experience.

A Game About Digging A Hole fulfils that strange universal attraction that every man feels about throwing a big rock into the water to watch the splash and ripples spread across the surface, or rolling a big snowball down a hill and watching it grow and grow until it crashes into a tree. Stupid satisfactions, but mysteriously appealing. Dig a hole in the garden and see how far you'll go until you get tired of it, or until someone comes along and offers you something more interesting to do. The premise is as simple as that: an irresistible offer to buy a house very cheaply and the promise of a great treasure buried in the garden. In less than a minute we've moved in, grabbed a tiny shovel and started digging in the dirt over a red X in the lawn. The adventure has begun.

As we dig, from time to time, we will collect different ores and rocks, which we will gradually dig out of the hole to sell in the barn. Click to dig, pick up ore, go out to sell. Over and over again. With this money we will upgrade our shovel, a power generator, a jetpack (because you need to get out of the hole with style and speed), and an ore bag. We can also buy lamps and dynamite, but that's really all there is to A Game About Digging A Hole. A clean HUD and a gameplay loop that slowly but inexorably evolves from a simple clicker game to a professional digger simulator in which you can create a tunnel system to mine every last shiny stone buried, but there's more down there than the promise of treasure...

Because in A Game About Digging A Hole there is a story, and there is an ending. One that you find underground, having seen the signs that something or someone left certain useful things buried for you to find. You can decide to go straight to the bottom, or you can amuse yourself by upgrading your equipment first and make the hole as big as the entire garden. There is no set time, no rush. There is no music to distract you from your task. No one is waiting for you, and the sun always remains at its zenith to serve as a guide for when you need to get out of the hole to recharge your batteries and sell gathered ore.

It's surprising that with such a simple premise and simple gameplay, solo developer Cyberwave has managed to strike such an exquisite balance between player progression and curiosity to get to the end of the story in A Game About Digging A Hole. He says it took him less than two weeks to develop it completely, during a holiday he took while working on Solarpunk, which he will also publish this year. I guess even developers need "developments between developments" to stay active and lively. And when you consider that it's less than £4, A Game About Digging A Hole is solid entertainment to escape boredom for a whole afternoon. Or maybe two, because if you're an achievement completist on Steam you should know that achievements will only be activated once you've finished the game.