Man, I really need to finish this game. Why don't I ever finish ANYTHING!?!?!? Anywho, @imageform, welcome, and the game is brillant. The interviews from the team with Daan Koopman really made me appreciate the heck out of the whole team over there. I'll definitely buy anything from you guys on any Nintendo platform.

deathly_hallows said:

I don't buy hundreds of games per year only to leave them unplayed in my Steam collection, I buy a relatively small number of games that I'm reasonably sure I will play to completion, therefor I don't mind paying $8.99 (I looked it up) for a fantastic eShop game that ended up being in my top 5 for the year. It's a different mentality.

It's also not necessarily a worse mentality for the industry, if you're spending the same amount of money across more games. And though I've played probably 95% of the Steam games I've bought (even the stuff from bundles that I saw as a bonus to what I actually wanted), it seems pretty silly to me to demonize anyone for buying hundreds of games and only playing a few dozen. They're still putting money in developers' pockets where before they wouldn't be.

@Zero I just don't see the iPhone market as an appropriate sign of things to come on traditional platforms. Was there ever a time when original $5 iPhone games were selling? The mobile side of the industry just doesn't seem to have the customer base, media presence, or hardware manufacturers' support that traditional platforms do. And the "race to the bottom" essentially STARTED at the bottom on mobile when Angry Birds and the other supergiants created the mobile gaming market and then subsequently swallowed the whole thing before anyone else could get a slice. Add in low barriers to entry that allow the market to be flooded by shovelware (Have you ever tried finding something like De Blob among the crap in the Wii section at Gamestop? It's a THOUSAND times worse on mobile...), and is it any wonder that bubble is bursting after just a couple years? Meanwhile it's been five years since Steam sales took off, and there just doesn't seem to be much negative evidence out there among the success stories.

Like I said, I'm more worried that the booming development on PC is going to outgrow the customer base. I buy and play a metric ton of games (played over a hundred this past year, it kind of hurts to admit) and I'm still missing out on plenty of games I'd love to play but can't possibly buy and play them all. And with Steam talking about even less curation in the future, how can the media and customer base possibly keep up?

imageform said:

Oh brother, the ranting... sorry! Happy gaming everyone! :)

Haha, no need to apologize for a rant around here. This place is Downtown Rantsville. This "SteamWorld Dig Discussion" turned into debate on the effects of Steam sales within hours. That might even be a record for us.

@nate38
I'm not demonizing anyone, companies like Apple and Valve and the developers/publishers themselves who price their games at rock bottom have created this mess. If Steam sales allow you and Jargo to buy 100 games for a few bucks then why should you ever pay full price for a game again? It's a logical conclusion, it's not morally wrong or anything to want stuff for cheap or free it's the American way! I'm just offering up an alternate point of view, that maybe sometimes it's okay to spend $9 on a high quality game that is super fun and enjoyable (and support great devs).

@deathly_hallows

The games I want to play right away, like NBA2K, I pay full price for on day one. (It is nice that it's only $30 full price on PC.)

The super cheap games I get in bundles are games I wouldn't otherwise buy. I have to make time for gaming, and I do because it's not that expensive of a hobby for me, but if I had to pay significant money for all these games I just wouldn't bother.

I don't play games on computer or mobile at all, so I won't speak to Steam or iOS, but I can speak to PS+. I stayed away from it for quite some time, but finally relented when I got a Vita and accepted that it's a glorified rental service. But now that Sony is happy to give me games for 'free', I'm happy to buy way fewer games on Sony platforms. Even $3.75 was too much for me to bother with for Spelunky and Guacamelee during the holiday sales. I'll wait for free. And if I were on Steam, I can guarantee I would never pay even close to full price, because that's clearly what Valve wants. Eventally, everybody will own everything, paying as little as possible, because as long as they still get their 30%, what do they care? They take a piece of every sale. All that said, I don't game half as much as many on here, and I throw all my money at Nintendo. Several balked at $15 for NES Remix and Dr. Luigi. Not me! Keep 'em coming, Nintendo, and I'll keep buying.

@Jargon
Fair enough, the games I get on PS+ are usually games I would never ordinarily buy (which is why I usually don't play them, just download them and file them away in my backlog).

