Steamworld Dig is one of the few games that remains constantly installed on my PlayStation Vita. Often, when I travel, I’ll download a new game so that I have a fresh experience to while away the hours on a plane, but Steamworld Dig is a reliable ever-present on the system. It’s an excellent mix of accessible gameplay that presents a challenge but doesn’t require too much thought, and a length that fits both most flights I take and the limited battery life of the Vita. I wasn’t super interested in the release of Steamworld Heist, but once I saw Steamworld Dig 2 was coming out, I was eager to jump on it in the hopes that it would be as much of a gem as the first game.
Perhaps the simplest way to describe Steamworld Dig 2 is to take the original game, and just add more. The environments are bigger, the game is longer, and there’s more equipment to unlock and more challenges to overcome. Steamworld Dig 2 puts you in the shoes of Dorothy, who spends much of the game searching for Rusty, the protagonist from the first game. In terms of gameplay, the loop is pretty much the same as the original, where you venture underground to find gems that can be sold on the surface, at which point you can use the cash to upgrade your equipment, which allows you to dig deeper and uncover more valuable resources to then buy even stronger gear. It’s a simple mix on paper, but there’s a deeper narrative and more variation in environments that keep the game feeling fresh.
As well as attempting to find Rusty, Dorothy is investigating a series of mysterious earthquakes that are threatening life on the surface. To do this, players will guide her through a variety of environments, including temples, jungles and deserts. In true Metroidvania fashion, the equipment that you unlock later on in the game will allow you to return to previously explored areas and reach new regions, but to its credit, the game doesn’t force you to backtrack too much, and even when you do return to an area, it’s often with the objective of digging deeper and getting further, rather than interacting with stuff that you’ve already seen.
Controlling Dorothy is easy, though it did take me a few tries to get the timing down on certain moves, and I never quite managed to fully grasp sprint jumps, though this was almost definitely a failing on my part instead of a problem with the game itself. Steamworld Dig 2 removes the ladders from the first game, and instead gives you a hookshot fairly early on, which makes navigation much easier, and doesn’t force you to rely on a finite resource to find your way out of a hole. There’s a pretty constant stream of new equipment being awarded, and by finding cogs, either waiting in the world or obtained by finishing a challenge room, you can modify each piece of equipment to suit you better. These range from creating extra gems to revealing enemy health bars to pulling resources towards you. None of the modifications are especially game-changing, but they go some way towards making your life easier, and it’s always fun experimenting with different loadouts and seeing what works for you.
The one downside to Steamworld Dig 2, and this is really going to depend on personal experience, is that it perhaps strays a little too close to its predecessor. If you didn’t get on with the first game, or you’ve only recently played it, then Steamworld Dig 2 is going to feel like you’re retracing your steps for the most part. In my case, I loved the fact that it felt like a direct continuation of the first game, but aside from being bigger, there isn’t a whole lot that’s different from what we’ve already seen from the original, which ends up being both a blessing and a curse. There’s the old saying of not needing to fix something that isn’t broken, but it can also feel a little iffy if you’re being asked to pay for the same experience twice over.
I loved my time with Steamworld Dig 2, but I had a feeling going in that unless the developer really messed up the formula, that that was always going to be the case. It’s an evolution of the first game rather than a new spin, and to be honest, it does at times feel a little too much like more of the same. However, when the first game is so well done, it makes a lot of sense to build on that instead of changing things up for the sake of it, and Steamworld Dig 2 is still an excellent game. It’s got solid controls, a much longer running time than its predecessor, and is a great take on the Metroidvania genre. Though I reviewed this game on Xbox One, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for any deals on the portable versions, as this sequel will certainly be taking the place of its forebear on my list of plane games.
