Steam store page

One of my favorite activities in Minecraft is going deep inside the caves and just exploring them. A few years ago, the developers behind Cave Digger reached out to me and asked me to review their game. Not too long after, the sequel got released and looked like it would be a VR exclusive. Until I noticed that it appeared on the Nintendo Switch eShop. So, I thought, maybe it also released on Steam, since after playing the Switch version, I felt like this game was better played with keyboard and mouse. Now, a non VR version is on Steam now… But is it worth it? Well, after playing the first sections of this game, I want to talk about it. The latest update was on May 28th, 2024 when writing this article. Now, before we dive right into it, I want to invite to you leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

Risk of Staleness

In this game, we play as an unnamed miner who is throwing into the deep end, when his digger broke. You arrive at a mysterious valley. In this valley, a hardy explorer once did his research. But why? Which secrets are in these valleys and the accompanying mines? That’s for our miner to figure out. Now, the story is being told by various comic book pages you can uncover and, according to the Steam store page, has multiple endings. I’m quite curious where it’s going to go.

So far, I haven’t gotten too deep into the story. But, from what I can read on the Steam store page, I think it has potential. I have my doubts on how the multiple endings will work. Since comic books mostly have one ending, right? Unless, it all depends on which page(s) you find or in which order or where. That’s something I’ll discover when I’m deeper into the game.

If this game is like the original game, the story overall will take a backseat for the gameplay. And after 5 hours in, that’s the case. The original game didn’t have a lot of story to begin with, but more story in a game like this can be interesting.

There is one voice actor in this game. He does a pretty fine job and brings some life to the atmosphere. I replayed a bit of the first game and I have to be honest, I appreciate the small voice lines during the exploration. Even when you quickly hear every different line, it’s a nice break since they aren’t spammed and don’t appear that often.

One of the biggest changes in this game is that the cave this time around is randomly generated each time you enter. So, this game becomes a rouge like to a degree. But, you can always exit via the lifts to safety. Since, dying in the caves means that at least half of your obtained loot is dropped. The atmosphere this time around is very cohesive. This game presents itself as a sci-fi western game, and it really feels like that. Something I really like in this game is that it doesn’t go overboard in the sci-fi genre and stays grounded. The technology could realistically exist today, apart from the unique enemies in the cave, that is.

With the story taking more of a backseat, it’s quite important that the gameplay loop is enjoyable. The gameplay loop is simple, you have to explore the caves with 4 chosen tools. The three slots above the entrance give you a hint on which tools you will need to bring to gather the most loot. You take the lift down and gather loot, while fighting enemies and avoiding pitfalls to survive. The goal is also to find the other elevator that takes you down to the next level to gather even more valuable ores to bring to the top. You have to fill in the ores you gathered into the grinder to buy upgrades to your tools and environment to progress.

The big risk with this kind of gameplay loop is that this is just a different numbers game. What I mean by that is that, apart from maybe the visuals changing, the core concept is always the same. This risks that the game becomes stale and repetitive. It’s possible that it is just a “me thing”, but I enjoy games like this more when there are some variations on the gameplay or some different puzzles. Thankfully, this game has that. There are a lot of things you can upgrade and improve to make each run feel rewarding, and each type of cave you can visit has different enemies types and unique lay-outs to keep you on your toes. In a way, I dare to compare the idea a bit to Cult of the Lamb in a degree.

The music in this game is also a blast. It fits the atmosphere of each area like a glove. My favorite track is the track that plays in the lake caves. It sounds like you image a typical track like that to sound. And it gets more intense while you are fighting enemies down there. Now, the silent moments when the music doesn’t play feel a bit long, but I always know that there is more music coming and that it fits the atmosphere perfectly and draws me more into the game. Sadly enough, this isn’t the only problem with this game, and I’d like to talk about them.

No feedback

This game has an addictive gameplay loop, and I’m really curious how the multiplayer works. I haven’t tested the multiplayer in this game, but it looks like fun. Now, this game can be played solo perfectly fine.

