DIGGERGUN News

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to another DIGGERGUN blog post! Today I’m writing to give an update on the status of development, as well as what’s to come in 2023! But first up I want to announce some news:

Eagle-eyed fans might have noticed this already, but for those who haven’t: DIGGERGUN will be published by Grab The Games on Steam!

Not only that but thanks to Grab The Games support, DIGGERGUN will be coming to PS4/5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch in various languages! This is massive news for the game and we couldn’t be more excited to bring DIGGERGUN to a wider audience.

Thanks to Grab The Games support, I’ve been working on DIGGERGUN full-time. Recently I hit a major game development milestone by finishing the game’s Alpha build and I want to share some of the changes and new features that were introduced for the Alpha.



The focus for the Alpha build was on finishing up the remaining systems for DIGGERGUN, before adding more story content during the Beta. I also wanted to apply changes to some of the core elements of the gameplay loop. All of these adjustments are based on the feedback I received from the demo that was released in 2022. So thank you to everyone for playing it and giving me your thoughts!

The biggest of these changes was to how players get paid. In the Pre-Alpha/Demo, players would get paid every Sunday. Now, you get paid at the end of the everyday. If you work through the night, then you’ll get paid the next time you go to sleep.

Players still get taxed to the UK taxation rates, including the National Insurance tax, as well as have money taken from their paycheck for rent and bills.

The main aim of this change was to get to the “point” of DIGGERGUN’s key hook as quickly as possible (the payment and taxation system) as well as giving the player more immediate feedback on how they’re performing.



Talking about performance, another big change is that there is now a minimum amount of lithium the player has to collect and deposit every working day. This is clearly shown when depositing lithium at the entrance to the mines. If you don’t deposit the minimum, then you won’t get paid. It’s that simple!

The hope is that this change will make the gameplay less obtuse as well as ensure the player has clear, short-term goals.



There’s also an additional element to this system. The game now tracks how much lithium you deposit, whether it’s over, under, or the exact amount required. How you perform will affect your relationship with your Manager. As with all NPCs in the game, your bond with your manager will have a profound effect on the rest of your game… for better or for worse.

Those are two of the biggest changes that have been made to DIGGERGUN. It’s my hope that they will address some key issues with the game, as well as enhance its pacing.

But what about other gameplay additions? Well, here are just a few:

• Players can now earn a money bank, and a lithium bank from NPCs to store their resources,
  
• It rains from time to time in Town, find an umbrella to stop yourself from getting wet,
  
• Loans - you can take out a loan, but beware of the interest rates,
  
• More mine levels have been added to the mine randomiser,
  
• More enemies and objectives have been added,
  
• More environments to explore and interact with,
  
• Plants - if you want to water them you’ll need to find a watering can…
  
• A new stat, Luck, has been added! Increasing it will increase how often lithium and other resources will spawn whilst in the mines,
  
• Players can sell their lithium to an ever-so-slightly dodgy buyer,
  
• More weapons have been added
  
• And much more!
  

So what’s next? Well as mentioned above, I’m now working on adding more NPCs to the game, as well as programming their various storylines. A large part of my time over the last month or so has been spent on designing each NPCs story, so I’m incredibly excited to start implementing them.

There will also be more enemies, more mines and more polishing as development continues on the Beta. It’s all leading up to another demo/prologue which will release sometime in Spring!

There’s still quite a lot of work to be done until the final version of DIGGERGUN ends up in players' hands. I must admit, it does feel quite daunting! But all of the feedback I’ve received over the last few months has really encouraged me to deliver the best game I can!

I wish everyone the best for 2023! May the next year be full of good luck for all! As always, Wishlist DIGGERGUN on Steam to get the latest updates!

Hello there and welcome to my blog series about DIGGERGUN's Game Mechanics. In this series, I'm exploring some of the inner workings of DIGGERGUN and revealing some behind-the-scenes info!

Today, I'm talking about experience points and levelling up!



