SteamWorld Dig 2 asks a simple question: what if digging was the whole point, and the game around it was good enough to deserve it? Image & Form answered that in September 2017, and the answer holds up.
The sequel to 2013’s SteamWorld Dig is a Metroidvania about a steam-driven robot named Dorothy, searching for Rusty, the hero of the first game, who vanished. She digs down through a vast mine, fights what lives there, and trades what she finds for upgrades. It is the fourth SteamWorld game, and it is the one that made the series matter.
Trailer, via GOG.
Dorothy, Fen, and the road to El Machino
The setup is lean and it works. Dorothy arrives in the mining town of El Machino looking for Rusty. On the way she meets Fen, a leftover piece of the Vectron that Rusty fought before, who signs on as her navigator. From there the game hands you a pickaxe and a hole.
The loop is exploration and extraction. You dig downward, hit enemy creatures, and pull out resources. Cash from those resources buys health, weapons, and abilities back in the hub. Each weapon carries perks you switch on by installing Upgrade Cogs found in secret areas. More blueprints open up as you level by killing enemies or finishing quests, or by finding artifacts buried in the mines.
The tools you collect change how the mine reads:
- Pressure bombs
- A hookshot for swinging across large chasms
- A pneumatic arm that punches through rock
- A jet engine for flying through caves
That list is the real design. The hookshot and the jet engine turn a straight descent into something you move through sideways and upward, which is what separates a Metroidvania from a hole with a ladder in it.
What lies under El Machino
The story runs between SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist, and it goes further than the first game bothered to. Dorothy hears rumors that Rusty turned into a monstrous machine. She runs into the Shiners, devolved humans hooked on a drug called moon juice, led by Rosie. Rosie says mysterious machines are causing the earthquakes. She is lying.
The machines were built by Rusty to stop Rosie from using a fusion distillery to make more moon juice and control the remaining humans. Rosie is an unhinged maniac. Dorothy beats her and rescues Rusty, but the distillery goes unstable. Fen stays behind to warp the two of them out. They escape on a rocket with the other El Machino residents before the planet explodes. Dorothy ends the game in space, hoping she will see Fen again.
That is a lot of plot for a game about swinging a pickaxe, and the shift lands because the game earns it. Rosie is a real villain rather than a boss with a health bar. Fen’s choice costs something. The ending is sad in a way the first game never attempted.
Where SteamWorld Dig 2 is weakest is where most sequels are weakest: it is a refinement, not a reinvention. The digging, the upgrades, the trading, the descent — all of it was in the 2013 game. What is new is the scale, the movement tools, and a story that treats its robots as characters instead of mascots. That is enough.
The game shipped across Nintendo Switch, Linux, macOS, Windows, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita in September 2017. It reached Nintendo 3DS in February 2018, Xbox One in November 2018, and Stadia in March 2020. Rising Star Games put out physical copies for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in 2018. It has been easy to find on almost everything ever since, which is the correct outcome for a game this clean.
The published critical score sits at 8.9 out of 10 across 11 outlets, and that number is about right. SteamWorld Dig 2 does not reinvent the mine. It digs it properly, fills it with things worth finding, and gives you a reason to care about the robot holding the pickaxe.
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