Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread!

Yesterday, I beat Steamworld Dig 2. Well, technically I beat Alan Wake 2 and Steamworld Dig 2, but my love of The Adventures of Alan Wake: Life-Destroying Hack an has been well established already. Overall, I found Steamworld… alright. Its general gameplay loop of you going a bit deeper into the earth each time is strong, but the writing wasn’t good and everything felt just a bit off. In the end, it felt a bit like that term I go to far too often, “gaming as product.”

Still, Steamworld gets the appeal of digging your way through the ground. That’s what makes the game fun; it’s tactile and clever and at its best can add a bit of puzzle solving. And it’s far from the only one. Like, this year alone has featured like three games about digging through the ground in the pursuit of depth, treasure, and its own sake. It’s a great element in the world of gaming. So in honor of what is, really, a kind of mediocre game that I had in my backlog since like 2018, what are your favorite games about digging, mining, and all other forms of underground navigation?

And, of course, what did you play this weekend?