Dig & Decode

A very underwhelming digging game. Your only goal is to collect artefacts and turn them into fuel. To find them, we use our scanner, which shows little white dots when they are in proximity. Sadly, this gameplay isn't particularly fun and quickly becomes a grind. Due to this being a digging game, I expected upgrades, but they never came, which means that no matter what percentage of fuel you have achieved, there's no way to accelerate progression. Artefacts you find are completely RNG, and if you find a common, you may as well not grab it, because it provides less than a percentage of fuel. I stuck it out to see the ending, but what you are greeted with is the main menu. I will concede that the game is chill, but it's ruined by the grind of finding artefacts of varying quality.

A passable mindless digger game. You are dropped in a large sandbox, and wander around until your treasure radar detects treasure, then dig down to treasure, maybe dig around a bit more for nearby treasure, surface, refill your power at your spaceship, rinse and repeat. Turning the desert into swiss cheese was pretty fun. The game defaulted to Portuguese when first opened, but when I managed to switch it to english I didn't notice any problems. The handful of puzzles are very basic. The item lore isn't very gripping, it's just the "complete alien guessing about the purposes of modern trash" shtick, but in addition to modern trash also egyptian stuff. The ship refueling process is very manual, I recommend waiting until you have many high value artifacts and starting with those. Every 20 minutes there's a fog that destroys visibility. Exploration outside slavishly following your radar is not rewarding. You seem to lose power over time rather than by digging, which is an odd choice, and I couldn't complete the find all artifacts achievement because a structure had half spawned inside undiggable rock.

A broken game. The last two achievements cannot be unlocked, because one of the relics is stuck inside the ground and cannot be reached. The whole point of the game is to dig through sand to uncover and collect things, getting the satisfaction of completing the collection… but you can’t do that. Bummer.

You are a space explorer, and your ship is running low on fuel. Fortunately, your ship is equipped with a system that can convert various items into fuel. Even better, you’ve parked directly above a desert filled with historic relics and discarded junk—perfect fuel material. The controls are standard for a first-person game: movement on the keyboard and actions on the mouse buttons. Since the ship is hovering above the ground, you can jump, and holding jump activates a jetpack. There is no limit to how far you can fly, but your energy slowly drains over time. You can always restore it by returning to the ship. When you step outside, you’ll see a vast desert surrounded by mountains. You can start digging anywhere, though you may want to focus on visible paths or structures that stand out. Digging is simple with the left mouse button, but there’s an even better auto-dig option, so you don’t have to hold the button constantly. Just move the camera and walk, and auto-dig will clear any sand or dirt in your path. Your goal is to find items and relics to turn into fuel. Because the desert is massive and deep, you have a radar that shows relics as white dots. However, the radar d…

If you're a completionist who likes running around an arena looking for every last artifact available to find, like me, you will find this entertaining. Except in my playthrough there was one inaccessible item. This has apparently been fixed in a patch, but I would have needed to start a new game for it to take effect, and I am certainly not playing the game twice.