Diggergun

Have you ever played a game that was supposed to be fun, but ultimately felt like a job? Something where you were asked to perform the same tedious task over and over, usually with little to no reward. In the case of the new game Diggergun, that tedium is the whole point. This is a game about the problems with late-stage capitalism disguised as a simple retro-themed platformer starring a regular guy who is just trying to keep afloat in a bad economy. That’s certainly a relatable struggle for many, but is this game actually fun? That’s what we’re about to find out when I review Diggergun, the debut release from Kabloop.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: This is the story of a young college graduate who is forced to take a tedious mining job for a shady corporation on Bal Island. You were hired to go deep into the mines and scavenge for lithium, a tiring job that turns out to be a lot harder than it sounds. But hey, a job is a job, right?

In this case, the answer is no. Between taxes, rent and student loans, our daily take home pay is around £17, not including food. And you only get that £17 if you hit your daily lithium quota, which continues to increase, making it harder and harder to make ends meet. And all that is before you get sick and have to buy expensive medicine or a supply chain problem leads to food shortages or inflation makes everything a lot more expensive. Before you know it, you’re trapped, slowly dying on a small island with no way to escape. All is lost.

Or is it? As our hero works the mines, he will meet a number of other island inhabitants and workers who share his plight. Some of them just want to be friends, while others will give you money for smuggling out lithium and other valuables found in the mines. You’ll also be introduced to Lily, a spunky go-getter who is spearheading an underground group that will attempt to disrupt the evil corporation and allow everybody to escape.

In order for that to happen, we’ll need to mine for lithium during the day and then puzzle through a number of challenging platforming sections at night, all while making sure to get enough food and rest to continue this cycle. You barely have enough time to do everything when you have small quota, but every week the boss demands more and more from you, never with an increase in pay. And if you get sick or can’t work, then you don’t get paid. And if you collapse from exhaustion while working the mines, they’ll take half of your money and send you right back down to the mines. You can feel the walls tightening around you with each passing day.

The job itself is just fun enough to keep you entertained, but not so much fun that you’ll want to do it. Each level of the mine is a single screen maze, usually with a bunch of rocks you’ll need to clear in order to get to the lithium. The titular Diggergun can shoot up, down, left and right, clearing blocks and keeping you safe from the mine’s many enemies. The gameplay isn’t all that different from games like Dig Dug and Mr. Driller, only in this game you’re on the clock and trying to speed through each level as quickly as possible.

There is a leveling system that allows you to upgrade your health bar, strength, aim and luck. Your first instinct may be to pile points into the strength, as that allows you to hold more lithium at a time, but upgrading luck will also increase the amount of lithium you’ll find in each stage. You’ll also need to add points to your aim, which will make dealing with the various enemies and traps a lot easier. Unfortunately, every time you think you’ve gotten the upper-hand with an upgrade, the game will ask more of you, be it with harder enemies or a higher lithium quota. You just can’t catch a break.

And that’s something I like about this game. Diggergun is a platformer with a very specific message. It wants you to know that this system is unsustainable and not working for regular people, and something needs to be done about it. It’s real good at making you feel stuck, even going as far as to dock your entire day’s pay if they catch you talking to other people. And because the game is so good at showing you the hopelessness, it makes the sweet success of the underground resistance that much more tantalizing.

In a weird way, because so much of Diggergun revolves around that one message, a lot of the criticisms I might have can be chalked up to being done on purpose. For example, you’re always at the whim of the randomized levels. Sometimes you’ll get a stage with no lithium, while other times the stage will be full of goodies to collect. It can be incredibly frustrating when you waste half of your energy going through four or five levels without any lithium. Not only have you wasted the entire day, but you won’t get paid. And since you’re living paycheck to paycheck, missing a day of work can be catastrophic. Before long you’re forced to take out a bank loan, which is just one more thing you’ll need to pay back with your meager wages.

Because the game saves at the start of each day, it wouldn’t surprise me if many players simply quit the game and reload when they don’t hit their ever-increasing quota. That game practically incentivizes you to cheat the system. Yet, that’s probably not a good thing, and only illustrates how dire your situation is at any given moment. There were days when I couldn’t afford both food and medicine, which isn’t a fault of the game, but rather the point it’s trying to make. But even if that is the point, it’s still frustrating for the player.

On a more positive note, Diggergun works as well as it does because of the great platforming gameplay. It’s easy to control the little guy and fun carving your way through the blocks in order to quickly go from the bottom to the top or vice versa. There are also special moves and weapons you can unlock, like a laser, shotgun and the ability to create blocks out of thin air. I like that the platforming doesn’t feel like an afterthought and has enough to it to sustain the surprisingly lengthy story.

Of course, what makes this game stand out isn’t the 2D platforming or the leveling system, but rather its story and how beaten down it makes you feel. It’s the struggle of barely keeping my head above water as everything around me got worse and worse that will stick with me. That is what the game is best at. In the end, the struggle is definitely real, but the payoff is worth it.