Now, I don’t know if VRKiwi took the VR version as a base for the non VR version, since I have the impression, that is the case. I especially notice that with the controls in this game. It feels a bit floaty, like you aren’t really connected to the ground. It also feels a bit stiff, like you have to move your mouse like you would a VR headset. You really have to play with the settings until you hit that sweetspot that feels right for you. For me, I had to lower the sensitivity to 80, amongst other things. I highly recommend that you tweak the settings to your liking, since on the Nintendo Switch version, I had to lower the sensitivity to 40 before it felt right.

Still, the character control doesn’t feel right. At first, I thought it was because the controls felt floaty… But, after some testing, I think I found a few other problems with the character control that might cause it to not feel quite right. First, the jump in this game is just silly. You can’t really rely on it, since it doesn’t always trigger when you hit the spacebar, and it’s just a pathetic jump. You can’t even jump out of ankle high water sometimes.

Secondly, there are no sound effects for walking on most floors. You feel like you are floating, and it’s jarring when you suddenly hear a sound effect when you walk over a table or a railway. Thirdly, climbing on ropes amongst other things is just insanely picky. There is also no real feedback or sound to show you grabbed the rope. Fourthly, the scroll order between tools is extremely weird. You get numbers on the wheel counter clock wise. But you go down, right, left, up. Which still confuses me after 6 hours of playing this game.

And finally, some things are extremely picky. For example, there are safe riddles you can solve down in the caves. But to rotate the letter wheels to make pick the right letter is more difficult to do. All of these things give you a feeling that you aren’t always in control of your character and that you don’t get the feedback as a player on what’s happening. Making you unsure what’s happening and doubt if you are doing the right thing.

Prompts like “Use W/S to use the crank” should be “Hold W/S to use the crank”. Since, you need to hold the key instead of pressing it. Small things like that could also improve this game and it’s controls quite a lot. Overall, the controls are good, but they lack feedback to the player sometimes. Either with sound effects or with some visual effects. Like with the hammer, you barely have any sound effects when you use it, and it has some wind up animation, making you unsure if you are using it or not.

That is one of the biggest flaws in this game. The lack of feedback on your actions. Things like not knowing how many bullets are still left in your revolver or a sound effect when you hit an actual enemy. I think if there is one thing I’d use the built-in feedback tool is to report various cases/moments when I expect feedback from the game, like a sound effect or visual effect. Maybe they appear in the form of rumble effects… But, I’m not playing this game with a controller.

When you read this section of the article, I wouldn’t blame you if you think that this game isn’t good. Small bugs like the text of “Press R to reload” when your gun isn’t equipped or the bullets not leaving from the gun but from the player model don’t improve things either. Yet, I find myself looking past these problems since the core gameplay still works. I find myself getting used to the jank in this game and finding a very rough diamond. If the developers keep up with their promise of improving this game, I think that more action feedback will bring a lot to the game and maybe fixing the small bugs like in this paragraph as well.

Things like the animation of the shovel looking weird sometimes. The animation looks like the arms go through each other after a dig. Speaking of the shovel, the last dig is annoying since you have to move a pixel or two for it to count and give you your goodies. But the bug I’d love to see fixed most is the freeze for several seconds when you pick up something new or get a new codec entry. The game locks up like it’s about the crash, but it doesn’t.

What’s next for us?

Usually, I’m not really picky when it comes to the visuals of a game. As long as a game looks consistent, I’m quite happy. It needs to have a certain style so that you can quickly identify what’s what and enjoy the game.

Yet, for this game, I do have some things that I not really like in terms of the visuals. Firstly, the contrast of some ores and the floor isn’t clear enough. Sometimes I was passing up on ores since I wasn’t able to notice them on the ground.

There are also a lot of objects to give more details to the cave, but you can barely interact with them. I’d love to see lilly pads in lakes to move a bit when you walk past them or something more than just being able to clip through them. As well, a sound effect when you hit a wall you can’t mine. You get shouted at when you use the wrong or a too weak tool on something, so when not for the rest?

