Digger Touch

A Digger remake for phone and tablet

Digger Touch is a remake of a popular game from the 80's. The goal in each level is to collect all emeralds or kill all the monsters. There are also bags of gold you can break open by excavating the earth beneath them or otherwise making them fall through more than one row of tiles. Once the gold is released, you can collect it for more points. A new life is awarded at certain amount of points, so the higher the score, the more you can progress.

There are, of course, many remakes available already. Why am I developing another one?

I enjoyed this game a lot as a kid, so few months ago, in a flood of memories, I wanted to play it on my smartphone. I tried all the available apps, but didn't like the controls they provide (and concluding from the other users’ comments, I was not the only one). In all of them the digger is moved via on-screen joystick or buttons. This is not comfortable because on mobile devices the player usually holds the device with two hands and can only use her right thumb to control the digger (unlike the PC version where she has a keyboard can use three fingers).

And since I have some experience in game development, I spent some time implementing my solution for the controls on touch screen devices. So here it is - Digger Touch!

Since the reaction speed of the user is naturally slow with touch screen, my solution is to neglect its importance. What do I mean? Take for example the following scenario: the user is moving upwards with two tiles per second and wants to turn left to a certain row of tiles (or corridor). In this case, with the standard controls, she has a half a second to press the left button (i.e. to react). In Digger Touch, the user sets the path in advance. So, instead of waiting for the correct half second to press the button, she “draws” with finger the path that the digger will follow afterwards.

This is my idea and innovation. My friends find it a little bit complicated, well, try it out and decide if it fits you :).

The graphics and the music are created (or actually re-created) by myself and using open source tools like GIMP and LMMS. They are not perfect and I know that. I will hire real artists for the next versions if I see some significant interest in this project.

I didn't watch from the code available online, hope I’m not violating the intellectual property rights of anyone by releasing this app. In case I do, please inform me.

The game is powered by the LibGDX engine.