Info about Keep Digging:

Official game description:
What is **Keep Digging**
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Keep Digging is a casual multiplayer game focused on digging, exploration, and treasure hunting. Players work together to uncover ores, treasures, and ancient technology, which can be used to upgrade gear and tools. Combat and stealth are absent, allowing the experience to focus purely on the fun of mining.
・Multiplayer: Up to 8 players can cooperate to explore the underground world
・Underground Exploration: 10 layers, reaching depths of 1,000 meters
・Gear & Technology: Equipment can be upgraded to level 20; over 8 types of upgradeable technologies available
Gear
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Equipment improves mining efficiency and can be upgraded at workbenches. Upgrades enhance performance and often change appearance.
Sample gear:
・Shovels & Pickaxes
・Dynamite
・Wire Ropes
・Batteries
・Color Spray
Hidden technologies can be obtained through mining and merchant trades. Tools like shovels and color sprays allow creative interaction with the environment.
Multiplayer Features
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・Items and currency earned in single-player can be brought into multiplayer sessions
・Rewards collected in other players’ worlds can be carried back to a home world
・Cooperative play emphasizes teamwork and shared discovery
Underground World
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・A vast, multi-layered underground environment with dungeons, ore veins, and hidden treasures
・Designed for repeat exploration, supporting continuous digging and discovery
Character Creation
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・Characters can be customized in appearance, including body shape and clothing
・Numerous emotes and skins are unlockable through progression and exploration
NPC Companions
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・Reliable companions continue mining autonomously when players are offline
・Gear and upgrades increase efficiency and depth of mining, supporting ongoing progression

Release date: 11 Sep, 2025

Categories: Cooperative Multiplayer, Exploration, Resource Management, Character Progression, Character Customization, Treasure Hunting, Automation Game, Mining Simulation


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Highly enjoyable and great value (weight 0.99): 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 (weight 0.48): 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 (weight 0.43): 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 (weight 0.2): 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 (weight 0.13): 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.
- Compares favorably to Minecraft (weight 0.06): The game is often compared to Minecraft, particularly for its digging mechanics, and is seen as fulfilling certain desires that Minecraft might not address, especially in its focused, relaxed approach to excavation.
- Thought-provoking ending (weight 0.05): The game's ending is described as unexpected, thought-provoking, and even having immense depth, leaving a lasting impression on players.

Common complaints:
- Severe Performance and Optimization Issues (weight 0.74): 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 (weight 0.64): 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 (weight 0.36): 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 (weight 0.34): 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 (weight 0.19): 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.
- Limited Control and UI Options (weight 0.13): The game lacks essential control features like key rebinding, a 'hold to dig' option, and a sprint function, making movement feel slow and tedious. The UI and menus are clunky, unintuitive, and lack basic functionalities like closing with ESC.
- Multiplayer Instability and Desync (weight 0.1): Multiplayer mode suffers from frequent disconnections, synchronization issues, and problems with rejoining sessions. Non-hosts often experience loading problems and desynchronized screens, hindering cooperative play.
- Negative Player Sentiment (weight 0.08): Players express significant disappointment, calling the game a 'crap game' and feeling it was a waste of time. Some even report physical issues with their mouse due to repetitive actions, indicating a frustrating experience.
- Subpar Solo Play Experience (weight 0.08): Playing solo is described as unengaging and less fun, with the game feeling like a gimmick without cooperative partners. The lack of random generation contributes to a repetitive experience when playing alone.
- Inventory and Resource Management Issues (weight 0.07): The inventory system is problematic, with 'cannot acquire more ore' messages obstructing digging when full. Collecting specific ores requires precise cursor alignment, and the value of some resources can quickly trivialize late-game finances.

Gameplay feedback:
- Digging straight down is optimal (weight 0.46): 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 (weight 0.44): 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 (weight 0.19): 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 (weight 0.17): 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 (weight 0.12): 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.
- Fast travel available (weight 0.05): The game includes fast travel points or waypoints, often located in caves, which help players navigate the dug-out areas more efficiently.
- TNT and pickaxe upgrades (weight 0.04): TNT can be leveled up, and pickaxe upgrades expand the digging range. In solo play, TNT resources are not shared.
- Chimpanzee skin (weight 0.04): The game features a chimpanzee skin, allowing players to play as a chimp that can fart and dig.
- Early game strategy (weight 0.03): In the early stages, digging deeper for more valuable minerals and gems is suggested to improve efficiency, as initial digging capabilities are low.

Performance notes:
- Graphics Settings Impact (weight 0.08): 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 (weight 0.05): 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 (weight 0.03): 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 (weight 0.02): 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.

Recommendations:
- Mixed recommendations, often conditional (weight 0.54): 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 (weight 0.49): 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 (weight 0.29): 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 (weight 0.05): 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' (weight 0.02): 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.

