DigWorld has a good roguelike mining idea, but its early grind takes too long to feel rewarding
DigWorld is very easy to understand. You start at the surface, dig down square by square through a grid, fill your backpack with ore, minerals, food, artifacts, and whatever else you find, then climb back up to deposit everything in the chest before the run ends. Runs only last a few minutes, so the whole game is built around digging, hauling, upgrading, and trying again.
I respect what it is trying to do. Between runs, you spend materials on better tools, gloves, backpacks, and other upgrades that improve digging speed, inventory space, and climbing. There are missions, contracts, underground chests, and even slot machines where you can win extra materials. You can also improve the mine itself by building a proper shaft through sections you have already carved out.
The problem is that the early game feels painfully slow. Upgrading the pickaxe should make each new run feel meaningfully better, but for too long I was still hitting dirt and clay one square at a time, filling a small backpack, and repeating the same trip back to the surface. Bombs and dynamite help, but they do not fix the pacing.
The stamina bar also hurts the rhythm. It drains quickly, which means there are moments where I just stood still waiting for it to refill. In a game like this, I want the number to go up. I want to dig faster, fill my bag, cash out, and feel like the last half hour mattered.
On the ROG Xbox Ally X, the game fits the handheld format fine. Short runs make sense there, and the simple controls work. My issue is progression feel. If stronger tools arrived sooner, or if there were earlier shortcuts like teleporters or faster shaft travel, DigWorld would click much harder.
Right now, it is a decent idea trapped in a slow first hour. I can see the better game underneath, but I did not enjoy the grind as much as I wanted to. Thanks for reading!
