Diggers
 

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available)

I remembered briefly playing this game, and I was wondering how come I never played it much or to the end of the game for it looks incredibly interesting. A quick download later, I sadly remember why.

Great idea, would make an incredible game. However, execution is horrible, interface is sub-sub-sub-sub par and utterly complicated for such a simple game, it's impossible to be able to control five miners at the same time with such setting and controls, the miners often act on their own at random and destroy what you are trying to do, speed of the game seem to randomly jump or slow down to a crawl without warning...

I never managed to end the first mission of this game. It's mainly because of the control interface. How someone can expect a player to go thru 30 missions with such an aggravating control interface is way beyond me. Way beyond me.

I rated the game a 1 and wish I won't touch it again even with a 30 feet long pole.

It was a great pleasure reviewing this game, one of my favorites for sure!

@Everyone that would like to play the game
You should play with DosBox, in XP the game is a bit quicker(which is not good) and has less sound and music(or even none of it).

@Eagle on Fire
Your system of rating a game is the stupidest I have ever heard!
As I sad the controls are little tricky until you get in shape with it, which is like after first half hour, so if you have given the game a chance and actualy played it before "throwing it in fire" you wouldn't be saying this rubish at the end of your post!
No offence! ;)

@Luchsen
This is a Strategy game not Puzzle, fix that! :)

I played way more than half an hour BranjoHello. Also, I probably played all the strategy games here on Abandonia, and that's my genre niche. I'm not going to change my oppinion about this game.

It's like Ascendancy. Great game, but the AI suck. Diggers is also a great game, but the controls suck. Big time. Which lead me to vote 1, for I have no fun to get in that game.

I don't know the game. What was written in the review sounds quite good. But I don't think that I will play it, though. Graphics don't let me conlude that this game is much sophisticated. That is just my association with this sort of graphics. And that might be wrong and biased. However...

Another question: why are there people that rate games with 5.0? 5.0 means to me that the game is perfect. And I doubt that there will evr be a game with characteristics that make it perfect. Why not giving a 4.5 or something? No offense, but I think using the rating system that way doesn't acknowledge its whole potential...

I think that DonCorleone is right about the rating system, everyone(Reviewers) give marks (1,2,3,4,5) so I did the same if I had a precise choise it would be 4.8(It closer to 5 than to 4 :D)!

@Eagle on Fire and anyone that would do something so anti-nice like giving this beautifull game "1"

I'm not saying that everyone should like this game as much as I do and give it 5, but it is stupid to give good game 1 because it's control system "sucks"(3 is more realistic mark ;)). To me the most important thing in a game(particulary in oldies) is it's atmosphere, and you said yourself that this game is "incedibly interesting" which so very true!
Example: I hate Half-Life 2...but I can't give it 1% because it wouldn't be true...and I can't say that I was sooo bored by the game so 70% would be fair from me because of the gravity gun(although zilion of gamers out there would give it 100% :noworry:).
I think I made my point! :)

Well, I didn't rate the game with "1" ;)
And I even thought that reviewers HAVE the possibility of rating 4.5 or something similar. So it's a lack in the rating system. But then there's still the question why not giving a 4 rather than a 5? A 4 would make it clear that the game is better than average... Well, but this isn't that important :)

i remembered when i was child - i had game on old computer - acorn computer before PC so i loved this game

I'd truly like to rate this game higher, I really would - I quite like the whole tactical mining game setup. But the interface to me is beyond "poor" on to "utterly game-destroying"...

The 5-man team would be useful given the mouse-based "tell a unit to go off and do... something or other for the glory of [insert race here]", but the fact that the mouse controls are so unwieldy means that by the time you've given two of your men orders, the other three have already decided to get bored and wander suicidally into some manner of danger... I'd not normally mind, as I've managed to complete Lemmings 2, but at least the Lemmings had predictable behaviour for where they'd wander off to, rather than "Ooh, I'm bored, let's do... something or other counter-intuitive...".

