Cave Digger 2 Reviews

I love diggers.

i love minors

Instead of bothering to fix the bugs in their games, they just keep vomiting out new game after new game.

Great game I loved all the endings very fun to play never know what happens when you go into the caves 8/10

This title is quite disappointing. I am not interested in multiplayer games so I'll focus on the solo experience. I can see that it is a port but I can't appreciate any further. Digging is awkward and imprecise, the tools swing randomly without any kind of control. Player movement often feels like walking through quicksand, really sloppy. Shooting is not fun and targeting is not precise. The enemy AI is very limited. I found myself calling the monsters that kept walking towards the walls and spawning underground, other times I was surrounded by absolute madness and spammy flies; really unpleasant. Most of the player actions don't have any sort of animation. The clues to open safes keep disappearing and scrolling to get the answers is infuriatingly slow. Overall disappointing. I was expecting a humble version of Deep Rock Galactic but I won't dare to compare these two titles. This is the start of something that could have been a good idea but there is so much work to do before calling it a game.

I unfortunately cannot recommend this game, at least not like how it is. I have not played the first Cave Digger and I didn't play Cave Digger 2 on VR, so I came into this serious completely new to it. I usually play a lot of FPS and Action Roguelikes/Roguelites. I do occasionally play games like this, and I remember liking the premise of it when I played the demo during Next Fest. It was a neat little loop of procedually generated caves that you can traverse, mine, and upgrade your stuff to go deeper and discover more. At the core, this is a fun loop and it has potential. However, the state this game is in with how it feels and how it doesn't really tell the player anything makes it a frustrating mess. It essentially plays like it's just in the beginnings of Early Access, except this is apparently feature complete since it isn't touted as being in EA. I had a little bit of progress saved from my demo carry over to me playing the full version. I wanted to delete and start completely over, but there's no easy way to do so. So, I only remember the tutorial from the demo. But, I remember that it went over the very basics of how your pick axe and gun works, as well as the very basics of the cave system. The caves are random, but linear. It's not like DRG where you could literally tunnel anywhere you like; you can only tunnel in specific direction denoted by the game. I don't have a major problem with this, but be forewarned that's how it plays. The feel of anything you do is very floaty and a bit imprecise. The worst offender is the pick axe, that just kind of swings and hits empty air, with that sometimes breaking down the thing you're trying to break down and sometimes not. Walls you're trying to pick axe through deform and break in weird ways that don't really connect with how you're swinging the pickaxe. There are gems on the wall you can get by breaking them, but trying to connect with your pickaxe is more difficult than it has any right to be. The revolver is much better for that, which is an odd choice. The gunplay is not a big focus, and I understand that. But, it still feels off. People have said there's "no weight" to the guns, and that's what I found as well. The weightless, floaty feeling is something that is consistent across everything, and takes away from the gameplay. Hit registration with the revolver is a bit hit or miss, more so when you're shooting at small flying enemies (which is the most common enemy in the first cave system). Trying to melee any enemy isn't worth it because hit registration with melee tools/weapons isn't great even if the target is stationary. Breaking stuff, like barrels or boxes, with your tools is off-putting. If you swing your pickaxes at the barrel, it has a tendency to either just fly away or actually get stuck on your pickaxe. Those physics seem like leftover from the VR version, and they don't translate well here. When you do manage to strike it enough to break it, it just kind of poofs out of existence and gems fly out everywhere. I wish gems had a better outline or at least an accessibility option to put an outline on it. I had to adjust to finding gems because a lot of them are dull and colored similarly to the mines themselves. Then you get to things like the scanner, sledgehammer, shovel, dynamite, and pan that you can unlock and use. How do you use them? Beats me. They don't give you a tutorial or a great way in-game to learn these tools at all. There are things that you can figure out on your own, like the shovel being able to dig up some gems out the ground and the sledgehammer doing the same job as the pick-axe when it comes to busting through destructible walls. The scanner shows you how the cave system layout for the floor you're on is, but the area is so small and linear from floor to floor that you're not going to get lost. I suppose it gets more useful with upgrades, but I never found a use for it in my playtime. You get a basic description of what stuff can do, but words mean nothing if I have no idea how that applies to your game. I never figured out how the pan works either. I tried quite a few times to pan in the water of a cave, but it was fruitless and a waste of time every single time I tried. Also, it's more difficult to get water into the pan than it should be. You have to get really deep in, and then it will slowly fill up (even though it's completely submerged). Sometimes, it will only half fill despite being completely submerged. After you get any amount of water in there, it just kind of disappears after a few seconds. You can hold the fire button to shake the pan, but the same water disappearing animation happens regardless if you do this or not. It sucks, because the core premise and potential are great. I like the idea of random caves I can traverse where random things happen, and then I can extract with the loot I manage to get. Then, to use the money I sell to help get more items, discover more secrets, get further into the cave, etc. In fact, a game that released around the same time, Below The Stone, is doing something quite similar. It's top-down and not first person like this is, but it's much better feeling. And I like the first person and action-oriented aspect of this, rather than this being more a simulation. But, there's way too much undercooked right now. I want to like it, and if it gets some good patches in reworking the feel and explanation of how things work, I'm definitely down to give it another chance. But, again, this game isn't purporting to be Early Access. So, there's no promise of such updates coming. Hence, I'm refunding and moving on.

[h1]Rating: 2 / 10[/h1] The game feels very basic with very little to do and more like a shell of a game. You can unlock new places on the map which seems exciting at first, but its sole purpose is to unlock a new mine (if you have enough money to repair) and to unlock one kind of ending. It is just a big open area to wander around but offers little in terms of gameplay. Climbing a rope and then trying to dismount off the rope is an absolute hassle. There are even times of just being stuck for a few minutes when my character can't go through the hole in the ceiling properly. [b]Some good points though:[/b] [list] [*] Can still collect ores when the backpack is full and it will swap out any lower value items, if the one you are collecting is higher in value. [*] Each place and mine brings a new biome with different enemies and environment. [*] You can change the modifiers for the mine run (at a cost) if you don't like the current set. [/list] [b]Overall:[/b] Would [u][b]NOT[/b][/u] recommend the game. There is little to do and while there are new places to explore, it is mainly just to unlock a new tier of mining. You are allowed to build one building (which is your cabin) and there's nothing else, where as the original game let you build the entire town and upgrade each of them.

I got Deep Rock Galactic vibes from this. The graphics and story seem ok, but the interaction prompts can defiantly be improved (example, picking up fallen gold or mineral pieces) and the game play seem clunky. The instructive voice overs are an excellent touch and just need some tweaking toward perfection, I refunded simply because I just do not feel like fussing over this particular Early Access game since I have a mile long backlog of other games to attend to at the moment.

Its a promising game port, yea its sloppy and pretty shitty at times, but it's a great port for a company that works mainly on vr games. Hope there's more bug fixing and improvements to come!

[h1]Felky Fun Meter[/h1] [h1]||----------| [0/10] Not fun![/h1] The digging felt annoying; the shooting didn't feel good; picking up items/ores felt tedious and frustrating; the progression was confusing. I didn't understand if there was some kind of story in the background or just supposed to dig and unlock stuff until bored.. Really didn't have a good time with this.