How Dig-N-Rig made me feel like a terrible person

Dig-N-Rig is a great digging game made by a group of students from DigiPen university. You take control of a mining robot named Diggit 6400. With a set of specialized drills you dig to collect minerals, which are brought back to the Lab by conveyor belts and scoopers. It is very addictive and the ASCII graphics give it a great distinctive look. Your goal is to drill to the core of the Earth to discover a mysterious treasure while collecting updates and new gear for your robot.

I strongly recommend you to play the game before reading this to avoid spoilers. You can download it here.

How was it? Fun, right? Of course it is. At least I thought it was.

But somewhere in the middle of the game I got a very weird feeling which by the end of it became really ominous. At this point I already figured out how to collect minerals with great efficiency by burrowing into the lowest layer possible, clearing it out, placing a giant conveyor belt and a scooper to the surface and just bomb everything above me leaving nothing of the level but music.

It seemed like the best way to do things. None of the minerals fell to the levels below and none were left hidden in the dirt. It was a win-win plan. Until I discovered the Mole City. It was just a couple of houses with a skyscraper and a crane in the middle of building a new one. Moles were doing their mole routine of digging through everything in search of minerals to eat. They didn’t care if it was their own building or a piece of machinery. I got rid of the moles and went on with my own routine. While waiting for minerals to get scooped up to the surface I thought “Hey this was a neat looking city”.

I continued to dig, level after level, until I reached the core. On the very bottom there was a door with the words “Exit” on it. I cleared out the last few blocks and constructed my mineral delivery system. Before moving on to the exit I wanted to check up on the lab, after all I haven’t seen it since the first level of dirt. I got back to the surface. After poking in the ground around the lab I found a little patch I could dig up. It was neat to find a little trinket before ending the adventure. But, surprisingly, flying out of there on my jet pack I discovered a much bigger revelation. THE LEVELS WENT UP AS WELL!

More than that I could actually mine everything up above too! Clouds, birds even stars! There wasn’t a thing I couldn’t convert to minerals. So I pushed up. Building a ladder to the skies. Finally I reached the Moon. Dr. Diggertz proclaimed “AMAZING, DIGGIT! Never in all my years I thought we could reach that far! You are the most amazing mining robot!”. I was impressed too. I was standing on a giant screen-filling ball that represented our satellite. A small step for a mining robot but a giant step for the mining corporation!

I prepared the conveyor belt, since I was above the earth I could let gravity do the work of the scooper. I pushed down and started drilling into it. The moon was easy to dig into and it consisted of only the rarest mineral. I made a horizontal slice and placed the initial layer of bombs. Explosions rang one after another. Moon was torn in two. Minerals that had nothing to land on were bleeding over the edges. I realized that I’ve just ruined the Moon.

The shining beacon in the dark of night, something that was orbiting us since a planet smashed into the morphing Earth, the first place that humanity took a step on outside our planet. I just took a few bombs and blew it up. For no reason too. I already had all the available updates and a ton of minerals in stock. I just wanted to get all the minerals I could. That’s what I’ve been doing the whole game, why not do it now? I was standing in a giant pile of the rarest mineral in the world but with no means to use it.

I finished up transporting it all and made my way to the exit. Taking a ladder to the center of the world I went through all the levels I cleared. Listening to their themes I remembered how they looked and realized that if they were real places I would feel weird about strip-mining them too. It would be insane to actually mine ancient ruins or dinosaur bones in the real world. No matter what kind of money you get out of it. What could be so important on the bottom that would make it all worth it? I stepped into the exit to find out…

To my disappointment it was an ambiguous chest with a question mark above it. I was treated to a classic “YOU WIN” screen. There was no explanation of what was in the chest, what happened afterwards and the question mark made it seem like the game is questioning your achievement.

There are a lot of art games out there. Some try to tell their message through a game mechanic, some through visuals and some just outright tell you what you are supposed to feel. But this game that does not present itself as an art game was way more powerful in creating emotion and making me think about what I just played, even if perhaps unintentionally. Even if you read all of this without playing the game, please play it now. It is a great game either way.

P.S

After you beat the game Dr. Diggertz has a little makeover.