The depths of the Earth are always fascinating. From Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth all the way to modern cave horror movies like The Descent, we are fascinated with plumbing the darkest recesses of our planet for the inevitable secrets that hide beneath its rocky exterior. Sometimes that fascination manifests in unexpected ways, such as games like Mr. Driller or Steamworld Dig. Other times it inspires some of our greatest fiction and more than a few real explorers as well.
Today, that fascination with diving below the surface of our planet is manifested in Ground Divers! from Studio Tsuruhashi and publisher Arc System Works. Trending more towards the comedic than the serious, Ground Divers! follows a group of, well, ground divers as they explore in order to find “rare matter” to solve our energy crisis as humanity is struggling to survive in a post climate change environment. Ground divers are the thin line that separates humanity from extinction and with the help of cute robotic frames, they dig through layers of the Earth in order to gather supplies and keep humanity alive.
You control a robot named Tsuruhashi (mascot perhaps?), using it to dig down through layers of the Earth’s crust and gathering an assortment of items, supplies, and of course, rare matter. Aiding your quest are a motley crew of oddballs including a talking tiger who is a former soldier, a child genius, a weirdly creepy fangirl, some cute robots and a few more. There’s plenty of playful banter and a short introduction story for each level but for the most part, Ground Divers! is about gameplay.
The bulk of the game consists of your robot digging down through a fairly extensive block map. Each map is filled with items, enemies, and a variety of blocks, some of which harm you, some of which heal you, and some which hide secret items. Your goal is to get to the bottom of each map, much like completing a dig in Mr. Driller. However, that’s where the comparison ends because Ground Divers! is very much not an action game of any kind. Instead, this is a much more tactical sort of game, requiring speed, thinking, and a deep reserve of patience.
Instead of controlling your robot, your job is to set waypoints for Tsuruhashi. You can set up to 5 at a time but each point requires 10 action points. You earn new action points by digging or using items, but your selections matter. Run out of AP and you’re not going anywhere. As you dig, you lay conduit connecting your robot to the surface world through pits, high-tech tents that allow you to heal, resupply, and even summon support units. You can make new pits as you go as well and making the distance between Tsuruhashi and your pit shorter is definitely important. One of your many goals in Ground Divers! is to build and upgrade pits and each section of each stage has 3 challenges that give you bonuses for completion, many of which include your pits.
Now setting waypoints isn’t exactly the easiest thing. Your robot has a bit of a mind of its own so if you leave it alone while you’re planning what to do, it will just start digging randomly down and most likely end up in trouble or defeated, forcing you to restart your run. Sometimes, you’ll have to cancel a waypoint with the B button or build a new pit as a waypoint in the level too. Constantly monitoring Tsuruhashi is a full-time job and considering that the viewable area is remarkably small in each stage, you often don’t know quite what you’re getting into until it’s too late.
In addition to pits there are some other key elements to Ground Divers! One of the most interesting is cheering for your robot. Apparently the circuitry within Tsuruhashi is remarkably needy and you need to encourage the little digging machine in order for it to maximize its functionality. This means hitting the R button regularly to send a cheer down the conduit to your robot in order to make sure that it stays motivated. Weird, right? Cheer enough and you get a special attack that hits a four block radius in front of your robot, breaks apart most blocks, and kills weaker enemies. It’s a powerful attack that you’ll want to utilize but if you cheer too much you overload and have to wait for a cooldown.
So now you’re digging away with your robot and you come across an enemy. Enemies automatically attack when close enough and a slugfest with underground enemies is definitely not going to go in your favor. By default, Tsuruhashi only has 100 HP and there are a lot of enemies lurking about the levels. Fight them all and you’re guaranteed to die. Sure, there are ways around all that, but it won’t save you because Ground Divers! is wildly unforgiving. As you’re digging, fighting, and collecting, there’s an unseen timer ticking away, moment by moment. Eventually, your team at the surface will let you know that the monsters are agitated and you should head for the bottom of the level. That can be a long way if you haven’t been paying attention and could be a big problem. A few minutes after that, the enemies begin coming for you. But they don’t come directly for you. Instead, they somehow sense your pits and start to head for them. If they reach your pit, it is game over as it’s your lifeline to the surface.
Death in Ground Divers! means that you lose everything you’ve gathered on a run. Yeah, this is definitely a roguelike and that means a lot of runs through a surprisingly small number of levels. Ground Divers! consists of 7 levels each with a number of sub-levels. Stage 1 only has three but as you get further, the levels become longer and more difficult. Failure to upgrade Tsuruhashi and your pits means that you have essentially zero chance of survival and are destined for frustration. This is where the tactical aspects of the game really start to take shape.
