Dig Dog Short Review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
- Dig Dog
- Developer- Rusty Moyher, Matt Grimm
- Publisher- Wild Rooster
- PC, Android, iOS
Sometimes a game can get by on a little bit of charm and simple fun. Dig Dog just about does. It’s a small game from Rusty Moyher and Matt Grimm, who brought us the excellent Retro Game Crunch and Astro Duel. Both of those felt like strong executions on existing concepts, backed by a lot of charm.
Dig Dog isn’t quite on that level. It’s more something to play in between small moments. Actions are simple–you can jump, and by hitting jump again you can smash downwards or sideways. You could also slowly push against dirt to dig one space at a time but let’s be real you’re gonna want to go as fast as possible all the time.
This is where the rogue-like elements come in, and also why I had a lot more fun playing it on easy. The hard difficulty is the main mode, with harder stage layouts, more enemies and a progression system that unlocks new areas. Each area is randomized and dying means starting over. But honestly, this is a bit too much resistance for such a casual game. What I enjoyed about Dig Dog was smashing through dirt and listening to the tunes, not trying to carefully jump and dash through enemies. So easy mode, which lets you retry generated stages as many times as you want and slowly accumulate completed stages, felt like the right way to play it. It offered just enough resistance without the need to be careful, meaning I could enjoy the act of smashing dirt and seeing the silly animations.
There’s not a lot to Dig Dog, but it’s just cute enough that maybe it doesn’t matter.