Diggles

Rating:
Summary: Diggle Mania... What's taking so long for it to catch on?
Review: ... Diggles has a lot of bugs and doesn't work well on all PC systems; otherwise, I would have rated this the best game of 2002. The bugs are possibly what's keeping this game from taking the US by storm.

... Unless you have a powerful PC or are willing to upgrade, this game may not be for you. I have a P4, 256MB Physical Memory and 962 Virtual Memory running on Win XP. The dialogue is choppy at best and my "show dialogue" option only works occassional. The original release of the game was in German so there are a few minor translation glitches which I don't mind but you might. All in all, the game runs fairly well on my system but you may want to visit the distributor's web site and read some of the forum comments. If you purchase the game, you'll end up becoming very familiar with the user forum as there is no published walkthru or UHS. ...

Now on to the actual game review: it is fabulous, funny, scary, suspensful, and extremely challenging. It's a mix of a bunch of different gaming types so it is hard to pigeonhole it into one category. Let's call it a combination RPG, Strategy, Simulation, Puzzle/Maze, Adventure, Fighting and more. The concept of mixing all these genres is amazing, gameplay bugs and all.

You control a growing clan of dwarves in search of the missing pieces to a magical dog lead. You have to find all the pieces in order to bring the dog/demon back under the control of his master. Finding the pieces to the lead requires digging underground through 4 worlds. Sounds simple but it's not. Case in point, I'm still on level one after 3 weeks of gameplay & much time spent in the user forum seeking hints and other assistance. Each world has several mini-quests. With the miniquests (some are required to advance and some are just for fun) and overall Diggle life management, gameplay is frustrating and thrilling.

If your PC can handle it, try this game. You'll love it!!!

Rating:
Summary: SUPER fun, but frustrating.
Review: I'll start this by saying that I absolutely LOVED this game until I got to the point where I couldn't play it anymore. The idea behind it is great, I thoroughly enjoyed playing it for MANY hours. You basically control a little group of dwarf-like creatures called Diggles. They are extremely fun to play! They pair up, have little diggle babies, which grow up to be more diggles to control. It's a blast.

Here's the big problem... on the first level you have to dig around and around and around until you find stuff. If I remember correctly, you're searching for rings. Anyways, I dug and dug for probably about 10 hours total. Finally I got frustrated and quit playing. The map is HUGE and there is absolutely NO indication of where you're supposed to dig. It becomes like finding a needle in a haystack and that's just poor game design. If I could get a map somewhere and figure out where to dig - I would start playing this game again in an instant - that's how fun it is!!

So I give the diggles themselves 5++++ stars - they are great!! I give the game designers 2 stars for getting me so frustrated I quit playing. I recommend the game - but just be forwarned that you'll get to a point where it's like searching for a needle in a haystack and we all know how aggravating that is!

Rating:
Summary: SUPER fun, but frustrating.
Review: I'll start this by saying that I absolutely LOVED this game until I got to the point where I couldn't play it anymore. The idea behind it is great, I thoroughly enjoyed playing it for MANY hours. You basically control a little group of dwarf-like creatures called Diggles. They are extremely fun to play! They pair up, have little diggle babies, which grow up to be more diggles to control. It's a blast.

Here's the big problem... on the first level you have to dig around and around and around until you find stuff. If I remember correctly, you're searching for rings. Anyways, I dug and dug for probably about 10 hours total. Finally I got frustrated and quit playing. The map is HUGE and there is absolutely NO indication of where you're supposed to dig. It becomes like finding a needle in a haystack and that's just poor game design. If I could get a map somewhere and figure out where to dig - I would start playing this game again in an instant - that's how fun it is!!

So I give the diggles themselves 5++++ stars - they are great!! I give the game designers 2 stars for getting me so frustrated I quit playing. I recommend the game - but just be forwarned that you'll get to a point where it's like searching for a needle in a haystack and we all know how aggravating that is!