DIG Raiders: Anomaly Extraction is an Action, Adventure, Simulation from Soda Game Studio. With publishing assistance from Infini Fun. This game in one word is chaos. And when I mean chaos, I don’t mean the good or bad chaos or even pure chaos. Somehow it reaches a neutral leave of chaos that makes you wonder why. Now, I’m going to let you guys dig into the review and decide for yourselves the level of chaos this game brings.
I can understand we’re collecting alien tech, but why are the alien energy cells shaped like cooked duck!?
Gameplay
DIG Raiders: Anomaly Extraction lets you choose from a small pool of characters when starting for the first time. You can then pick between story, showdown and other modes. But, because I was playing solo, Story Mode was my only choice. The main objective of the game is to dig, collect alien tech and make a lot of money in the meantime. Best part, we start off with a huge amount of debt!
Once you’ve mined enough ores and sold enough parts to get out of debt, you can start saving. Using the money to buy backpack space, upgrade your pickaxe or improve yourself. You can also go to the plague doctor to get some new abilities or make your return ability cheaper. When reaching certain milestones, you will need to solve certain puzzles or defeat aliens to get their DNA. Which in turn you can use for a multitude of methods and they come in three different varieties. The only difference when looking at them is the color of their skin.
Yet, you’d have to choose to either have to work themselves to death and harvest their remains to sell to the public. Or you can have them dance their life away on a live stream cube. There are some mechanics that honestly just seem good, but not well executed. There are even times where trying to interact with certain things or objects doesn’t work until several adjustments. They could fix it before release or it could be something they don’t know about and it will be there forever.
Graphics and Audio
The looks of the game seem….off. Sure it has a polished look with smooth movements, but that’s about it. It feels as if they grabbed a few assets from somewhere, and made small changes to them. Like the two designs for the chicken onesie character. It has it in normal, but then they just had a white wig to make you think of Colonel Sanders. Honestly I felt like the only sense of creativity that was done to this was where things were placed.
Now the audio is another reason I brough up the word “chaos” because some things when hit make the same sound. But, (and this is a big but) when you hit something like a chicken or any other animal will get you an assortment of sounds. For example, there is a Wilhelm scream that happens when hitting the chicken randomly. Even the clucking noise sounds like it was cut and captured from somewhere else.
Longevity
This game seems to be unfinished and it seems that it’s trying to have their players play to avoid them from speeding through the game once reaching the 100 meter mark. While trying to go through the maze of the game to locate 3 keys to open a door to be granted the privilege to move on is just bad. After three hours of playing, I just stopped because of that level itself. Playing by yourself will feel like a drag and playing with other could make the experience enjoyable.
Final Thoughts
DIG Raiders: Anomaly Extraction is a game but not one I can fully back or recommend anyone to honestly. With the previous projects that Soda Game Studio game, has mixed reviews stating that the game is unfinished. So, I cannot in good conscience say this game is worth the buy. But, you’re all your own person and you have free will to do what you want. Unlike the aliens in this game who get their freedom and tech taken away for our entertainment.
I give DIG Raiders: Anomaly Extraction the Thumb Culture Bronze Award
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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