Keep Digging Review (PC)

It doesn’t have to be glamorous; it just has to be fun. It doesn’t even need to have a purpose; it just needs to cough up enough material to make chores feel weirdly satisfying to complete. I suppose that’s what Keep Digging aims to encapsulate: a primordial concept that is, while not overtly pleasant (much less complex)  simple, harmless fun on an ore-stricken platter. With this world, you don’t need riveting battles to keep things interesting; you just need to have an open mind about what you’re doing and, more importantly, why you’re doing it. And while that approach wouldn’t work for every chore core sim on the market, it does work here, weirdly.

Keep Digging takes the basic infrastructure of A Game About Digging a Hole and embellishes it with a trove of fascinating underground locations, historical sites of cultural significance, and a communal essence that carries over in an oddly addicting multiplayer experience. The idea, of course, is still the same: a group of miners take to their pickaxes and shovels and, through the power of hard labor and other methods of extraction, collectively carve their ways through a seemingly bottomless world that’s teeming with ore veins, rarities, artifacts, and a plethora of materials to unearth. The thing that sets this world apart from A Game About Digging a Hole, however, is that it fleshes out its 1000m underworld with ten unique biomes, all of which contain their own secrets, landmarks, and lore. And honestly, that’s a huge step in the right direction.

The Secrets That Loom Below

Keep Digging isn’t like Deep Rock Galactic, by which I mean that it doesn’t supplement its procedurally generated worlds with random bouts of combat or any form of physical activity. Heck, it doesn’t even make you dig. Well, it does, but it also gives you the option of being able to alternate between building your own network either alone or with up to seven friends, or relying on the automation process that enables your offline companions to make progress on your behalf whilst you’re clocked out.

Suffice it to say, Keep Digging is a game that openly wears its heart on its sleeve and its intentions on its forehead. As I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t contain any form of combat, or even any challenges, for that matter. Instead, Keep Digging opts to take the route less traveled—the route that favors the art of discovery and the thrills that tie in with unearthing fragments of history. And with friends, such an adventure is a great way to spend a dozen or more hours, truly.

Keep Digging leans on the rogue-like progression tropes that we’ve seen countless times before—the instrumental components that require you to both maintain and upgrade your tools in order to proceed even deeper into the underbelly of the cavern. It’s a simple setup, and it doesn’t exactly elevate the basic structure of a traditional build ‘em up. That said, for what it is, and for what it aims to achieve, it doesn’t really need to excel, or even set a new benchmark, for that matter. It is, quite simply, a premise that just works.

Discovering the Truth

While the act of digging through a thousand meters of dirt can feel like a bit of a slog at times, Keep Digging does at least make the process more interesting by adding a tiered system that sprouts all sorts of earthly delicacies and environments for you to explore and document throughout your expedition. Moreover, it coerces you into working collectively with your friends to overcome obstacles and reap the rewards as a unit—an incentive that brings about its own array of benefits, including more efficient tools and resources that allow you to elevate your tactics and abilities.

Keep Digging is a satisfying game, to say the least. Granted, if it didn’t have multiple layers to explore, then it wouldn’t be half as effective, as it would lose its appeal almost instantly. And I think that’s where A Game About Digging a Hole went wrong, because while it had the mechanics and the gratifying work, it didn’t have the added weight of being unpredictable. But that’s where Keep Digging bridges the gaps—in the form of a borough of unique locations, all of which are as equally diverse as they are entertaining to chisel through. What’s more, they make you want to stick around to explore before moving on, which is a whole different ballgame altogether.

To add to all of the above, Keep Digging is, in spite of its simplicity, visually stunning, both inside and out. It isn’t just a murky crater with ore veins and soil; it’s a labyrinthine cortex that houses numerous points of interest and treasures from various mysterious eras. And to reiterate, it’s a great deal of fun to chronicle, more so if you’re working alongside a troupe of like-minded miners. Admittedly, it fosters a few graphical issues, but nothing particularly disastrous.

Verdict

Keep Digging isn’t just your typical ore-grappling dig ‘em up; it’s a fascinating joint expedition into a pit of lost civilizations and cultural artifacts—a journey that is not only made to feel awfully endearing (more so for those who share an undying passion for good old-fashioned crypt-dwelling affairs), but to exhume a primal sense of personal responsibility, too.

Thanks to its inclusion of multiple mythical tiers and a labyrinth of unique caverns and collectible artifacts and resources, Keep Digging establishes itself as a jam-packed endeavor with a certain special ingredient that makes it all the more intriguing. Of course, the core gameplay loop isn’t drastically different from your bog-standard excavation sim. Yet, thanks to its ever-fruitful branch of tool upgrades, modes of play, and multiplayer capabilities, it certainly does enough to put itself a few tiers above its competitors. And that’s saying a lot, given the number of similar games that are currently available on the market.

When all’s said and done, Keep Digging provides you with plenty to unearth for all the while you actively choose to don the pickaxe and get your hands dirty. It’s slick, mysterious, and oh-so addictive. What more could you want from a co-op mining sim, eh?