Can you dig it

Beautifully sedate; A joy to play; Fen is brilliant

Slow to start; One harrowing segment; Possibly too short

As Image & Form often reminds us, its now-familiar core IP began with SteamWorld: Tower Defense on DSiWare, a thoroughly decent tower defence game. It was SteamWorld Dig that was transformative for the studio, however, achieving well-earned success on the 3DS and a range of other platforms.

My absolute favourite thing about the first SteamWorld Dig - a game that, in the memory, seems pretty much bursting with favourite things - was a simple collectable. It was an in-game currency of some kind, although inevitably I can't remember what you could spend it on.

Let's start this off with an obvious statement- games are meant to be fun. We all feel that's the case, but all too often do we have games that fight against your expectation of how the game should play out.

After the unquestionable success of , the appearance of is certainly a cause for celebration. Though its predecessor wasn't perfect and ended a little sooner than you liked, this follow-up works on what the original needed more of. And then some.

The original SteamWorld Dig was defined by its rewarding progression loop, fun exploration, and steam-powered cast. As a mining robot, your job was to excavate resources, then spend the money on items and abilities to make you even better at excavating resources.

Steamworld Dig 2 is a top-notch game that so succeeds at what it set out to do, that calling it merely "retro-inspired" almost feels like an insult. It's a fantastic 2D title, and belongs in anyone's collection.

Having not owned a Switch for long and predominantly gaming on my Xbox One, I really needed a hook game, something to really endear the console to me. While I can't discount Legend Of Zelda as being a masterpiece, my gaming time has been so taken up with other things lately that I've not been able...

SteamWorld Dig 2 is no mere sequel by numbers, instead taking everything that was loved (and critiqued) about the original and building upon it considerably in every way possible. The sense of exploration is phenomenal, and those willing to dig deep will find the world down in the mines has so much...

Buy SteamWorld Dig 2 Developer Image & Form has managed to create a handful of great games under the name of SteamWorld , so the expectations for SteamWorld Dig 2 were high for an indie developer.