"A Game About Digging A Hole" Review

Publisher: Yalpakor Bou-tique

Developer: Cyberwave

Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)

For as long as mankind has told stories, countless explorations have been made into our deepest curiosities. Why are we here? What does it mean to be human? How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? These questions and many more have been the centerfolds of theological debates and countercultural revolutions for all of time, and they will continue to be for as long as our tiny species on this pale blue dot in the cosmos dares to dream. And in 2025, we have A Game About Digging a Hole (henceforth referred to as just Hole), a game that takes a Meat Loaf hit written by James Michael to heart: you say it best when you say nothing at all.

I couldn't be more facetious if I tried, but there are only so many ways one can open up a review of a game that wears its heart so clearly on its sleeve. So, let's get started!

In Hole, you're somebody who has just purchased a house for $10k on the promise that there's buried treasure hidden in the backyard somewhere. So, you pick up your shovel (that comes with a warning that it'll explode if it runs out of batteries) and start digging. That's it. That's the story. There's a little twist at the end, but it doesn't really add anything to the discussion, nor does it need to!

So, onto the gameplay. This is one of those "dad games" where you chip away at a task with initially shoddy tools, earning currency along the way to improve your tools and chip away at the task more efficiently. At first, you have a basic shovel, a basic battery life for that shovel, and a small inventory that holds three items. These items are "ores" you'll find while digging, starting with stones at the surface level and getting to things like gold or platinum as you get further and further down. You then sell these for money to buy upgrades and usable items like lamps and dynamite.

With that, you probably have a basic idea of how things go at the start. You'll dig until you either fill up your limited inventory of 3 stones or run low on battery (remember, it'll explode if it runs out). You'll sell your haul, charge your battery (if needed), and purchase upgrades if you've earned enough money. Then you'll rinse and repeat. 

As for what these upgrades are, obviously the most important one is shovel size and efficiency. But there are also inventory upgrades (which are important if you don't want to have to surface after every three ores you find), battery life upgrades (which are important if you don't want to have to surface after a couple seconds of digging), and a jetpack with its own upgrades (which help you get out of holes you can't leap out of). Realistically, you'll want to secure all of these, and thankfully that isn't at all hard to do.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Hole (apart from the autistic joy of having a clear goal to chip away at) is the speed at which the upgrades flow. Plenty of games like this take their time when it comes to doling out progress, but you can get your first upgrade after maybe two trips back to the garage to sell stones (keeping in mind that stones are everywhere in that surface level and you can only carry those three at a time at first). The pace only slows down a bit from there: just enough to keep the game from completely blowing by. So, not only is the experience of digging the hole satisfying to begin with, it's also generous when it comes to rewarding your efforts!

So, that's how you'll go about the process, but now let's discuss how the process evolves as you dig deeper. At first, everything is simple: you dig starting at the X in the center of this wide backyard and keep going down. But sooner-or-later, things are going to change. 

In the earliest iteration of this, at about 4 or 5 meters down the hole you'll suddenly take out a little radar that starts beeping. Following this radar will reveal a little suitcase with money inside buried just a shovel poke or two away from the downward tunnel you've been digging. This shows you that there are other treasures to be found elsewhere in the backyard that can help speed up the money-making process. 

Not long after that, you'll find yourself up against rocks that can't be broken with your shovel. At this point, you likely won't have the money to buy dynamite (which is the only way to break the rocks), so you'll have to dig yourself a little detour around them. 

But on the opposite side of the spectrum, around this point in the dig, you may find yourself lucky enough to dig into a cave. You may dig down through a bit of dirt to find a large drop before the next patch of dirt, getting you closer to the bottom of the hole without having to do as much work. These often come with a fair amount of darkness, but lamps are fairly cheap if you find the darkness too much to handle.

Whatever form it takes, the rocks and caves and the detours they necessitate will oftentimes lead you to those aforementioned other treasures, making this whole gameplay experience a tightly-programmed dealio...and I do mean "programmed," because the backyard itself doesn't seem to be procedurally generated. Perhaps the ore placement is procedural, but I tended to find caves and rocks in roughly the same places I found them, all things considered, and the non-story treasures are 100% in static locations. Just another thing to love about this game!

That's gameplay covered, how about stability? Well, Hole is solid in all the ways that matter most. The sounds are satisfying, there are no low textures, no crashes, no framerate drops, etc. I do, however, have a couple complaints. 

The first concerns the dynamite. This tool costs $100 a pop and, as I mentioned, it's the only way to clear rocks. The price tag isn't necessarily the problem, but it's somewhat a problem when the product doesn't always work. There have been multiple times where I've thrown a stick of dynamite at a rock only for it to fall through the world and explode somewhere off camera. $100 isn't cheap when it isn't reliable! And on the subject of dynamite, I also found it too bouncy at times. I'd throw a stick at a rock, it would bounce a little bit, roll a distance, and blow up too far away to deal with the rock. As I wrote this particular section, I wondered if I could've been "cooking" the dynamite that whole time...and I'm not sure. Either way, it doesn't negate the fact that the dynamite just doesn't work sometimes.

Finally, there's a bit of an oversight in the game's dirt system. Let's say you're digging a simple downward spiral. Now, let's say your shovel was maybe a pixel off at one point during that process. That little pixel of dirt still counts as a piece of solid ground, meaning that you may have trouble easily getting down the hole you dug until you find the speck and shovel it. I got all the achievements for Hole, and this issue made the achievement for a 4-second free-fall far harder than it should have been (to say nothing of the nightmare that was my self-imposed challenge to clear all of the dirt in the entire game). What's more, that list of achievements includes one for reaching the treasure in 30 minutes or less...and I eventually cleared that with a time of around 27 minutes, but this speck of dirt problem was the cause of many a failure in the pursuit of this accolade.

A Game About Digging A Hole has been hopped on by Youtubers far and wide, so I'd be surprised if you haven't at least heard of it in passing. I'd also be surprised if you heard about the premise and didn't instantly know if you'd like it or not. So, I won't waste your time trying to convince you that you may find something to love if you're on the fence. I'll just say that if you think you'll like it, you will. And you'll probably sink far too much time into it, like I did. With this being as simple a game as it is, I'll be using my smaller scale wherein I double the point value deduction because of the relative lack of aspects to judge.

Let us review:

Dynamite and dirt system woes - 1.0

The final score for A Game About Digging A Hole is...

9.0/10 - Fantastic

Excellent work, Cyberwave, excellent work.