Experience points in DIGGERGUN work in a similar way to other games. Do "X" and you will gain experience points. Reach a certain amount of experience points to get a level up. And then, depending on the game, increase your power somehow.

In DIGGERGUN you gain experience points by defeating enemies, obtaining lithium gems and depositing lithium at the Mine Entrance. Seems basic enough, but there are a few things which make the level-up system unique!

Firstly when depositing lithium the amount of experience points you gain is multiplicative, meaning that the more lithium you deposit, the more experience points you get. So, dropping off a lot of lithium in one go will get you a TONNE of experience points.

As with most games when you obtain a level up, the maximum amount of experience points required for your next level is increased. In DIGGERGUN the experience required to obtain a level up increases by 1.4 of the current maximum experience. At level 1, you need 100 experience points to level up, so at level 2 you'll need 140 experience points to level up.

(As a side note, I will probably be increasing the maximum experience multiplier in the Alpha release, as currently, I feel players get too many level-ups too quickly)

So once you gain a level, you obtain a stat point which you can then spend in the Main Menu's Status Screen.



There are currently three stats to spend your points on:

Aim: Increases the damage that your bullets do in the mines

Endurance: Reduces the amount of energy you lose over time and by doing actions

Mindfulness: Increases the amount of energy restored from resting and eating

Those with an eagle eye might notice that there is space for a fourth stat. In the prototype, there was a fourth stat, but it was removed as compared to the other three stats it didn't seem as useful. There are plans to eventually re-add the fourth stat, but that will be much later in development.

In terms of the effectiveness of each of the stats in the demo, aim is currently the least effective as most players won't get deep enough into the mines to encounter enemies with a lot of health. That leaves Endurance and Mindfulness.

Both stats are very effective but players will get more immediate effects from putting a point into Endurance.

The math for Endurance is: "EnergyBuildUp" / (Endurance/2)+1).

So for example, if "EnergyBuildUp" is 0.85, then with an endurance stat of 1 you will reduce that to 0.56. With 6 points in Endurance, your Energy BuildUp will be 0.2125.

Every 0.45 seconds, "EnergyBuildUp" / (Endurance/2)+1) is added to a hidden value. When that value hits 100, you lose one point of energy and the value is reset.

These numbers will be a bit higher in the game on launch, meaning that the player will lose energy faster but for the demo, I found that players were struggling with the speed of energy being reduced. I'll talk a bit more about energy in a later blog!

Mindfulness requires a 2 point investment in order to see results. At that point, you'll start gaining an additional point of energy each time you do an activity. The math is similar to Endurance: "EnergyIncrease" + "round(Mindfulness/2)". This makes Mindfulness exceptionally powerful every two stat points invested. For example, at 6 points, you'll be getting 3 additional energy every time you rest or eat.

Again, I'll probably tweak the numbers before the game launches in its final state, but it will probably remain similar to what is in place now.

Overall where you add your stat points, and when, does matter. Even though I've explained them in quite simplistic terms, it's important for me to note that a lot of these systems can be very complex. For example, the player gains "EnergyBuildUp" from doing a variety of actions, such as jumping, and this is further affected by other tracking stats such as how long it's been since you've eaten or slept.

There's a lot at play and DIGGERUN's really not just a simple, 1bit, pixel-art game. It reacts to the player and their day-to-day choices.

That ended up being quite in-depth, didn't it! I guess you're here so I thought why don't I share all! Hopefully, now you understand the level system in DIGGERGUN a bit more!

If you like what you've read and you haven't backed DIGGERGUN yet be sure to back it on Kickstarter for some great rewards!

It's been a long week since I launched the DIGGERGUN Kickstarter and demo seven days ago! If you haven't already, then make sure you play through the DIGGERGUN demo here on Steam! Next Tuesday I'm going to be releasing the pre-alpha of the level builder to all backers who selected the reward on the Kickstarter. Don't miss out and back us now!

Onto the DIGGERGUN dev-log!

Hello there and welcome to my blog series about DIGGERGUN's Game Mechanics. In this series, I'm exploring some of the inner workings of DIGGERGUN and revealing some behind-the-scenes info!