I think the biggest mistake that the visuals make is that it has an identity crisis. What I mean by that is that it isn’t a cohesive style. There is a lot of shell shading going on, but there is also a lot of details that give off a more realistic vibe. Some textures aren’t detailed enough and strechted too wide giving wrong impression the rest of the visuals that look more modern. The floor textures sometimes suffer most from this issue.

Looking back at this article, I think I’m being very critical for this game. I have played a lot worse and broken games for 15€. But, in this game you even have customisation options for your character and thee developers are extremely open for feedback. This game has a lot going for it. Fun achievements to hunt for, bosses at the end of runs and an amazing auto save system.

Apart from improving the character controls and adding some feedback on actions, I think this game is pretty decent. Yes, there is some polish missing like not having a tooltip with the lever at the cave entrance on what that lever does. I personally feel less conflicted about this game compared to the original. The growth in this title is immense and brings me a lot of hope for either some amazing updates, DLC or a new entry in the series.

The basis of for an amazing title is here and if you look past it’s short comings, this game is a blast to play. Maybe it’s a bit too repetitive for some and can be more fun in short bursts. But, when this game sinks it’s hooks into you, it really clicks. There is some polishing left to do and for a rather new VR focused developer, this is amazing. It’s their second non VR game and it shows a lot of promise.

The game is a perfect relaxing game to wind down, since it isn’t too difficult. The game is rather forgiving. I wouldn’t be surprised that I play this game after work to wind down and try and finish it slowly. Then again, while I’m writing this, I have summer holidays and I wouldn’t be surprised that I finish most of this game during my summer break.

Like I said earlier, I feel less conflicted about this game compared to the previous title. This game has a lot more going for it compared to the original. It’s less repetitive and it has a lot more going for it. It has it’s problems, yes. But, if you enjoy games like Minecraft, Steamworld Dig or Cave Digger, give the demo of this game a chance. The demo gives a very good idea on what you can expect from this game and if you enjoy it, buy the game. I’m enjoying myself quite a lot with this game and I’m happy that I have chosen the PC version over the Switch version since I feel like it just plays better. But maybe, if I get used to the Switch controls, I might enjoy it on Switch as well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. Maybe when I finish this game, I might write a full review with the final thoughts and opinions on this game. But for now, I think the best conclusion for this game is that it’s an amazing step up from the original and besides some unpolished things… It’s a great game and comes recommend from me.

So, it’s time to wrap up this article with my usual outro. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

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The prices for building a gaming desktop PC have improved over the past few months, but they might still be too high for you. In fact, they even be so high that you consider purchasing a gaming laptop instead. As the name suggests, a gaming laptop is a laptop made with gaming in mind; big companies like Razer, Dell, and MSI make lots of these nowadays. These laptops can be attractive options for more on-the-move, lower-budget, and/or younger players as they tend to be a little cheaper and a lot more portable than desktop alternatives.

In this article, I will explore if this is a viable alternative to building your own desktop. I’ll be covering a selection of important topics, starting with those that favor the laptops and transitioning toward those that favor the desktops.

This comparison will be mainly aimed at people wanting to play games on their system. You could also use this comparison for picking a system for similar workloads like video editing or 3D rendering, but the article is written with gaming in mind. Now, let’s get to it!

Cost of Laptops vs Desktops

The first topic is cost, and gaming laptops tend to be cheaper (especially after factoring in the computer itself, the operating system, and the monitor and keyboard).

Let’s compare the current ‘very good’ tier from our main chart against a laptop that is getting sold for the similar figure of 949 USD as a sample:

You can see from this test that laptops can sometimes be cheaper, despite not suffering too much in the performance department. The laptop has worse (but reasonably comparable) specs and a lower price tag. When you factor in that the ‘very good’ tier PC does not include an operating system, a screen, a keyboard, or a mouse/trackpad—the prices diverge considerably wider. Now, the laptop is only going to achieve its peak gaming performance when the system is plugged in, which hampers the portability I’ll be covering below, but for now we’ll set that aside.

