In Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder, we don’t waste any time. As a cave spelunking roguelike, it is surprisingly solid. There’s no unprecedented visual splendour or novel gameplay ideas here. It’s just a good old-fashioned gunsling game with money hoarding.
As a roguelike, Cave Digger 2 revolves around exploring caves, collecting treasure, and upgrading. You will be grabbing gemstones and stuffing them into your pack for hours at a time thanks to the game’s solid mechanics: all it takes is a few swings of a pickaxe, a few swipes of a shovel, or some bullets from your revolver to get the treasure flowing.
You’ll get a “just one more run” itch with smart design decisions. Cave runs take no longer than 30 minutes to complete. You’ll automatically spit out the least valuable item from your bag when you grab something more valuable. Since your revolver has infinite ammunition, you won’t have to scrounge for bullets. Such details remove potential speed bumps from the often chaotic four-player online co-op, so you can enjoy the game alone or with friends.
As simple as Cave Digger 2 may seem, the procedural generation is repetitive and patterns quickly emerge. It has three overworld areas to explore and find secrets, but they’re mostly barren and don’t offer much distraction from the cave runs that eventually run out.
A few annoying little bugs pop up just enough to be a distraction in Cave Digger 2, and it is not a technical showpiece. The pickaxe swings often don’t register, you can find yourself trapped in virtually insurmountable nooks, and hand tracking sometimes doesn’t work. Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder is still a delightful diamond in PSVR2’s launch catalogue, but its intermittent issues and lack of variety make it less appealing.
Pros:
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Gameplay loop.
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Progression that satisfies.
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Discover hidden secrets.
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Chaos in co-op.
Cons:
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A lack of variety.
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Technical issues.
Score 7 over 10