Today, I'm talking about money, the economy and game balance.



I’ve been pretty clear from the beginning that from an economical perspective, much of DIGGERGUN is based on the current situation in the United Kingdom. Food, bills, and rent are all based on real-life UK figures during the time that I made the datasets in April. Even tax and national insurance are calculated to real-world rates.

However, pretty early on I encountered a problem which I doubt any game designer has ever experienced: real life was too hard.

In play-testing, it proved too difficult to keep up with the barrage of taxes, bills and cost of living, on the £9.50 minimum wage the player was earning. If they missed even one day of work, they would immediately be making a loss that week.

Players were struggling.

So I had to go in and adjust the numbers, sharply reducing the costs, making them lower than they would be in real life. I even had to remove one bill.

It was a depressing experience. I could go in and tweak the numbers to make things easier for the player, but unfortunately, this isn't the case for at least 2 million people in the UK who are paid minimum wage or less (1). They can’t just adjust their life with a keystroke and make it easier.

Of course, since then, things have gotten a lot worse as the UK is being battered by record-breaking inflation, the highest it’s been for 40 years (2). And things are set to become even more difficult.

Given how I will be adjusting the economy again for DIGGERGUN before its final release, I dread to think what battered state Britain and its population will be in at that point.

There’s an interesting moment I want to share that occurred during playtesting. One playtester was genuinely shocked when they got their paycheque for the first time and saw their taxes and bills go out. He commented on how difficult the game was. In the second week, when it happened again, he was still just as surprised as he was the first time it happened.



The playtester said he really didn’t want to be reminded of the days when he was on minimum wage and the whole experience was a bit of a depressing throwback.

It was moments like this during playtesting that made me feel like I had created something meaningful. There was no character shoving the message into the player's face, telling the player “minimum wage sucks, doesn’t it”.

Instead, the player saw first-hand, with immediate brutality, just how much living on minimum wage sucks. And all I did was show them numbers when they picked up their paycheque.

I didn’t create DIGGERGUN to make people depressed, but I did design it in such a way to make people think.

Money isn’t talked about enough in the western world, and often it’s with a weird shame. And yes, maybe we should be ashamed that we have a society that enables people to struggle on such a grand scale.

But we can change things, and that’s optimism I hope DIGGERGUN exudes as more of the game is fleshed out and character plotlines are expanded.

Besides, if I wanted to make DIGGERGUN really morbid, then I would have set the minimum wage to £9.18. That’s the minimum wage for 21-22 year-olds (3).

And considering the player’s character is a young, university graduate, in real life that's what his wage would be. How’s that for some rampant ageism in a society that already punches down?

Sources

1 - https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7735/

2 - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/22/uk-inflation-rises-to-91-its-highest-rate-in-40-years

3 - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-national-minimum-wage-in-2022

Hello everyone and welcome to DIGGERGUN!

My name's Kabloop and I'm the developer of DIGGERGUN, and today I'm super excited to finally release the demo on the Steam store!

Our demo release on Steam has been done to coincide with the launch of our Kickstarter, which happened today!

For those wondering WTF DIGGERGUN is, here's a short summary:

DIGGERGUN is an oppressive platformer about workers, low wages and the environment. After arriving on an island off the coast of Cornwall to work as Engineer, you’re quickly put to work in the lithium mines due to the flexibility clause in your contract. With the Cornwall Mining Corporation demanding a £3,000 fee to terminate your employment contract and take you back to the mainland, you’re left with nothing to do but dig.

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It's been a crazy long road to get to this point but I'm so happy to be able to finally share the game I've been working on with the public. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to share any feedback with me on social media or through Steam! Naturally, I'll be keeping an eye on the build and aiming to fix any bugs that pop up!

Also a note to Linux users, the demo is currently available on Windows but I do have the Linux version ready to go, it just needs a few more days of testing. I'll post an announcement when it's ready to go of course!

Thank you to everyone for their support with DIGGERGUN!