If you play Ground Divers! like an arcade-style game, you’ll die, pure and simple. There is absolutely no way to survive the game’s gruelling difficulty spikes without massive upgrades. But those upgrades aren’t easy to get. They mean multiple runs to perfect your skill at each level, utilizing multiple styles of gameplay to achieve a variety of goals. In addition to cheering and building pits, you need to regularly use the items you get. Hoarders don’t prosper here as you have a limited inventory and are constantly acquiring new items, many of which are designed to help you succeed like bombs, missiles, screws (to heal), goldfish to provide AP (no idea…don’t even ask) and a lot more. You’ll also acquire resources which allow you to craft more powerful items, weapons, and upgrades. This is a busy game that has you doing a lot of heavy lifting across both the game board and management screens.
You’ll also need to fulfill certain conditions if you want to fully complete Ground Divers!. Each stage has an exploration percentage, a fixed number of enemies to defeat, and robots to rescue. All three of these goals net you stars on the level selection screen to show you’ve fully completed a level. This is in addition to the in-stage goals that are shown at the top of the screen. Getting starts is surprisingly challenging due to the random nature of the level layouts and the lack of visibility in stages. Sure, you can add visibility with upgrades in your pits, but it’s only in tiny squares, not the entire stage and the game feels weirdly restricted because of it.
That’s kind of the feel for Ground Divers! across the board though. There’s a ton of stuff to accomplish, find, craft, and utilize but if often feels like you just can’t catch a break. Fail to cancel a waypoint fast enough, go the wrong direction, encounter a strong enemy, it all means curtains for Tsuruhashi. You’re constantly worrying about when the enemies will be triggered and not enjoying the planning part of the game, and even when you start upgrading your robot rabbit, you’re still weak as can be. In other words, Ground Divers! is a ceaseless grind that forces you to exit levels over and over before you’re finished playing in order to reclaim valuable resources and make any meaningful progress. That’s frustrating for anybody but the hardest of hardcore resource management fans.
But Ground Divers! doesn’t present itself as a challenging resource management game with a rogue-like twist. It instead comes off as a light and airy little digging game with tongue-in-cheek dialogue and an air of irreverence. This dichotomy creates a sense of dissonance in the game, seducing the player into thinking they can casually waltz through areas and find what they need. That couldn’t be further from the truth however. You need to be a careful strategist with logistical sensibilities here in order to survive and thrive in the gruelling world of Ground Divers!.
Nothing reinforces the carefree feel to the game more than the graphic and music either. This is honestly a gorgeous pixel art game that harnesses the nostalgia of classic arcade design and combines if with a light, cartoonish soundtrack. Characters are primarily humorous exaggerated archetypes and they’re silly and irreverent. The music is fun with bouncy rhythms and designed to bring a smile to listeners’ faces. But that fluffy presentation couldn’t be further from the truth in Ground Divers! as you struggle to find a random item or mineral in order to slowly craft your way to success and turn the game from an exercise in frustration into a somewhat pleasant experience.
That never really happens in Ground Divers! though. The game simply forces you to go through the same levels over and over again hoping for a different result or that one item that allows you to finally proceed further only to have to do it all over again. There’s not much else available either. Sure, there’s a customization area where you can mod Tsuruhashi’s paint color and stuff and a Game Info area that lets you go through bios, memories, and a few other things but to be honest, it’s all filler. Ground Divers! primarily expects you to ceaselessly repeat levels until things get better and it takes a darn long time for them to do so. In the meantime, you’re stuck in an endless loop that isn’t even all that engaging thanks to a lack of direct character control and the fun factor lessens in proportion to the experience.
While the concept of Ground Divers! is a cool one, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Challenging levels that are slow to complete with limited options before time runs out just adds a bunch of pressure to a game that desperately needs direct character control of your robot. Sure, it’s only a $15 game and there’s definitely at least $15 worth of gameplay here if you stick with it but a fair number of players are going to find that Ground Divers! isn’t nearly as cute or fun as it comes off looking and they probably will not stick with it. If you’re into resource management, Japanese kawaii, energetic soundtracks, and grindy, repetitive roguelikes, Ground Divers! might be for you. For the rest of us, it might be better to look elsewhere for our digging fixes.
This review was based on a digital copy of Ground Divers! provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Ground Divers! is a Switch exclusive at this time.