Other player notes:
- Desire for more content (weight 0.4): 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 (weight 0.37): 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 (weight 0.22): 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 (weight 0.21): 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 (weight 0.17): 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.
- Desire for quality of life features (weight 0.13): Players suggest features like a camp system for saving and replenishing resources, a countdown to respawn, and the ability to reset item levels. These would improve the overall player experience.
- Affordable price point (weight 0.09): Players generally perceive the game as inexpensive and its content volume as fair for the price. This suggests the current pricing is acceptable given the game's scope.
- Randomization and balance needed (weight 0.09): Players recommend randomizing ore and treasure locations, reshuffling fossil spawns, and balancing item drops like extra batteries. This would likely increase replayability and reduce predictability.
- Similar to 'A Game About Digging A Hole' (weight 0.06): Several reviewers compare the game to 'A Game About Digging A Hole', noting similarities in concept but highlighting the addition of multiplayer as a key differentiator.
- Controller support requested (weight 0.03): There is a clear request for official controller support, indicating a desire for alternative input methods.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 1.28): Players feel satisfied by the game's simple yet engaging digging loop, often enhanced by multiplayer. Achieving 100% completion, unlocking achievements, and finding good value for the game's price are also significant contributors to this emotion. The game's meditative quality and ability to provide entertainment for its cost are frequently mentioned.
- Frustration (weight 0.98): Frustration primarily stems from severe technical issues such as consistent GPU crashes, inconsistent FPS, high CPU/GPU usage, and multiplayer desynchronization. Bugs, poor optimization, and missing quality-of-life features like key configuration or proper controls also significantly contribute to player frustration.
- Disappointment (weight 0.97): Disappointment arises from the game's perceived lack of content, short length, and shallow depth, often leading to a feeling of low value. Technical issues like poor optimization and bugs, along with design flaws that allow for trivial strategies or make upgrades feel useless, further contribute to this sentiment.
- Joy (weight 0.46): Joy is frequently experienced when playing the game with friends, highlighting the strong positive impact of the multiplayer experience. The simple, addictive digging loop, humorous elements, and the overall fun and engaging gameplay also contribute to players' joyful experiences.
- Excitement (weight 0.38): Players feel excitement from the game's addictive loop, the thrill of digging up giant minerals, and engaging boss battles. The potential for future content, the rewarding later game, and the unique concept of mining as a chimpanzee also generate excitement, especially when shared with friends.
- Hope (weight 0.23): Hope is expressed through players' desires for future updates, bug fixes, and deeper content. Many players are willing to revisit the game if developers address current issues and add more features, indicating a belief in the game's potential for improvement.
- Amusement (weight 0.18): Amusement often comes from the game's humorous elements, such as funny character actions or the ability to play as a chimp. Discovering and exploiting bugs, engaging in mischievous activities with friends, and the game's overall silly nature also contribute to this emotion.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.12): Enjoyment is derived from the simple, addictive digging and collecting gameplay loop, whether playing solo or with friends. The well-designed reward system and the fun of finding efficient mining methods also contribute to a positive overall gameplay experience.
- Anger (weight 0.08): Anger is primarily caused by the perception of the game as a 'scam' due to its poor quality, perceived rushed development, and game-breaking bugs. Extremely poor performance, even on good hardware, also fuels this emotion, leading players to feel cheated out of their money.
- Desire (weight 0.05): Players express a desire for more game depth, additional content, and quality-of-life features such as multiple save files, controller support, and key configuration. There is also a strong wish for continued development from the author to enhance the game.
- Concern (weight 0.05): Concern arises from the game's high PC resource consumption, potential for negative mental health effects if played alone, and the risk of unfixed bugs leading to the game's demise. Players also worry about getting lost or running out of resources, and potential physical strain from continuous clicking.
- Relaxation (weight 0.04): Players experience relaxation from the game's laid-back nature, allowing them to play without much thought or while multitasking. The casual gameplay is suitable for unwinding, especially when played with friends.
- Confusion (weight 0.03): Confusion stems from unclear game mechanics, unexpected game behavior, and an ambiguous ending. Players often express uncertainty about what else to do in the game after a certain point.
- Humor (weight 0.03): Humor is found in ironic comparisons, such as equating the game to penal servitude or exaggerating concerns about mouse durability due to gameplay. These instances often highlight the game's quirks or shortcomings in a lighthearted way.
- Boredom (weight 0.03): Boredom is caused by the game's core gameplay loop quickly becoming repetitive. The lack of variety and depth in the main activity leads players to lose interest over time.
- Surprise (weight 0.03): Players experience surprise from unexpected game elements, such as the end scene or how enjoyable simple digging turned out to be. The game being more complex or providing unexpectedly long playtime also contributes to this emotion.
- Neutral (weight 0.03): This emotion reflects factual observations about the game's state without expressing a strong positive or negative sentiment. It often appears in objective descriptions of game features or performance.
- Sarcasm (weight 0.02): Sarcasm is used to highlight the game's shortcomings through exaggerated praise or ironic comments, such as using 'poggers!' after refunding a very short game. This often conveys dissatisfaction in a humorous or critical way.
- Love (weight 0.02): Love for the game is expressed through overall enjoyment and a deep appreciation for the gameplay experience. This indicates a strong positive emotional connection to the game.
- Mild frustration (weight 0.02): Mild frustration is caused by minor technical issues such as slight lag, especially when many rocks are present, or occasional connection problems. These issues are not severe enough to ruin the experience but cause minor annoyance.}