Fancy mining for treasures in virtual reality? That’s what Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder has you doing. Or, at least, has you think that’s what you’ll be doing.
In reality, there’s much more to Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder once you get going. Its caverns you find yourself in seem rather innocent to begin with; they’re laden with rock to mine and various minerals for you to pocket and make a profit from. Holding a pickaxe in one hand with a sense controller, you can realistically swing it with a nice, satisfying thwack when you make contact with rock. Pocket what you pick up, and move on to the next pocket of ore. Simple stuff, right?
For a few minutes, at least. It’s not long into your cave-digging journey that you come across various monsters and creatures that you’re going to have to lay waste to. Thankfully, your pickaxe isn’t the only tool at your disposal, and you’ll be able to make use of a gun to protect yourself.
Offering free forward movement and a 90-degree rotation system, it’s easy to get around in Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder. But because you’re going to be spending a lot of time walking around, you may well feel a little nauseous if you’re susceptible to VR motion sickness. It got the better of us very quickly, and we had to pause our progress for a while.
If you can stomach what Cave Digger 2 has to offer, though, you’ll find a lot to like. Mining in VR is way more fun than it has any right to be, and we could have happily swung our pickaxe around all day long. Perhaps it’s a shame that you can’t simply focus on that: honestly, we’d have been quite happy mining and selling our wares on repeat.
But that’s not what Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder wants for you. So stick with it, and you’ll uncover all sorts of mysterious secrets, from the ruins of an ancient civilization to dark, eldritch powers. You can even team up with up to three friends if you fancy braving the caves in co-op.
Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder is available on PC, PS4 and PS5. You’ll need a compatible VR headset to play.
