AnnaBlackwell

Digging Out The Dig

Added 2022-07-22 12:20:23 +0000 UTC

Last year, when I first tippled over the £200 per month mark, I started working on a very experimental game called The Dig. A 21 day long journalling game in which you played as the head of a paleontological dig looking for a pulp style artefact known as The Crystal Spine.

The interesting twist? It was played on an A3 scratch-off poster so you physically uncovered the fossils and prompts as you went. Pretty cool right? I thought so, as did quite a few people who bought it at Dragonmeet or paid for the ridiculous shipping cost to the United States.

Well, as it turns out, scratch off ink has a shelf life and after shipping a good number over to a retailer in the US, we discovered that the entire stock had spoiled and the prompts could no longer be uncovered. Boo.

So while this isn't the format I would like The Dig to be presented, I figured it might still interest some of you and would be a heck of a lot better than leaving it to fade into obscurity.

So enjoy! The Dig, the first experimental game but not the last!

Dig Site_1.png is a picture of the uncovered prompts and fossils

The Dig PaintdotNet File.pdn requires PaintdotNet to open but will allow you to use the eraser tool to "scratch off" the squares which is the closest to the original mechanic I could find.