Preview: Dig & Fly beta by Viliam Korbel
In Dig & Fly you will start your own colony in space to earn as much gold as possible. Therefore you will buy machines, robots to charge the machines and a lot of floors which will be used to obtain as much gold as possible. At the start, you only have one floor and not that much gold. Soon you realize that if you spend a lot of gold on upgrading your tools and floors, you will become rich in no time. In the meanwhile, you will fly and take over new colonies which can be used to collect even more gold.
Earn a lot of coins
Dig & Fly is an interesting mobile management game. All the money you earn will be contributed to build the Earth shield, together with all the other players who are playing Dig & Fly. In this game, you will have a leaderboard showing which players who contributed the most gold during the estimated time to build the Earth shield. To achieve a high place in this global leaderboard, you will have to work on your management skills. You can only spend your coins once, but by spending your coins on upgrades for robots, machines, and other stuff, you might make it yourself easier to collect more coins in less time.
Most of the time you will find yourself checking if your machines are still running and if not you have to charge them with your robot. When you believe your machines are running out of power to quickly, you can upgrade your robot (Tom Sleeper) to increase the time machines are charged. If you are collecting enough coins, you will find yourself tapping on your pile of ores, as your life depends on it. Most of the coins will be collecting by repeating the same pattern of charging your machines. Nice in the beginning, but after some time it gets quite boring. You are waiting for new ways to earn coins and I was losing interest in the game… until…
Go on an expedition
… I discovered there are also expeditions. Taking part in a mission will cost you coins but reveals a whole new kind of gameplay since the management kind of gameplay will be taken over by puzzle elements for a while. During an expedition, you will face several waves of enemies that you can take down with your expedition ship. Taking down those ships ask you to play a bejeweled kind of minigame. You have to clear tiles by clicking on adjacent tiles with the same color. If you have a canon with the corresponding color, you will do actual damage to your enemies.
By finishing multiple levels and waves, you earn Engrams which have little extras like artifacts or parts for your ship. You can sell them, or use them to earn more coins and colonies. By defeating all enemy waves of a stage, you can also take over a planet and start a new colony. This new colony will hourly give you coins. This way you can also collect coins during the time you’re not actually playing the game. Great! You can even upgrade these colonies so they produce more hourly income.
Therefore you need gems which can be bought within a shop. The shop is not available yet in the beta build, but this shop gives the feeling that it brings some sort of microtransaction to this videogame. Luckily those gems can also be received as rewards for sending coins to Earth or by completing other tasks within Dig & Fly. It looks like it will be difficult to earn them without the shop, but on the other hand, it is not impossible. I’m not sure yet what to think about this.
Should you try Dig & Fly?
In the end, Dig & Fly is quite a nice but simple ‘snack’ in between. I can not see myself playing this game more than fiftheen minutes a day. The gameplay is too simple and monotonous for that. Dig & Play is rather a game that you would grab for a while when you have nothing else to do. For example, when you have to wait in a waiting room or during a bus trip. The puzzles with which you conquer colonies ensure that the game remains interesting for a little longer before it becomes monotonous and you will leave the game for that day. You can still try it yourself on Android or iOS as a beta tester, or play the game later!