Dig or Die - EP 0 - First Impressions
Channel: Sharlenwar
Date: 2015-03-19

Here we are with a new sort of series. This one came out of the blue and is definitely worth a try.

Enjoy!

- Sharlenwar
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Recorded On: Mar 17th, 2015
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Steam Store Link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/315460/
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About This Game
Explore, fight, craft and build your defenses! Enjoy a unique and innovative game:
• Strategy: survive massive attacks each night by building strong walls and placing turrets wisely. 
• Physics: build wisely or your structures will collapse! And you will need them to defend your base, or build bridges and high towers to access remote locations 
• Water cycle: rain, infiltration, underground rivers and lakes... be careful during the heavy rains, or you could be surprised by a sudden water level rise!
• Fun from the start: no awfully slow digging, so you can concentrate on the exploration, fight and strategy. 
• Huge world with global real-time simulation of the environment, physics and water cycle. 
• Plenty of minerals to dig, plants to harvest, items, weapons and turrets to craft, and monsters to fight! 
• No swords or magic here! It's a real science-fiction game, with fast and fun laser guns fights! 
• Intelligent monsters: they will find the best path to attack your defenses. And be careful: even if they can't move through walls, they can still destroy them!

Currents features in detail:
• Game objective. You final objective is to build a rocket ship to escape the planet. In order to do that you have to retrieve some very rare ores and local resources, which can only be found in the most dangerous places, very deep underground or very high in the sky. 

• Defense. The game is a survival game in a strategic meaning. No hunger needs, the whole point of the game is to survive to the massive attacks each night. To do that, you have to explore the world to gather resources and craft your defenses. 

• Difficulty progression. During the day, you explore the world and encounter local monsters, so the difficulty depends of the areas explored. During the night, only the species of monsters that you have already killed before attack (they have been upset for sure!). The difficulty is not auto-adaptive, but you can choose when you are ready to move forward and fight highest-level monsters. 

• Base construction. You build a fortress, not a holiday house. So you won't find hundreds of flowerpots or tapestries, but rather turrets, strong walls and useful machines. The idea is to get the feeling of a Starship Troopers or Aliens movie... 

• Digging & crafting. The digging and crafting system is classic: you dig some ores, get plants and retrieve some killed monsters body parts. But the digging is much faster that in other games of the genre, so you don't spend all your time on it. With your auto-builder machines, you craft items, machines and higher tier auto-builder machines. So you can improve your defenses, be strong enough to explore new parts of the world until you can finally craft a rocket ship and escape the planet. 

• Sci-Fi: it's a coherent world of science fiction, so you won't find any medieval swords, flying clown monsters or Santa Claus walking around. Nor chest full on money or monsters looting some laser-guns or gold coins. Monsters drop some organs or body parts very useful for crafting. 

• Procedurally generated world: At each new playthrough a massive and unique world is generated. 

• Physics for buildings: all blocks built above ground or in underground large caverns (where there is no background to be attached to) break if they support too much weight. So you'll have to add more support or use more resistant materials to build high structures, like in a "bridge construction" games. The monsters are also able to attack and break the structure if it can open a shorter path to attack you. So you'll have to manage that risk when you build your base, or when you build high towers to access some floating island or a bridge to pass some large ravine. 

• Water: the complete water cycle simulation (rain, runoff, infiltration, trickle, underground rivers and oceans) give the world more life and fun, but it can also be really useful. Dig some moat or rivers around your base to slow down enemies, and create irrigations for some plants you would like to spread. 

• AI. companion. Your crashed ship contains an AI that survived and will give you useful advices (or not!). 
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Musical Thanks:
"Volatile Reaction" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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Watch the entire playlist @ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBSRYzBHoAXHly0qUTpgv7K-2tM_lrfkM