Keep Digging Review Summary

Highly enjoyable and great value: Players consistently found the game to be very fun, engaging, and stress-relieving, often leading to extended playtimes. Many highlighted its excellent value for money, considering it a worthwhile purchase that provides significant entertainment for its price.

Enhanced fun with friends: The game's enjoyment factor significantly increases when played with friends, making it an ideal party game or a casual co-op experience. Players found it relaxing and a great way to spend an evening, often leading to lively and memorable sessions.

Satisfying and addictive digging: The core digging mechanic is highly praised for its simplicity, addictiveness, and satisfying nature. Players enjoy the mindless yet rewarding process of digging, finding it a unique and exhilarating experience that fulfills a primal desire.

Casual, accessible, and low difficulty: The game is noted for its low difficulty, intuitive controls, and casual gameplay, making it accessible for beginners and suitable for relaxed play. Features like fast travel and lack of fall damage contribute to a stress-free experience.

Solid concept and design: Reviewers appreciate the game's novel concept, solid design, and retro-style vibe. It's seen as a well-made 'snack game' that delivers on its premise, with good optimization and stable performance.

Severe Performance and Optimization Issues: Players consistently report extremely poor game optimization, leading to low frame rates (5-15 FPS even on high-end GPUs), high CPU/GPU usage, frequent crashes, freezes, and long loading times. Many find the game unplayable without significant performance improvements.

Lack of Content and Polish: The game is criticized for its limited content, short playtime (often under 2 hours for completion), and lack of replayability. Players feel it's an unfinished product, lacking a compelling story, diverse gameplay options, and overall polish.

Game-Breaking Bugs and Exploits: Multiple critical bugs allow players to clip through terrain, fall to the bottom of the map, or instantly complete the game, severely undermining the intended gameplay loop and challenge. These exploits make the game feel broken and unsatisfying.

Poor Core Gameplay Loop: The primary strategy of digging straight down is too effective, making other digging methods irrelevant and leading to a repetitive and boring experience. This approach also allows for extremely quick game completion, reducing engagement.

Unreliable Save and Settings Management: Players experience issues with lost save data, settings not retaining after exiting or restarting, and the inability to save game progress reliably. Basic features like multiple save slots or proper menu navigation are also missing.

Digging straight down is optimal: Players found that digging straight down is the most efficient and fastest method to progress, reach lower layers, and quickly upgrade equipment. This strategy often leads to rapid game completion.

Short game length: The game is notably short, with many players reporting completion times ranging from 1 to 5 hours, even when playing solo. All achievements can typically be unlocked within a few hours.

Core gameplay loop: The primary gameplay involves digging for ore, selling it for money, and then using that money to upgrade tools. This loop is central to progression and reaching deeper levels.

Multiplayer experience: The game features a cooperative multiplayer mode where players can dig together, but also engage in playful sabotage like burying or blowing up friends. Resource sharing might extend playtime.

Controller input issues: Players noted that the game does not fully support gamepad input, and some specific button functions on a PS5 controller were either unknown or had limited utility.

Graphics Settings Impact: Lowering graphics settings, including turning off V-sync and reducing texture quality, can mitigate some performance issues like stuttering and visual glitches such as seeing through the floor. This suggests that some problems are tied to higher graphical fidelity.

Contextual Performance Drops: Performance issues are particularly noticeable at the starting point of the game and can worsen in multiplayer with floating minerals. Conversely, frame rates tend to improve when players venture deeper underground, and removing grass can also boost FPS.

Inconsistent Performance Reports: While most feedback points to poor performance, a few players reported that the game runs fine on their systems, and some noted smoother gameplay on NVidia GPUs. This indicates that performance may vary significantly across different hardware configurations.

Potential Default Resolution Issue: One player suggested that the default resolution might be set too high, potentially contributing to initial performance problems. Adjusting this setting could offer a quick fix for some users.

Mixed recommendations, often conditional: Player sentiment is highly divided, with some strongly recommending the game and others advising against it. Recommendations are often conditional on factors like playing with friends, waiting for sales, or developers addressing current issues. Some even suggest refunding the game.

Needs significant updates and fixes: A large portion of feedback indicates that the game is currently unpolished and suffers from various issues, including performance problems and crashes. Players express hope for future updates to add content, improve replayability, and resolve critical bugs.

Good for casual multiplayer: Many players recommend the game for casual play with friends, highlighting its value for money and enjoyable multiplayer experience. It's seen as a fun way to pass time, especially when played with others.

Repetitive tasks and achievements: The game involves repetitive tasks, which some players enjoy, especially when aiming for achievements. It's recommended to be the host for achievement tracking and to complete digging sessions in one go due to synchronization issues.

Referred to as a 'god game': A small number of players referred to the game as a 'god game', though the context or specific meaning behind this label is not elaborated upon in the feedback.

Desire for more content: Players frequently express a strong desire for additional content, including new maps, deeper abysses, random map generation, and interactive elements like NPCs or enemies. This indicates a need for expanded gameplay experiences and replayability.

Enhance game challenges: Reviewers want more challenging elements, including enemies with varying difficulty, traps, and bombs. They also suggest adding fall damage for a more strategic approach to exploration.

Refunds due to issues: Some players requested or received refunds, citing issues like loading problems or simply completing the game quickly. This suggests a need to address technical stability and content depth.

Early access and future updates: Players acknowledge the game is in early access and express hope for continued development, future updates, and improvements. This indicates an understanding of the game's current state and potential.

Improve digging mechanics: Players suggest various improvements to the core digging mechanics, such as adding durability to tools, requiring tool upgrades for deeper terrain, and implementing an automatic ore collector. There's also a request for a 'hold to dig' function instead of repeated clicks.