The first game of 2026!
DigDigDig has been made for 1-BIT JAM 8. Its main rule is to create a game that uses any two colors.
Out of the humongous list of themes, 'Into the depths' has won.
I couldn't imagine a worst time to begin this game to be honest. As much as I had fun coming up with unique mechanics this project probably has the least amount of hours of work put into it. And it's due to the simple fact of my fragile body being sick at the moment. I've tried every day to add something new and to work on it, but during that time my brain was not working properly and all I wanted to do was to lay down and watch a movie. And so I did that.
The Jam lasted for a week 5.01-12.01. I got sick at 5.01...
Anyways, I joined the jam so I had to do something. From the get go I knew not to try anything too difficult as I had no strength to work on the game for more than few hours a day (or less than an hour at times). I thought of making a simple digging game that will incorporate the theme by making the player dig down... into the depths. I was lacking some unique mechanic to do the digging, so I came up with an input-type mechanic.
The player moves with arrow keys and chooses a block (that is randomly generated). On the top of the screen a word appears. Each block has a different word(s). To dig the block out, the player has to type the word on the keyboard. After that, the block is dug out, sometimes money is earned and the little dude moves forward/ downward. The process repeats. Some blocks require a higher pickaxe level, that's why you gather money in the first place. On average it takes 14 most-valued and available at the moment blocks to upgrade the pickaxe to the next level. There is 8 levels of pickaxe and the player starts with level 1.
I decided to use a dark pink-ish color as well as black. I do not know why I choose these two. I liked how they looked.
My first game of 2026 came out much sooner that I would have predicted, but it is indeed here and even though it does not have any sounds or animations or complex and improved mechanics I had fun making it.
