Big Dig: digging up artifacts so Mayor Dog can build his highway

Let me summarise Big Dig's premise and let you decide whether it is a joke.

Mayor Dog's campaign is in full swing. He wants to build a highway across the Animal Republic. Unfortunately, the land is filled with wondrous artifacts he desperately needs removed.

And you are the one digging.

Out today. No score.

What it is

An incremental narrative game, and the studio specifies short, which I appreciate enough to highlight.

Mayor Dog's highway will stretch through beaches, suburbs, lakes, middle schools and more. As the road grows, so does your need for seriously capable tools.

You hire a crew of helpers, you get new equipment like an excavator, and you renovate your museum for increased profits.

Why I am writing about a small incremental game

Because there is an idea in here that is not only a joke.

You dig up historical artifacts to let an infrastructure project proceed, and you store them in a museum whose renovation increases your income.

In other words, the game casts you as preventive archaeology, the kind genuinely practised before major works, which consists of saving what you can while an excavator waits.

Put like that, it is a subject. Put with a mayor who is a dog, it is satire.

I do not yet know whether the game goes anywhere with it or whether it is a funny coat of paint over a clicking loop. But the intention is there, and an incremental game with an intention is already rare.

What I am watching

The announced length. The studio says short, and in a genre that lives on infinite stretching, that is almost provocative. An incremental that ends is an incremental with a story to tell.

The museum. That is the mechanic that could make the game clever. If renovating the museum is merely another income source, it is a classic loop. If what you display there changes something, or if the game confronts you with what you destroyed, there is a point being made.

And the writing. A short narrative game rests entirely on its text. Mayor Dog can be funny for two hours or for ten minutes.

There are a lot of incremental games, and the vast majority have nothing to say: you click, numbers rise, you buy an automaton that clicks for you.

This one offers digging holes for a highway while a canine politician hurries you along, and filing away in a museum what you found before the tarmac arrives.

For three hours, that is plenty for me.

Got an incremental game that surprised you with what it was about? That is a tiny category, help us fill it on the InsertCoins Discord.