Steamworld Dig 2

I smell treasure

The sequel has arrived for the Switch and the first game was rather enjoyable. It continues a time later after the first game when Dot, the girl robot from the first game arrives to look for Rusty after he disappeared. She arrives at the nearby town and starts to investigate some strange earthquakes and find this floating spirit named Fin that will be your sarcastic partner during the adventure. Rest of the game works like the first one, mine for minerals, get it back and upgrade your things and go even deeper. The game isn't only the mine and town this time around since you can travel to the left and right for even more things like a temple for some suicide cult and... another way into the main mine, but it at least feels bigger.

Mine Mine Mine All Day Long!

The game took me a bit less than 10 hours to finish and 74 % of all secrets found. The end game serves up a bit of a twist. Playing through it I believed Rusty would be the end boss, that he had been possessed by the evil machine in the last game. The game even encourage this theory when you meet mutant humans living at the bottom of the mine that tells you that Rusty built several machines that seems to correlate with the earthquakes. After disarming them the way to the humans are blocked so after entering their sewer system you confront Rosie that have taken Rusty and uses him to power her mech-suit. The machines Rusty installed was to siphon the energy from the core so it wouldn't explode. I had to do the boss battle twice since the first time I wasn't that prepared, but after changing cog-upgrades it worked a lot better. In the end the spirit Fin stays behind to teleport Dot and Rusty to the surface so that everyone can escape on rockets that was built during the course of the game... and then the planet explodes. I guess they are setting up the world of Steamworld Heist since that is in space and a destroyed planet usually fits the bill. I really need to finish that game as well. Overall a fun game.

Steamworld Dig: A Fistful of Dirt

Dig dig dig in our mine all day long!

With the new Nintendo reward system I, for some reason, have accumulated a bunch of gold and silver coins and there is nearly nothing I want to use it on. So for the heck of it I started to check games that was recommended and so on and grab one that was on sale. So I got Steamworld Heist, but since I wanted to play the first game in the series I got Steamworld Dig as well... not on sale and finished it in just around 5 hours. It was a fun little game. You play as Rusty, a steambot that has arrived to Tumbleton to meet Uncle Joe. But instead he falls into a cave where he locate Uncle Joe dead and another Steamboat that takes you back to the town. And so the adventure begins.

It's basically dig your way down the mine, get minerals to sell to get money in order to buy upgrades, equipments and items and go even further down the mine. Also some upgrades needs orbs so get them to. The mine is divided in three areas. You look at it from a 2D perspective so it feels like a Metroid game. The difference is that the player decides the environment and how you want to dig the tunnels. You need to dig them good enough so you can jump up and down before the lantern goes out and at the same time make it cross the whole map to find the mineral deposits. Until the end of course when you can run and double jump as well having a way to detect deposits on the map.

And at the end, as per usual you get to fight a boss... which for some reason absorbed Uncle Joe (which is what I guess killed him) and speaks about preparing Rusty to be absorbed as well as the heart of the machine and then launch an attack to take over the world. The battle is destroying the generators powering it... and it is randomised how they appear on the screen each time you enter. So the first time I was killed rather fast (could also been due to not fully upgrade everything). Second attempt was a much better time. You defeat him and then it goes to one month later when the people of the town has built a monument over Rusty that didn't come back... but then again, the town people were afraid to search for him except the girl steamboat you met at the beginning of the game and bought all the minerals you brought in. So that was 5 hours, one sitting. Wonder what Steamworld Heist looks like.