Over the weekend, I went out to a bar for a friend’s surprise birthday party. When I greeted him, he told me that the event had interrupted his other plans for the evening: digging a hole. He went on to tell me about a new $5 Steam game called A Game About Digging a Hole, in which players dig a hole. I could not tell if he was joking or if this was a real thing that existed. I laughed it off and went on with the night.
Days later, I was so focused on my Steam Deck screen that I missed my subway stop and showed up late to a movie screening.
A Game About Digging a Hole is one of those games whose appeal is nearly impossible to describe. It’s in the same niche tent as Powerwash Simulator, taking a mundane premise and turning it into something hypnotic. I don’t even know if it’s something I should be formally recommending, as it’s best discovered by accident and bought on a curious whim. Just pretend I’m relaying everything I’m about to write to you in the back corner of a bar between drinks.
If you can read the game’s title, you have most of the premise down. Some fast story setup tells me that my character has bought a new house for dirt cheap, and it came with a bonus: There’s treasure buried in the backyard. With a battery-powered trowel in hand, I begin digging into a small patch of grass outside. My holes are shallow at first, only deep enough to uncover stones. I can take those rocks to my computer and sell them, netting me cash that can be used to upgrade my gear. I can get a bigger shovel, increase my inventory, get a bigger battery, and eventually pick up a jetpack. Cash can also be spent to top off my battery (which explodes when it hits zero) and health, as well as buy TNT and lamps — useful tools once I get deeper.
What quickly emerges is a deconstruction of Steamworld Dig, where I need to keep digging for rare rocks, selling them, and incrementally growing my toolset. It’s almost like an idle clicker game in progression structure, but with a shovel instead of a mouse. Within an hour, I’ve dug an enormous, messy hole in the backyard and begun finding more valuable materials like silver to sell.
Whether inadvertent or intentional, developer Cyberwave finds surprising depth in minimalism. Digging becomes a complicated engineering puzzle that requires strong spatial awareness. Before I get my jetpack, I need to dig carefully so as to make sure I can climb out of the hole if I get too deep. I start making stair step footholds to achieve that, though I need to maintain it while I expand the hole. As I get deeper, I begin forming tunnels in the dirt as opposed to simply digging straight down. That’s dangerous, as it sends me through dark spaces that are easy to get lost in. I’m almost creating my own liminal space akin to The Backrooms — a maze of claustrophobic dirt paths that would trigger someone’s trypophobia. It’s not a horror game by any stretch, but you can trick yourself into seeing it as one.
More than anything, though, A Game About Digging a Hole simply taps into a simple joy. There is something primal about sitting in a sandbox as a kid and feeling compelled to dig. I don’t know what makes it such an engrossing act. Maybe it’s just the possibility that I’ll discover something down there, a possibility instilled in me from years of marveling over dinosaur bones as a kid. My humble mission here makes me feel like I’m on an excavation mission, with the promise of a big discovery dangled in front of me.
Is there really something worth find under all that dirt? I wouldn’t dare spoil that for you. Pick up a shovel and find out for yourself.
A Game About Digging a Hole is available now on PC.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.