XBOX REVIEW | Dig or Die: Console Edition

“When your ship crashes on an unknown and hostile planet and you only have a few tools to survive and rebuild the rocket, it’s time to get creative.”

In the game Dig or Die: Console Edition, you play as a representative of the CRAFT & Co company. Your mission is to sell automated fabrication tools across the galaxy, but things take a turn when your spacecraft crashes on a hostile planet. As you explore this strange world, you will find that the wildlife is not friendly and will attack you given the opportunity. Use resources that you find to build a base, which comes under constant attack from the monsters and creatures that inhabit this planet. Defend your base at night, and during the daylight hours, it’s vital that you go exploring and gather vital resources to upgrade your base and work towards your mission of building and launching a rocket ship so you can escape this planet.

Crash Site

Things I liked!

• Gameplay | As soon as you begin your adventure, it quickly dawns on you that in Dig or Die, there is little hand-holding, and you have to figure out what to do all by yourself. The only help you receive is from the AI in your crashed spaceship, who warns you that the territory around the crash site is very hostile. He tells you to build a base with some sentry guns to defend yourself at night. All you have in the beginning is your trusted flashlight, a Miniaturizor which you use to mine resources or retrieve items, a plasma rifle which is medium range but does very little damage, and an Auto-Builder which you can place on the ground and then use to craft a variety of tier 1 items. As you progress through the game, you can craft even better Auto-Builders, weapons, and much more. Dig or Die has procedurally generated worlds, so each time you start a new game, the environment around your crashed spaceship will be slightly different. This definitely adds to the replay value. I would recommend starting on an easier difficulty so that you can familiarise yourself with the gameplay mechanics and then try a more challenging difficulty. Another thing that really impressed me was the use of water in Dig or Die. It rains often, and the water does not just disappear. It will fill a hole and work its way downwards. So when you build your base, you have to make sure that if any rainwater gets in, there is a way for it to escape too. You can dig tunnels to guide the water away, creating underground rivers. Luckily, your character is a great swimmer and can also hold their breath for a fair few seconds. Swimming mechanics are really simple and very realistic.

• Replayability | Dig or Die has lots of replayability. Apart from the main game, you also have a game mode called Other Worlds. Here, you have three different game worlds to choose from, such as: Sky World: An unpredictable, random world composed of a multitude of floating islands. Under The Sea: Start in a cavern under an ocean 300 blocks deep. Base Defence: 100% base building and defense without any exploration.
  
  
• Sound | Dig or Die has some really nice touches in the sound department. The music on the menu screen is very relaxing. As you play during day and night cycles, the music changes, as does the mood, with nights becoming more chaotic. The sound effects in Dig or Die are also really well implemented, from the gushing sound of the rain as it pours through tunnels to the sound effects from the various monsters as they chase and attack you.
  
  
• Difficulty | Dig or Die has five difficulty settings to choose from, ranging from Peaceful, where surviving each night is not really challenging at all, to Brutal, where you are very lucky to survive the first night. For the most part, I played on Normal mode for this review. I did test Brutal difficulty, and I didn’t last too long. You can choose how frequently you would like the game to automatically save your progress, which I found really helpful as you can get lots done in only a few minutes. I would recommend saving often and having more than one save.

Nice day for a swim

Neither good nor bad

• Controls | While for the most part, when things are calm, the controls seem to work well. The left trigger activates your Miniaturizor, and the right trigger fires your weapon. The Y button brings up your inventory and shows everything that you are carrying. Along the bottom of the screen, you have twenty item slots that you can fill to save you from having to go to your inventory each time you wish to use them. You can select these items using the left and right bumper buttons. A good example of items that you may have here are health potions, weapons, and helpful building items. I found it very tricky when you have multiple monsters attacking you from all angles, and you need to quickly use a health potion and then quickly select the weapon again. There is no option to button map the controls yourself.

Base Camp

Things I disliked!

• No Co-op | The PC version of Dig or Die, released in 2018, features co-op play, which is missing from the console version. Even if they had included couch co-op, I think that would have been a huge plus.
  
  
• Base Building | With no guidance or help given, I found it really difficult to build a good base, especially later on when you can craft more advanced items. I would have really liked to see some guides explaining how certain items work, especially all the different kinds of building blocks available.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 14 hours
How long to beat the story? 13 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 4/18
How long to achieve 1000G | 40 Hours plus depending on skill
You’ll love this game if you like these | Terraria and Ark: Survival Evolved