@Koovaps
I hear ya. I still buy games like Spelunky and Guacamelee on the Vita because I want to support the platform and make it viable for indies (Gone Home on Vita? Please?), but truthfully if you wait long enough all those games will probably be free. Sony is kind of shooting themselves in the foot with that one, but they had to do something to compete against XBL so it's hard to fault them.

BTW did you buy Steamworld Dig on 3DS? It's a Nintendo-quailty game which is why it's worth full price, super polished and fun.

Does anyone else want to comment on the game itself in any manner? The gameplay?

I heard something about a possible sequel already in the works or announced? Is that true?

@DrFinkelstein

Ha, the game rules, and I think I'll play some more in a bit. In one of Daan's interviews, I believe they mentioned their next project. I don't think they do sequels, but rather different games in the 'Steam World' world. I think I also recall their next game coming out (possibly first) on 3DS again.

And yes, deathly_hallows, I happily paid full price when it came out. I support all sorts on Nintendo systems.

@Koovaps

Will it have similar gameplay or be something totally different? Any word on that?

@DrFinkelstein

Yeah the gameplay is supposed to be different but still be set in the same universe. Curious to see what they come up with next.

@DrFinkelstein

I think a lot of discussion of the game itself happened here

If you could make a sequel to one Nintendo game, what would it be and why?

What a simple question! Obviously we will make sequels to SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Tower Defense, provided that SteamWorld Dig performs as well as we believe it will. We think there will be a lot of the robot-human relation aspects left unexplored also after SteamWorld Dig. However, these sequels will contain radically different gameplay. But we'd also gladly make a SteamWorld Dig 2, if all goes well.

Rest of the interview is here. Also this is a great postmortem, if you have time.

@Koovaps

Wait... what? SteamWorld Tower Defense? Is their next game based on a tower defense game?

@VofEscaflowne

Tower Defense was before Dig.

@Koovaps

Oh, was this their iOS game? I never checked that out. That was set in the same universe?

@VofEscaflowne

Even better, DSiWare!

@Koovaps

Huh, how have I never heard of that? I've only heard them mention their start on iOS and nothing about DSiWare.

@VofEscaflowne

Trailer here.

deathly_hallows said:

@nate38
I'm just offering up an alternate point of view, that maybe sometimes it's okay to spend $9 on a high quality game that is super fun and enjoyable (and support great devs).

That's not an alternate point of view, that's MY point of view! I still buy as many games for full-price that I used to, even on Steam*! I bought Volgarr the Viking for full price when it launched because I was familiar with the developers' previous work and (mostly because) the game looked like exactly what I wanted. Sure, I could have waited three months for the winter sale and paid $6 or whatever, but I didn't want to wait and reasonably believed it would be worth the $10. And I don't think that's so rare, even in our new age of sales frenzies.

But now, with Steam sales and the like, I'm also buying games I'd normally pass on because the risk is so much less. Fallout didn't seem like the kind of thing I would like so I'm not going to spend much on it, but with the reviews it got and recommendations from friends, I'm willing to take a chance on New Vegas for $2.50. If I end up loving it and intend to buy Fallout 4, I'm not going to wait until it drops all the way to $2.50, because that won't happen for at least a couple years. I'll buy it at a higher price because, after liking New Vegas, it'll be worth more to me. Maybe even full-price. It's already happened with a bunch of games I bought on a whim during sales or got as bundle bonuses. And if it works on a stingy grump like me, I have to imagine it's a pretty common occurrence.

*Admittedly I don't pay full price that often, but I rarely did so even before I built a PC for Steam. Before that I was getting most of my games used or just renting, so the developers weren't getting my money at all! Now that the games are priced where I can afford them, my money goes to the developers, instead of GameStop or GameFly.

DrFinkelstein said:

Does anyone else want to comment on the game itself in any manner? The gameplay?

Hahaha, it's just, I don't have much to say. It was a solid game, and I liked it. The one thing that really stood out to me was that the pacing felt pretty perfect. The upgrades always seemed affordable right when they could make digging go faster. And the Drill and Mega Buster came in good increments to switch up the manner of digging, too.

@nate38

I agree that the upgrades seem to happen at a solid pace. I always needed more funds but it wasn't too hard to go get more. When I speed-ran earlier today, this was even more apparent when I was selectively choosing to upgrade the drill and the water tank. I chose that over the pick-axe this time and whoa that made a world of difference.