DrFink addition: Announced, I believe, through social media today (6/5/2014) is the fact that Steamworld Dig is coming to Wii U!!
Image & Form to DrFinkelstein on Instagram (in comments) said:
"There will be some new features and tweaks but essentially it'll be the same SteamWorld Dig we all know and love :) /Julius" ... "I can't tell what exactly will be new but I promise it will be unique in some aspects."
@Zero Yes you are, buy Steamworld Dig! Forget all this 2DS and Wii U price-cut nonesense, the real story here is a badass 3DS exclusive that everyone should be playing and talking about!
Just finished my 2nd playthrough and this time I was able to get 100% completion no problem, in fact I ended up with tons of cash and orbs and nothing to spend them on because I'd bought every item in every shop, cleaned out the town! Of course the most expensive upgrades are practically game-breaking... by the end of the game you're so powerful you can really wreck shop.
I totally dismissed this game when I heard about it based on it's iOS roots and the graphical style, what a fool I was.
I'm 1 hour in and loving it! The exploration is fun and the controls feel great. There isn't as much faffing about on the surface as I initially thought, which is a good thing. A quick upgrade then back to the digging. Yeah Steamworld!
@Super_Conzo Yayyyyy!!!! Someone else who appreciates this game, oddly enough I think it's iOS roots might have helped it, the constant feedback loop of awards and progression smacks of a game designed to be addictive. Well... it's addictive, in a good way! If this game was never ending I'd just keep digging and digging further and further down, as long as the upgrades and abilities kept coming.
Completed! Finished in 5:05 which makes me think the game is overpriced by about 20%, but it was such an enjoyable play I'd still wholeheartedly recommend it!
Well, if we're going to use the dollar-to-playtime metric, weren't Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission about 8 hours tops, the first time through? Makes the "5 hours of fun for 9 bucks" ratio look pretty good.
@Guillaume For me Steamworld Dig and Metroid Fusion both took about 8 hrs on my first playthrough, although I was trying to 100% Steamworld Dig on the first run, I could have easily ended the game a couple hours eariler but I kept digging for orbs (one of the types of currency needed to unlock all the upgrades, for those who have not played).
It's a different age, it's hard to imagine a game like Fusion costing $30 now.
For some reason my attitude to the eShop has been £/$1 per hour. Gunman Clive, Mighty Switch Force, Sakura Samurai, Spin Cycle - these all obey my model. There is total replayability in Steamwold Dig though so I retract my comment.
@Super_Conzo Well it is pretty short, the reason I replayed right away was because I was still having so much fun with the mechanics yet the main story was over. If they make a sequel for this game I'd like to see it be 2 or 3X as large with more secret rooms and puzzles and items to find. Hopefully that will happen since this game was received pretty well. I heard a rumor somewhere it's coming to Steam, I hope that's the case, it needs more exposure.
I seem to recall that the developer was very happy with sales on the eShop, so the chances of another game from them (a sequel or otherwise) is fairly high. I think/hope.
Bought this on a whim, and played it through in one sitting. Very Super-Metroidey, with a vibe of a certain flash game I played years ago with a similar theme*. It's not a long game, but digging is fun, and you'll want to start over to do more. It has the feel of a game that you can "ruin" if you dig the wrong way, or spend too much on the wrong things, but it's short enough that you can restart guilt-free. The story leaves room for a sequel and another playable character (if that isn't simply unlocked in this game one way or another). Image and Form are also very good about interacting with their audience and critics over twitter, and they'll most likely follow you if you have something (or two) to say about their game. It also feels like Steamworld Dig could have used randomly generated map algorithm, but perhaps I&F ran out of time before they could implement such a thing. The mine is the same each time through, although it's big enough that you won't memorize where all the minerals are.
*There were two games actually. One where you're trying to dig to Hell so that you can join a dance party there, and one where you're a robot mining on Mars (with similar mineral names, e.g.: "Bronzium, and Goldium" to Steamworld's "Trashium and Bronzite"), where you ALSO end up in Hell, fighting off Satan.
