Life in our cruel, demanding Darwinian economic system can sometimes be soul-sapping. Video games, although very much operating within this structure, traditionally provide an escape from this world – indeed, for many gamers this remains their main function. Of course, in the modern era, many video games now deal with the kinds of difficult sociopolitical themes that we once used them to get away from. DIGGERGUN is a remarkable example of this trend. It recreates and heightens (for poetic effect) the mundane, repetitive and harsh rhythms of life as a worker in a lithium mine, satirically exploring themes of worker’s rights, corporate greed, environmental degradation and the fundamentally exploitative nature of the capitalist system. However, there’s elusive light amidst the darkness of the mines. The protagonist Alex and his co-workers begin to fight back.
DIGGERGUN is an unrelenting life sim, or more accurately a work sim. The art is beautifully evocative minimalist black-and-white, featuring small character sprites. It’s a stark, simple art style that conjures up so much with so little: the world of Bal Island feels vivid and lived in. Perhaps this is because the simplicity of the art leaves space for the player’s imagination to work in. The island itself is an apt metaphor for the employment trap Alex finds himself in. It turns out that it is as hard to escape from Bal Island – all the workers have their phones confiscated when they arrive – as it is to get out of the work contract that binds him to the place. As one character says, it’s a choice between survival and escape. The only hope lies in the community of people he embraces on the island.
Building relationships with Alex’s work colleagues is one main strand of the gameplay. This is very much a story-driven game. There’s quite a large cast of characters to meet, many relationships to cultivate, and personal stories to discover. The writing is simple but, like the art, highly impactful. I certainly came to care deeply about Alex and his newfound friends. Moreover, choices really do seem to matter in this game. I had two playthroughs (one to completion) and experienced very different stories and events. The main narrative throughline, meanwhile, kept me engrossed and eager to help shape the fate of Alex and his friends.
The gameplay loop is intentionally monotonous, reflecting the real-life grind of life of a worker in a market-driven economy. Alex wakes up to the grating sound of an alarm in his tiny flat, walks to the elevator, rides down to the mine, and works, digging his life away. Day in, day out.
The gameplay itself is less tedious, rather addictive actually, albeit still quite a grind. The simple 2D platforming is strangely compelling. Using your diggergun, which can be upgraded as you progress, you must destroy blocks of rock and forge your way toward the precious lithium on each screen (if there is any). There’s some light puzzling involved when making a path for yourself through the mine in which it’s possible to dig yourself into a hole you can’t get out of. Speed is of the essence as you are constantly racing against the clock to get back to your flat in the mining town hub area before you collapse from exhaustion. (The wicked Cornwall Mining Corp – more on them soon – takes half of your money for being so kind as to rescue you when you collapse).
Alex’s energy levels are a constant concern. Each time you descend to a new level of the mine, a precious unit of health is consumed. You can buy food, take a shower and use the toilets in town to replenish health, but it feels like you never have enough. (A huge shout-out here to the game for incorporating the ‘call of nature’ into the gameplay, a fact of life so often ignored in games and other art forms. I cheered the first time I used ‘the loo’!).
The XP upgrades (for increased health, aim, strength and luck finding resources in the mine) also help, but it remains a harsh game throughout, with punishing repercussions for small mistakes – I don’t know how many times I walked under falling rocks. It’s even more of a battle when you inevitably find yourself in debt and can no longer buy food from the restaurant or the food stand in town. While the platforming does not require a high level of skill, you do need to maintain concentration. More importantly, the game requires patience, resilience and endurance. Alex is, after all, simultaneously a cog in the capitalist machine and a spanner in its works.
Back down in the mine, the diggergun can also be used to kill any wildlife that might get in your way. I’m ashamed to say that although I avoided killing living things at first, as my money began to run out, and I got more desperate, I increasingly began using my diggergun to destroy anything that got between myself and the precious lithium. In short, instead of using a gun to shoot people, in this game it’s used to destroy nature, both inanimate and animate. This is an apt illustration, and playing out, of the harmful extraction processes used in lithium mining in real life.
The choice of lithium as the resource being mined in the game is perhaps a significant piece of social criticism. Lithium has many uses in the real world, most obviously in batteries for consumers (perhaps an implied reference here to the fact that Alex’s and his coworkers’ batteries are continually being worn down by their exploitative employers). It is also used by the military (most drones use high-performance lithium batteries). I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the Cornwall Mining Corp. were supplying armaments companies with their stores of lithium. A deeply depressing thought. Indeed, it’s also perhaps ironic that lithium is used as a mood-stabilising medication for people suffering from major depressive disorders: the very economic system that causes so much psychological pain and anxiety is also profiting from it. As I say, it’s all rather depressing, but it’s highly impressive just how much social commentary is embedded into the writing and allusions.
The Cornwall Mining Corp is an unscrupulous company, to say the least. Wicked, even. They care naught about workers’ rights – forget about paid holidays or breaks – and even fail to pay a subsistence wage. Alex’s payslip makes for sombre reading. Once they’ve taken money for accommodation and other ‘expenses’, there’s not much left. And workers don’t even get paid in the first place unless they make their daily quota of lithium, which gets increasingly difficult as the game progresses and the company demands more and more…The form of hyper-capitalism they pursue requires constant, unsustainable growth.
As if all this weren’t bad enough, workers, including Alex, are starting to get sick from the polluted air down in the mines. The corporate satire is spot on – heightened for effect, of course, but a depressingly familiar depiction of late-stage capitalism’s prioritising of profit over people. Without giving too much away, there are also hints (early on) of supernatural happenings on the island, which is also used for satirical purposes – those greedy humans overreaching themselves, again, will perhaps pay a price for their rapaciousness.
The tension between winning at the game and fighting against the cruel practices of the arch-capitalist Cornwall Mining Corp within it is striking and plays out brilliantly, reflecting the moral compromises we each have to strike in our own lives. In a sense, the mining game is a game within the wider story-driven one, and it’s a game that you might not ultimately be able to win. The only winners of the mining game are the owners of capital. But luckily, the encompassing narrative might offer a way out of this vicious inner circle of Hell.
The politics in the game are proudly left-wing. It is, after all, a satire on the corporate class and the political parties, institutions and media outlets who support them. Although most of the references are UK-specific, the penetrating analysis of power structures is universal. For instance, the anti-immigrant and anti-woke rhetoric of right-wing media filters through to some of Alex’s coworkers, a phenomenon not exclusive to the UK. While the politics might put some people off – not a problem for an ageing dilettante democratic socialist like myself – in these fractured times of ours, most of the stances taken seem purely humanistic commonsense positions to take: people are surely more important than profits, and corporations shouldn’t be allowed to exploit and mistreat their employees. These should be uncontroversial points of view. Right? Right?!? This is a timely piece of satirical video game art.
