Here is, in its entirety, the thought I had immediately before I started writing this article: “Oh dear, I haven’t moved anything except my right arm in several hours, and I’ve apparently just played Digseum from start to finish in a single sitting. I guess I’d better review it so I can truthfully say I spent the day working.” So, here we are. Digseum is an incremental game in which you and an NPC friend of yours decide to open your own museum, though you somehow didn’t have the forethought to acquire anything for your museum to display prior to opening day.

You’ll have to go excavating to find some artifacts to put on display. The more artifacts you find and the higher level each artifact is, the more money you can charge patrons to enter your museum. In turn, the higher your museum’s entry fee is, the more money goes into your pocket. You spend money on upgrading your skill at excavation and on unlocking new areas in which you can go digging. You start with no money to your name, a small stamina bar, a pit of mud in which to dig, and a dream of creating the world’s best museum.

Each point of stamina you have equates to swinging your pickax once in the hopes of finding treasure. If you don’t find all the artifacts a dig site contains before you run out of stamina, you’re forced to stop digging. You’ll still get credit for every artifact you fully unearthed before you became exhausted, however. Each artifact you uncover grants you progress toward leveling up each excavation zone. The higher the level you reach in each zone, the more money you’ll get from displaying artifacts you found there. The same is true for all the individual treasures you can dig up.

You can always dig up duplicates of every artifact you find in every zone. The more duplicates you have of each item, the more that item will level up. The more each item levels up, the more money you get from charging people to enter your museum. As I mentioned, you can spend money to become a better excavator. You can upgrade things like your maximum stamina, how many tiles you dig with a single swing of your pickaxe, how easily you can break through obstacles like stones, and how effectively your museum is marketed to attract new paying customers.

As you might expect, you won’t get very far until you’ve purchased several upgrades. That’s one reason I’m so glad Digseum frequently gives you a “quick reset” button at the end of each excavation attempt. If you ran out of stamina before collecting everything, the quick reset button lets you try again in a matter of seconds. Even if you did grab all the artifacts and you just want to dig in the same site multiple times, the quick reset button allows you to do that as well. You can also skip the “progress report” animations after each digging attempt.

When you’ve spent enough money to unlock several new dig sites, you’ll likely find a Dream Fragment after not too long. Dream Fragments are a fascinating aspect of Digseum’s core gameplay loop. When you collect enough Dream Fragments and have at least one million gold available to spend, Dream Fragments allow you to “prestige.” That is, you’ll spend one million gold to enter the “Dream Realm,” where you can spend your Dream Fragments to unlock permanent upgrades at the cost of resetting all your existing progress. You might reasonably wonder why the heck you would want to reset all your hard work.

Without wishing to spoil more than I absolutely have to, the answer to that question is that, as you keep digging and collect more and more Dream Fragments, you’ll be able to see how less and less of your overall progress gets reset each time you use the prestige mechanic. As I’ve alluded to before, I love it when incremental games like Digseum give you tangible ways of seeing what you’ve achieved and how you’re benefiting (both directly and indirectly) from your progress. I really like games that put in the effort to show me that my time has been worthwhile.

There are only two things I dislike about Digseum. Given the nature of my two complaints, however, they might be major issues from an accessibility standpoint. Firstly, Digseum is entirely mouse-controlled. If you have difficulty holding and moving a mouse and/or clicking several times in quick succession, you’ll have trouble with Digseum. I should clarify that you’re not under any sort of time pressure in Digseum’s core gameplay loop, so you can play at your own pace. Nevertheless, you may have to take breaks if its controls become uncomfortable for you. My mouse hand and arm became noticeably fatigued after a while.

Secondly, Digseum’s art style is very minimalist. By that, I mean that every NPC in your museum is represented by a brightly colored, pixelated stick figure. If you have photosensitivity issues, this could become increasingly problematic for you as more and more people visit your museum. As you progress, your museum will start to attract tens of thousands of visitors per minute (in real-time), so all those bright colors on-screen all at once could be problematic. Digseum ideally should have included an option to reduce the intensity of those colors, but unfortunately, no such setting exists as of the time of writing.

Aside from those two problems, I adore just about everything Digseum offers. It’s a fairly short experience to play from start to finish. Considering its base price is only $3, though, I have absolutely no problem with its brevity. If you like incremental games of this nature as much as I do, playing Digseum is a fantastic way to really kickstart your brain’s production of dopamine and serotonin. If that sounds like a good time and you won’t be bothered by those potential accessibility issues I mentioned, I can categorically recommend “digging” into Digseum.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Digseum

$2.99

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Addictive core gameplay loop.
• Short, highly enjoyable story.

Cons

• Gameplay presents potential accessibility issues for some players.