Diggerman

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Diggerman is a simple game played in short busts with only two buttons. The idea is that you can only move downward left or right. That’s it.

The challenge in the game comes from multiple sources. For starters, as you’re digging, you can set loose rocks that fall on you (reminiscent of Boulder Dash), or fall too far, or onto other hazards. In addition, you have a limited battery supply, and you must constantly be refilling it with batteries you find because when you run out, you die.

And you will be dying, a lot. That flashlight battery? It depletes rapidly, and while this is clearly intended to encourage you to dig as quickly as you can, even if you go extremely fast collecting as many batteries as you can, you’ll still run out in less than a minute.

To offset this, while you dig you can find coins and treasure that you can use to purchase upgrades to your character, however, these upgrades feel far too minuscule to combat how very quickly this game will make you die, and it doesn’t seem like there’s really much I can do to keep from dying over and over and over again within the span of minutes… and that’s just not fun. I don’t mind a game being super-hard so long as I feel there’s something I can do to get better, but here the progress feels just pathetic.

I suppose, on the bright side, this game’s presentation is cutesy and retro, which would make it a pleasant experience if… well, if it wasn’t so soul-crushing.

In the end, Diggerman is a game that seems like it would have been a fun arcadey time-waster if it wasn’t in such an extreme hurry to dole out deaths and offered so little in the way of opportunity to progress.

tl;dr – Diggerman is a arcade-style game where all you do is dig down to the left or right, and it’s got the formula for a decent time-waster except it’s in far too much of a hurry to make you die from a power meter that depletes far too quickly. This game had potential, but as-is, it’s just frustrating.

Grade: D+

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