For fans of holes, here’s a game about digging them

I’ve been saying for a long time that video game titles are stupid. What does Horizon: Zero Dawn even mean? Aren’t Dead Space and Killzone the same titles in a different font? Games need to be more honest with their names, like A Game About Digging A Hole.

There’s nothing to hide with this one: You have a shovel and yearn for a really big hole. It’s a small hole at first, but it gets bigger with time. The deeper you go, the more secrets you find, and by secrets I just mean different rocks. There are a lot of rocks and they fill your backpack up pretty quickly, pulling you away from the hole every few minutes to sell them on the computer. I don’t know who is buying them and A Game About Digging A Hole, as we’ve established, isn’t about that, so I won’t be asking questions.

Every dollar I earned went towards the hole. You can buy a better electric shovel, a bigger battery for the shovel, a larger backpack, and a jetpack — for leaving the hole, of course. Like a clicker game, every upgrade just makes you more efficient at digging a hole. And you’ll need those upgrades because digging a really big hole is a lot of work. Once you’re 50 meters deep into the earth, it’s a challenge dropping back down to where you left off without hurting yourself. Thankfully, health care is extremely cheap in the fantasy world of A Game About Digging A Hole and only costs you the price of a few rocks.

If there’s anything A Game About Digging A Hole is missing, it’s a good satisfying sound effect for carving away dirt. I want to hear that Minecraft crunch every time I click. What’s there doesn’t hit the same way, and the drill you get later on just sounds like a vacuum. These are minor issues, however, and the game makes up for them by forcing you out of the hole so frequently that you get the satisfaction of seeing your hole grow. Sometimes I would just stand at the top and look at it, admiring every little detour I made to place a lamp or to uncover treasure. The hole tells a story.

After a few hours, you become a hole god. Dirt is your medium and the hole is your masterpiece. You’re rich on rocks, you’re fully kitted out, and you have nothing to lose. A Game About Digging A Hole only has one secret, and it’s what you find at the bottom. You’ll know it when you see it; the ground will give way to a tunnel and in that tunnel you’ll face a challenge the hole never prepared you for. The trial that awaits isn’t easy, but neither was digging the hole, when you think about it. You started with a single scoop and built a hole empire. Nothing can stop you.

A Game About Digging A Hole was released Feb. 7 on Steam. The game was reviewed on Windows PC using a pre-release download code provided by Cyberwave Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.