This better bang-for-the-buck performance-wise is caused by multiple things. Obviously, there’s that list of bundled features. But within the device, the core components are usually soldered to the motherboard, which means that the motherboard doesn’t need to have unnecessary ports, slots, or devices. Laptop parts can also be built with one certain situation in mind, which gives companies room to strip down unused functions. Less features on each component often means that the production price is lower.

But it’s not all peaches and cream with the lower cost. Aside from the smaller storage, single-channel RAM, core spec differences, etc—there are a number of conventional compromises involved to achieve the lower price:

The operating system of a laptop is almost always cluttered with an array of bloatware programs that were pre-installed due to a marketing arrangement between the software publishers and the laptop manufacturers. Motherboards, RAM, and other unexciting components like the power supply tend to be not just lacking features but also of lesser quality in laptops (although directly comparing laptop and desktop motherboards and PSUs is slightly unfair, because of the different requirements for those parts). And you also have to keep in mind that the screen of a laptop is  physically smaller and often has a lower refresh rate than desktop monitors.

Portability of Laptops vs Desktops

Laptops are more portable than gaming desktops. Obviously. Moving your desktop setup from A to B is a bigger task than moving your laptop (and maybe a mouse) from A to B. This might actually be the main selling point of laptops for the vast majority of users.

You won’t have to carry these around! Well, at least not the keyboard…

This is a nice feature for people that are always on the move, for work or school for instance. You can also use this to take your gaming setup with you on holidays or long flights. Lastly, this means that you can utilize your system in casual spots like cafés, if you have the confidence. It gives you quite some freedom when you are able to play your favorite games wherever you want.

Prepare for more obviousness: the reasons laptops are more portable are because they are much thinner and lighter than desktops, have all functional peripheral needs integrated into them, and can run on battery power for a while. Unless you’re planning to drag a generator around in addition to your tower, you’re probably not going to be able to run a desktop with ease away from a wall outlet.

The only real complication for this otherwise oh-so-straightforward section is, as noted above, that gaming performance tends to suffer on battery (as system components are throttled to preserve power), and that gaming drains the battery at a considerably higher rate than other ways of using a computer.

Up-front Work of Laptops vs Desktops

The last primary advantage of buying a laptop instead of building your own PC is that your system is already built for you. Laptops don’t require any assembly, and most ones can be booted up out-of-the-box (when plugged in of course, since they tend to not be fully charged). The fact that they don’t require any assembly means that you will save time, and that you will be protected from making any system-breaking mistakes. And component compatibility is obviously not even the remotest concern for a laptop user.

There are even some minor additional virtues along these lines. For example, you don’t have to keep a lot of boxes around of all your components just in case you have to RMA a product (just a laptop box). And the operating system is pre-installed and pre-configured, making the system plug-and-play.

Now, I’ve already mentioned earlier that the pre-installed OS is a double-edged sword—as it usually comes crammed full of versions of Candy Crush, desktop applications for services that work fine as websites (like Twitter), redundant and bothersome virus protection software, and other junk. But that’s not the only caveat here. It’s also worth pointing out that some of the work being avoided, such as installing an OS, takes 20 minutes at most. And it being a small pre-assembled device also means upgrades and customization are harshly limited, moreso even than prebuilt desktop PCs… but that will be discussed more in a bit.

Still, though: not needing to build, however easy we believe building a PC to be, will be a strong enticement for many.

Heat and Noise of Laptops vs Desktops

The chance of this happening is somewhere around zero. But a hot, loud laptop is something that most laptop users are used to.

