Developed/Published by: The Electric Toy Company
Released: 5th July, 2014
Completed: 18th January, 2015
Completion: $39,000, 621 meters depth.
Trophies / Achievements:18/31
January has been a tough month here at exp. Towers, with little to report in the “completed games” stakes. Of course, when I say “tough month” what I mean is “I’ve played Fantasy Life more than anything else, and I’m enjoying it, and ‘finishing it’ isn’t something I’m really bothered about doing, so…”
Doug Dug. is an “endless digger”! I know there are some other versions of this idea—there’s that game I Dig It, isn’t there?—but this one feels like they said “I’d like to make an endless Spelunky, sorta” and went ahead with doing that. When I started playing it, I hated it. Basically, your wee guy (Doug, I guess) digs his way down, but dirt has several strengths. if you dig under blocks and leave them supported by blocks that are less strong than they are, they fall and will almost certainly squish you.
To begin with, it’s really, really hard to grasp the system that leads to blocks falling. In fact, although I’ve grown to very not-hate Doug Dug., I’d be lying if I said I understood it well enough that I’m not usually killed by this happening. There is one solution (a bit like Spelunky): extreme caution.
That’s what makes this game a bit more fun than the other endless-me-do that I played recently, Crossy Road. Crossy Road isn’t interesting after a while because as you get good at it, moving forward for quite a while isn’t challenging, and collecting coins doesn’t offer enough of a reward to be worth the risk. Here in Doug Dug., you’ve got two high scores (depth and cash) and you kind of need to keep pushing both upwards, so you’ll, even in the first 100 meters, find yourself pushing yourself into dangerous positions to get some cash.
(And if you don’t—and I’d be interested if the developers have confirmed this is coded or just random—the game eventually spawns stuff in your way so you don’t cheaply just dig down, down, down, to avoid anything falling on you.)
I don’t like that there’s a randomness to dying (in particular, you’re much much safer if you happen upon a helmet which protects you from one cave in, but you don’t always) but I do like that there’s a reason to keep playing… up to a point.
Because once you’re past 500 meters (I’d say) the early levels do lose their lustre, and the game introduces some pretty unfair baddies, including a huge troll that seems to be indestructible apart from that one time I happened upon him and he was already dead (dynamite, maybe.) And it’s at that point the “I didn’t understand exactly why that fell on my head” thing starts to feel really annoying, not just unfair, and you stop.
It’s still good for a while though.
Will I ever play it again? Nah. Quite comfortably done with it.
Final Thought: You know what’s a good series? Mr Driller. I should play one of those again.