Fortunately, I've also played Extractors, the sequel to this, which sorts some of the problems out by giving keyboard controls, allowing this game's orders to be tapped out in under a second each (even if it doesn't explain what's going on very well...). However, to be absolutely fair, I'd have to recommend the Clonk series over either Diggers game.

It's possible to get your miners to be less suicidal by having them "search" (magnifying glass), they will wonder for a while, but when they stop WATCH OUT. The AI in this game is somewhat similar to "Lego Rock Raiders" except they can be stopped.

Wonderful oldie but still a pain in the @$$ to play
 

Ye gods; another antique from my olden days.

Wonderful to replay the first two levels; that was all the demo I had let me play all those years ago.

Unfortunately the control system is still as clunky as I remembered it. Although a much better mouse makes it easier, the system itself is just sad. The sequel looks promising and I hope it will be.

Any one of you guys figured how to use bridges ?

Keyboard Controls
 

I actually managed to play this thing to completion using the horrid mouse controls. The reason I perservered was because back when I was younger and before it was abandonware, and back when I was broke and had parents averse to mailing off cash for purchases, I played the PC shareware version.

That shareware version had one stage (the vertically aligned starter one) and KEYBOARD CONTROLS. That's right, I'm telling you keyboard controls did exist. And you could use them to easily scroll between and keep tabs on the miners, suddenly making the auto-AI boredom stuff a fair penalty for getting too engrossed in one miner's affairs. I'm guessing somewhere out there floating around there is a FULL keyboard control PC version. THAT (unseen) version to me is definitely worthy of a 5/5 because it was a perfect game FOR ITS TIME. Note the proviso though.

The single shareware stage was one of the greatest in the full game anyway because there was a single quarter square of dirt and hole in a deep wall on the right hand side that once dug and blasted let you flood the whole map and make all sorts of crazy underwater cities and the like. Many hours of fun were had right there.

To the poster above: Bridges are simply dropped but are sticky and kinda defy physics so you can arch them outwards a bit if needbe. More importantly though, they float on water, so you can drop them carefully into a pond to cross it, or place them strategically before opening a flood gate or priming a flooding dynamite blast.

I also had a demo with keyboard controls from long ago, and was baffled by their lack in the full version I found later. Turns out it's a later version- 1.94, and also has other changes. I found it here:

http://www.abandonware-utopia.com/in...rgement&id=897
(Wait for the 'Telecharger' link to appear)

OMG thank you! I was searching for this version for over ten years or so :D Awesome game!

Clarification on Controls
 

This is the only place on the net where I could find any discussion of this game. This was a surprise considering that Diggers was a childhood classic for me (I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of hours). I recently tried to install it from the original CD-ROM on WIN7 with little success (big surprise there). Finally, I got it to run in DOSBox off the disk. Unfortunately I've been unable to figure out how to generate save files so I can't start losing my life again to it yet.

Some clarification on the controls for those who fell prey the the horrible mouse-based interface.

D + Directional button = Tell your dude to dig in the direction you command
Space Bar = Wait/Stop Digging etc.
X = Pick up Gems
T = Teleport back to base
H = Enter home base
Shift + Directional button = Run in a given direction
Up Arrow = Jump
1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 = Switch focus to the corresponding digger (1-5)

There's probably other miscellaneous commands I've missed (sleep, etc).

I HAVENT been able to figure out how to do a diagonal digging pattern from the keyboard yet. It used to be the 7, 9, 1, and 3 keys on the numpad. So that's the one time I'll use the lousy right click interface.

Once you get the hang of using the keyboard for everything it becomes totally possible to be efficient with all five of your dudes at once. I couldn't even imagine trying to play this game with that mouse menu interface so props to anyone out there that's been able to get any enjoyment playing like that. For everyone else, I can feel your pain but give the game a second chance using the keyboard and I think you'll better understand why some folks really praise it.

Controls
 

I love this game...but unfortunately i can't control 5 diggers at the same time only with the mouse.I remember that when i was a kid i used to play,but i was using my keyboard.Any idea on how to make it work to control the game ? If you can help me,please reply or send an e-mail at octeh@ymail.com
Thank you very much.