SteamWorld Dig Review – Switch

SteamWorld Dig initially released several years ago but has just been ported onto the Nintendo Switch. Having never played the game before, but hearing good things about it, I was excited to finally have a chance to try it out.

The first thing that struck me about the game was the characters. SteamWorld is populated entirely by robots, but these robots each have unique personalities and charm. You start the game by arriving in Tumbletown, which has a population of three. It has the look and feel of a wild west mining town and the mine that sits below the town belongs to you.

The way the game works is that you go down into the mine, digging through the dirt creating your own little labyrinth of tunnels, always progressing further and deeper, in search of deposits of valuable gems and ores that you then take back up to the surface to sell for money, which you then use to upgrade your equipment, which allows you to progress further and deeper each time. It’s a great loop that naturally steps up the level of difficulty and challenge as you go.

At first you can only carry a little bit of ore and your pickaxe is only able to pick through soft dirt. But, once you get enough money from your first run or two, you can sharpen that pick to be able to dig into more compact earth, allowing you to go deeper and find richer ore. You can also upgrade your carrying capacity, allowing you to stay down longer, and carry more back up to the surface when you go. Also, as you progress through the caverns below, you will come across tunnel doors that will take you to other parts of the mine, where you will discover upgrades that were left there before. Some of these include boots that allow you to sprint faster, which helps you make jumps that are impossible without them.

There are also a lot of cool things that you can choose to purchase with your earnings that will make traversing the depths a little easier. You can buy ladders that will help you reach places that you otherwise couldn’t get to, lamps that will serve as a more permanent light source than your torch which slowly burns out as you go, and more.

The only time that I felt frustrated by the game was when trying to do sprint jumps to make it across large gaps. I don’t know if it is an issue with the game mechanics in general, or if it is something unique to the Switch version, but I felt that it was extremely difficult to maximize the sprint-to-jump transition, which caused me to miss several jumps that I knew that I was supposed to be able to make. I don’t know if this is just something that I’ll have to practice and get better at, or if there is some kind of weird delay between button pushes. It just felt a little mushy and frustrating to me.

Otherwise, I really love the atmosphere of the game. It really captures the feeling of digging deeper into the earth and feeling a mixture of a sense of fear for the possibility of getting lost or stuck down there and being unable to find your way out, but also the feeling of relief and excitement when you finally emerge back on the surface with all your hard-earned materials, giving you the courage to brave the depths once more. I also really liked that the tunnels you dig remain persistent throughout your game. So, the more you play, the more familiar you get with the opening areas, and even those places begin to feel like an extension of “home” and you begin to recognize landmarks along the way that help guide you back or point you in the direction of where you wanted to go next.

Ultimately, I think SteamWorld Dig is a rock-solid game (hehe, get it?) and the port to the Switch is really well done, aside from perhaps a little mushiness in the controls. I very much enjoy the simple gameplay loop and the naturally developing motivation to keep pushing just a little bit further each time you go down, just to see what you can find.

Screenshot Gallery


Author: Brice Boembeke
My first memories of gaming are from when I was 5 years old and my dad got a Commodore 64. It has been almost 30 years and my passion for gaming has only grown. I play a little bit of everything, but am particularly interested in the emergent and unscripted gameplay that comes from open world, sandbox-style online multiplayer games. It is a very exciting time to be a gamer, but I still feel like the best is yet to come. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

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