Hole Digging Master Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & Switch)

Hole Digging Master taught me that there was, albeit only the bare minimum, a little something to love about incremental games. The baby steps; the gradual progression; and the small but seemingly beneficial tool upgrades that could allow me to travel just a little further into the soil. I wanted to hate it. The endless graft—the snail-like process and the ever-elusive climax that teased spoils beyond my wildest dreams but remained forever wedged behind an infinite loop of digging and selling. I wanted to abandon the plot and find something better to pour my heart and soul into. But I couldn’t. I stuck with it — and I was weirdly glad that I did, for it gave me access to corridors that I never thought I’d be able to venture into. A small plot of land eventually transformed into an underground labyrinth of marvelous ores and secret chambers, and before long, it wasn’t just about crafting a drill or a vacuum, but carving as deep as I could possibly go for the sake or unraveling uncharted biomes and claiming their sunken riches.

I might be exaggerating just a bit here. It’s either that, or I’m neglecting the internal notion that maybe, just maybe, I find a game like Hole Digging Master the perfect way to unwind after a long shift at the office. It isn’t that it offers a ton of perks; it’s that it dangles a carrot on the end of a stick and finds various ways to keep you chasing it, be it with a new tool—a drill or a vacuum, for example—or a new material to forage in the deeper crevices of the cortex down below the surface. The premise might be the same as A Game About Digging a Hole, in which the player also has to gradually remove clusters of dirt to descend deeper into the labyrinth, but with Hole Digging Master, you have a little more to explore. Well, sort of.

It begins with a small backyard, an ineffective digging tool, and a cloister of common ores. As you dig, you collect said ores, and sell them back at your workspace before venturing a little deeper to earn better ores and, with that, more efficient tools to help you reach new sections of the world. Along the way, you can use your cash to unlock better gear—a lantern for aiding your darker descents, or dynamite to help you remove thicker areas of soil, for example—and discover one of several secret biomes, all of which contain their own unique ores and mysteries. And that’s really all there is to it. It’s A Game About Digging a Hole with a few extra layers, nothing more, nothing less.

It goes without saying at this point, but Hole Digging Master is about as dull and as sluggish as you could possibly imagine. In fact, during the initial twenty to thirty minutes or so, you don’t really make any progress. Instead, you spend your time collecting worthless ores and selling them once your energy level depletes. Once you collect enough ores, however, the game does become a little easier to play, with larger sinkholes to weave through and more complex terrain to tackle. It’s still a slow process that requires a lot of patience, but on the bright side, it does offer you a good selection of perks and bite-sized incentives to keep you rifling through the soil. The question is, does it offer enough to keep you digging through to the root? Eh, it’s a hit and miss thing.

While Hole Digging Master does make an effort to cram even more secrets and sunken biomes into its open-ended sinkhole, the gameplay itself is still rather barebones and without any real depth to it. But that’s a given—the fact that you have to subject yourself to the act of monotonous grafting in order to reap the fruits of your labor. It isn’t a fun experience by any means, though it does fool you into believing that, if you are able to spend just a little more time wading through the dirt, then the great payoff will uproot and fall gracefully into the palm of your hand. The thing is, the “big payoff” isn’t all that rewarding. Aside from a couple of peek-a-boo treasures and ominous biomes, there really isn’t a lot for you to work towards. And yet, you’ll still find yourself doing it regardless, if only for the sake of scratching “that” itch that yearns for something far, far greater.

As for everything else that flesh out Hole Digging Master, what you see is what you get: a fairly generic incremental indie that houses all of the usual janky tropes and liminal visual elements that you would typically find in an alternate chore core sim à la Backyard Digger. It isn’t a feast for the eyes, nor is it a game that will make you ooh and aah at every turn, for that matter. But, it might just make you appreciate the little things, like the randomized treasures and the hidden quarters. It isn’t much, but it ought to give your eyes a break for an hour or two between taxing cinematic sequences, nonetheless. The question is, do the “little things” justify the price tag?

Verdict

Hole Digging Master orbits the same carrot on a stick tactic that countless other incremental digging games have recycled over the past several years or so. This isn’t a bad thing, mind you, as such a concept has often proven to work wonders for curing boredom and keeping fingers twiddling for a few hours or more. The problem, however, is that big payoff in these cases is rarely worth the time and effort that you pour into it, and Hole Digging Master isn’t all that different, annoyingly. Even still, for a game that can remediate your boredom for an hour or two between tougher bouts of action-heavy excursions, I’d say that it just about warrants your attention, if only just.