So, a laptop wins in all of the foregoing sections… but not here. One major downside of a laptop is the fact that a mobile device is far more likely to overheat. Not just sometimes—most of the time when it is under full load. Now, overheating won’t destroy your laptop unless something is seriously wrong with it (or the ambient temperature is extremely high). In fact, nowadays there are a lot of systems that will automatically shut down the laptop if temperatures reach a dangerous level, though that isn’t the best thing.

More commonly, if the temperatures are high, the laptop will simply switch priorities to cool itself off. The performance of the CPU, GPU, and/or other parts will be capped to below max, and the laptop fans will spin very fast (making a loud noise). This is something that most laptop users will just have to accept. Whenever you put it under full load, or boot it up, it will drop in gaming prowess and it will be really loud.

This can really be a downside if you want to play recent hard-to-run titles, or just want to game without headphones. Playing games mixed with loud fan noise isn’t a great experience, and no one likes their system to be regularly running below peak performance.

Of course, there are fixes, like buying a laptop cooler, or just preemptively limiting the hardware so that it never runs hot, but those ‘fixes’ may be worse for most users than the problems they’re intended to address. After all, a laptop cooler reduces portability, and hardware limiting directly lowers framerates (as well as being an arguable a waste of money, since you still paid for the components’ full abilities). In the end, playing on a laptop often means having a hot, loud gaming session.

Upgrades and Customization of Laptops vs Desktops

The second major disadvantage to a gaming laptop is upgradability. A laptop is barely upgradeable. When you want to get more performance, you often have to buy an entire new system. Laptops are not built to be upgraded. The GPU and CPU are soldered to the motherboard, and often there aren’t even any free RAM slots or space/ports for extra storage.

This chip has been soldered to the board.

This can be a big downside for many, since it is usually far more expensive to buy a new laptop than to just upgrade one, two, or three components. The impact of this disadvantage will differ from person to person. If you plan to play the same games for the foreseeable future, you won’t need better hardware next year or the year after that (unless those games become increasingly performance-heavy). If you plan to play the newest games every year, you will have to upgrade more often, and this downside of not being able to upgrade will hit you harder.

There are upgradeable laptops out there, but they tend to be extra-expensive, and your upgrade choices will still be very limited. And you can simply employ external hard drives for extra storage space, though that again counts as a limitation on the portability of a self-contained laptop system.

Screens of Laptops vs Desktops

Seeing detail on a small screen can be tough.

The last disadvantage of note is that the screen size of a laptop is… small. You will most surely get a bigger screen when you use a desktop and buy a stand-alone monitor. Laptop screens are often in the range of 14-17 inches (for 1080p screens, that is). 1080p desktop monitors tend to be within 21-27 inches. If you like to have a bigger screen to see everything better, laptops are not for you.

A smaller screen makes it more difficult to see certain details, so games where you need, for instance, to look for enemies in the distance—might be less fun on a laptop. And if you want to use your laptop for workstation tasks in addition to gaming (like 3D rendering, photo editing, or video editing), it may also be annoying to have to zoom in to see the details that you are working on.

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, refresh rates tend to be lower on laptops than desktops; this has been less true in the last couple years than it was previously, but it’s still fairly conventional to see 60 Hz or 75 Hz monitors on gaming laptops. So, even in situations where the laptop is overcoming its potential specification and heat disadvantages to pump out high frame rates, the effort may be going largely wasted on a low-refresh-rate screen.

Conclusion

In conclusion, laptops can certainly be a viable alternative to a desktop system—even for gamers.

This, however, depends on what you need and what you want. You have to ask yourself a few questions to find out what best suits your needs: Is saving money high on your priority list? Does your system need to be portable? Do you want to build your own system? Are you okay with a loud system? Does your system need to be upgraded in the future? Would a small screen be a problem for you, or is that not particularly important?

I think that you can come a lot closer to knowing what the best option is for you by reflecting on and answering those questions. Gaming laptops can be a great option, but they do have drawbacks that interested gamers should bear in mind. I hope that this article cleared things up and helped you with the choice between a gaming laptop or building your own desktop. And feel free to share you thoughts in the comments below!