Diamond Digger Saga Review

DFG Exclusive Review Summary

Read Full Diamond Digger Saga Review

Game Description

Have you ever wanted to explore the depths of the planet to unearth shiny treasure and undiscovered secrets? In Diamond Digger Saga, your mission is to help Diggy navigate the unseen depths and find treasures of all kinds.

Puzzle Fun!

In Diamond Digger Saga, players are presented with grids of gems underground. If three or more gems are grouped together, they can be removed from the board with a simple tap, and other gems will fill the space left behind. Water is an element that you have to work with as well. Water is free to flow further down when matches are made nearby, and once the water reaches the bottom of the grid, you are whisked away to a deeper puzzle grid, whether you’re ready or not! Beware of water and make matches carefully to complete your objectives successfully!

Adorable Story

In Diamond Digger Saga, you follow along with the adventures of a lemon yellow digger alien named Diggy. Diggy is a sweet little fellow who goes through life thinking digging is the solution to all of life’s problems. For the most part, he’s right! Missing a pet? Digging is the answer. Missing toys? Dig for them! Need some money? Get to digging! The game presents Diggy’s adventures via cutscenes, and the storyline is sweet, simple and adorable.

Targeted Puzzle Action

Each level has certain requirements that must be met in order to move forward to the next level. Matches made that don’t meet the requirements won’t give you any points, and each move has the potential to move water further down the grid. This makes strategy absolutely necessary to beat the levels.

Boosts

Dynamite, color bursts and line blasts give you a helping hand during gameplay. Use them wisely to make getting through those tough levels easier.

Cute Art Style and Sweet Sound

The artwork throughout Diamond Digger Saga is whimsical and adorable, with otherworldly aliens that are as soft and sweet as can be. The main protagonist, Diggy, has a bucktoothed smile that few could resist, and the world he lives in is round, colorful and unique. Progressing through the game is a great opportunity to see all this alien world has to offer.

The music in Diamond Digger Saga is excellent too with lots of instruments and sounds coming together to make a soundtrack you won’t soon forget!

Digging is Better With Friends

Connect Diamond Digger Saga to Facebook to go head to head against the matching skills of your friends! A Leaderboard gives you the opportunity to see who among your circle of friends has got the digging skills to beat. Top their score to be the very best!

Free to Play

Diamond Digger Saga is free to play, with in-app purchases possible if desired. Lives will be refilled given time, so purchasing lives isn’t necessary to enjoy the game fully.

Diamond Digger Saga Review

King Games lives up to their name when you consider their domination of the mobile game market. Most of their games are a rework of the match-3 format that’s brought them so much success (Candy Crush, Candy Crush Soda Saga… etc), so it’s always a surprise when King brings something different to the table. Diamond Digger Saga initially looks like just another Candy Crush clone, but it’s something very different than the sweet-themed puzzler. Does Diamond Digger Saga deserve a download? Read on to find out!

Interesting Puzzle Gameplay

When the game boots up, it looks like it will be another match-3 game. However, it’s not. In Diamond Digger Saga, you can remove groups of 3 or more gems by tapping them. More gems (they’re all technically called diamonds, regardless of shape or color) fall to fill their place. Simple and expected.

However, if the game didn’t specifically tell you to make that match, you get zero points for it. All moves must bring you closer to the goal of that particular level, otherwise you might as well not make the move at all. Diamond Digger Saga will not reward thoughtless gameplay, and that’s refreshing.

Each level has its own set of requirements that must be met in order to advance to the next level. Within each level, there are “depths.” You dig lower and lower and lower, and there are often greater rewards the further down you go.

Now, the thing that really makes Diamond Digger Saga shine (pun not intended, but I’ll take it) is water. Water follows you down as you dig. If you make a match near the water, it will free up enough earth for it to flow freely downward. If the water reaches a designated space at the bottom of the puzzle grid, you will be taken further down into the next depth. You, as the player, have no say so in advancing to the next depth. Even if you needed to do something on the board, the water will still carry you down, spelling disaster for that particular level in some cases. So your goal is to control the flow of water at all times.

This adds a surprising dimension of strategy to the game, and this complexity is something that other puzzle games often lack. The moves you make on the board can impact you both negatively and positively, depending on what you’re needing to do. You can’t avoid the water altogether either; the game won’t allow it! If you want to be able to move down to the next depth, you’ll need the water to flow.

Like most puzzle games, your moves are limited, though you get two freebies each time you move down a depth. You therefore can’t save manipulating the water for too late in the puzzle, otherwise you’ll burn all your moves before reaching your objectives.

Diamond Digger Saga is unique in its gameplay, and it’s a fantastic puzzler due to the ingenious addition of water. A refreshing take on the matching puzzle!

Very, Very Cute

The lead protagonist of this game is Diggy, a sunshine yellow digger alien thing with buck teeth. He has a firefly for a pet, and he spends his days in a carefree, happy manner. Until his firefly disappears or his toys go missing in the bath tub. When faced with these troubles he does the only thing he can. He digs, and in the world of Diamond Digger Saga, that’s always the right solution.

So you’ll be helping this cute little guy with cute little quests like the ones mentioned above. Adorable to the max, without feeling the least bit condescending or juvenile.

Great Graphics

Everything King releases has a certain level of polish, but they really outdid themselves with this one. It’s visually stunning in its cute and simple style, with graphics that bring to mind Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario Galaxy was one of the most visually pleasing games in the Mario franchise to date, so the comparison between this mobile app and that console hit is high praise indeed.

The characters look fantastic and the alien worlds are unique and whimsical in a way that Dr. Seuss would appreciate. As for sound, it’s also excellent, with lots of different instruments present within the music. There are these strange little noises and sounds peppered throughout the soundtrack, giving it a very cute vibe. I assume the little vocalizations are Diggy and his other alien friends. Memorable and charming!

Addictive

This game has a very addictive quality. Once you get used to having to watch your moves, the water and your objectives, all at once, it’s very fun to play level after level. It’s all pretty much the same during each level, but progressing through the alien worlds is oddly satisfying. This is one I’ll be playing for a long, long time.

Unexpected Hard Levels Slow Things Down

With King’s free-to-play offerings, you can count on hitting a level so stinking hard, you almost have to pay to get through it. Diamond Digger Saga is no different. Everything will be going along just fine, and then suddenly, it’s impossible. It looks doable and it should be doable, but by gum it’s not! If you can clear that hellishly hard level, the one immediately following is so easy that it’s ridiculous. There is no steady progression of difficulty for this reason. I know why they do this, but I like that sense of progression through a puzzle game. It’s kind of like climbing a mountain or running a marathon. It should get progressively more difficult. The randomness is pretty annoying, but at least you can count on a breather once the paywall levels are payed for or cleared through sheer will.

Repetitive

This game is amazingly cute and all that, but it’s the same thing, over and over and over again. If you don’t mind doing the same thing every level with little variation, this won’t be a problem for you. If you tire of the same puzzle, you’re going to get burnt out on this simple little game real quick. It’s a YMMV type of thing. I love repetition in games, personally. It lets me continually improve by going up against my personal best. One man’s con is another’s pro, I suppose.

Overall

Diamond Digger Saga is my personal favorite of King’s games thus far, which is a real surprise. I didn’t expect much from this little game, but it delivered hours of fun. The boosters, the levels and the objectives are all run-of-the-mill stuff you’d see anywhere else, but having water in the mix made this game a completely new experience for me. This game scores an 8.0, Excellent! Download it and try it! It’s a real gem!

Player Reviews