It doesn’t matter what kind of survival game I’m playing; if I’m with friends, then you’ll be able to find me down in the mines. You see, I’m the designated rock-gatherer. Ok, it’s not much, but it’s honest work.
Yes, I gather important building supplies and resources like stone and coal, but if I’m completely honest, I just enjoy the repetitive act of breaking up stones with a pickaxe. Which is exactly why I jumped at the chance to play the demo of a new mining sim, I’m a Wizard, But I Dig.
This game does exactly what it says on the tin: you are a wizard, and you do indeed dig. Armed with nothing but a pickaxe at first, you walk outside your wizard hut into your garden to find a duck, a beaver, and the side of a mountain.
Instead of walking around the mountain to get to the castle, you decided to take a shortcut, straight through the mountain. But it’s not exactly easy. It takes a hell of a lot of energy to dig through the mountain, meaning you’ll have to drag yourself back to your comfy bed to recharge.
It does get easier, though. You can upgrade multiple aspects of your wizard, such as your stamina and how many precious metals and stones you can carry on your person at a time. By the end of the demo, I had as much space for iron ore or ruby as I could fit inside my pockets.
You can sell these to a magic duck that lives in your garden (stay with me here) for coins, which you then use to buy potions or food, which will replenish your stamina. The duck is surprisingly generous, which meant I managed to save up hundreds of gold coins in no time at all.
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I was really getting into the groove of mining through the mountain. I had my main tunnel, secured with wood that I had bought from the kind and slightly creepy beaver that sits silently in my garden. I’d even started mining offshoots of this tunnel, a proper Minecraft strip mining strat.
Sadly, my efforts came to an abrupt end when I struck a strange blue aura. At first, I thought I’d come across something big, something that the magical duck back home would give me heaps of gold for. But on further inspection, I realised I had simply struck the end of the demo map.
I was surprisingly disappointed to realise my time with I’m a Wizard, But I Dig had come to an end. It may be a very simple idea, but I had enough fun to be left wanting more. I’m excited to see what more the full game has to offer. An element of platforming, or carving paths through the mountain to reach better equipment or potions, could work very well here, but we’ll just have to wait and find out what’s in store when it releases fully.
There was so much of the mountain left to harvest as I looked beyond this spectral blue wall, but that’s not meant for me, at least not now. I’ll just have to sit with the duck and wait for the rest to be unlocked in the near future.
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