Dig For Riches Review

An Old West Mine With a Surprisingly Deep Toolbox

Dig For Riches casts the player as a prospector descending into a randomly generated underground mine, breaking crystals and hauling loot back to the surface to sell, upgrade, and dig deeper. On paper the loop is simple: swing a pickaxe to clear rock, use a shovel to widen tunnels, load a wheelbarrow with whatever turns up, and cart it back to a trading post for coins and gems. Underneath that simplicity, though, the game layers on a genuinely wide set of systems: an energy meter that limits how long a digging session can last before requiring a trip home, a bench-press minigame that permanently raises that energy cap, radiation zones that punish lingering too long with health loss, a purchasable map to scout danger and plan routes, a lighting system that can be upgraded for longer and wider illumination, a decoration system that raises the resale value of everything sold, a Sheriff NPC handing out delivery missions, and a phone that lets items be sold remotely without a trip back to town. Developed and published by the small studio OxygenStudio, Dig For Riches entered Steam Early Access in early 2026 following a public demo, priced at $7.99 with a launch discount currently bringing it to $6.79, and reached its most recent major update in March 2026 with further mining-mechanic reworks.

A Genuinely Mixed, Actively Reviewed Early Access Title

Dig For Riches has drawn 36 reviews, with 25 positive and 11 negative for a 69% approval rating, a real, actively engaged pool spanning English, German, Simplified Chinese, Russian, French, and Danish. The mix is a fairly even split between players charmed by the core digging loop and its surprisingly deep system stack, and players frustrated by how quickly that content runs out or by specific bugs and balance issues still unresolved this deep into Early Access.

A Satisfying Core Loop With Real System Depth Underneath

The strongest praise, echoed across several languages, is for how good the basic act of digging feels moment to moment. One English-language reviewer calls breaking crystals and watching money pop out "weirdly satisfying," while a German reviewer says the game "packed" them more than expected and became genuinely addictive once the wheelbarrow was upgraded past its initially tiring starting capacity. A detailed Simplified Chinese review lays out the system stack in full: pickaxe and shovel upgrades that improve efficiency and drop rates, a wheelbarrow expansion system that caps single-run profit, an energy system that forces route planning, high-risk radiation zones for bigger payouts, a permanent energy-cap upgrade through the bench press, a map system for planning descents, a remote-sell phone feature, a decoration system that raises item resale value, and Sheriff-issued side missions, concluding that none of it feels redundant and that the design avoids the content-hollowness common to early-stage Early Access releases. A French reviewer calls it "très cool et chill," suggesting the developers lean further into the variety by adding animal encounters to the mine. Multiple reviewers who followed the game from its public demo through to the full Early Access build say the update cadence has visibly improved the experience patch over patch.

Anachronistic Loot, Thin Content, and Real Bugs

The negative side of the pool is just as specific. Several reviewers flag a tonal mismatch at the heart of the premise: a mining game set in what reads as an alternate Old West turns up modern and WWII-era weapons as loot almost immediately, which multiple English and German reviewers found jarring enough to undercut the setting entirely. A more serious complaint concerns length and pacing: multiple reviewers say the game can be fully upgraded and effectively "finished" in under two hours, with one German reviewer specifically noting a starting debt of one million paid off that quickly, and asking where the actual gameplay is supposed to come from after that point. Two separate reviewers, including one who explicitly says the game's screenshots "scream AI," raise concerns about the visual asset quality and pickaxe upgrades that increase money-per-hit rather than reducing the number of hits needed, calling the progression math confusing. Others report concrete bugs: achievements tied to early-game-only resources becoming permanently unobtainable once past a certain point, a save-and-reload bug that drops the player back in the middle of a run while inventory and progress persist inconsistently, dynamite clipping through floors and walls, and a wheelbarrow exploit that lets upgraded suction pull unmined loot straight out of dirt mounds without any digging at all. A Danish reviewer also notes a specific mismatch between the store page's described "lamp" upgrade and the candles actually implemented in-game. None of these amount to a broken game, but they're concrete, reproducible issues a $7.99 Early Access purchase should reasonably expect to be further along in resolving.

Verdict

Dig For Riches is a mining sim whose core loop, breaking rock, hauling loot, upgrading tools, genuinely lands for a meaningful share of its players, and whose system list, energy management, radiation risk, a bench-press progression track, remote selling, decoration-driven pricing, is more ambitious than the genre's crowded field of digging games usually bothers with. Its 69% approval across 36 actively engaged, multilingual reviews reflects a real split rather than either universal acclaim or dismissal: the digging itself works, but the content built around it currently runs out fast, the Old West setting's modern loot undercuts its own theming, and a handful of concrete bugs around achievements, save states, and an exploitable wheelbarrow suction mechanic remain unresolved. For players specifically drawn to mining sims who don't mind a short, still-evolving Early Access build, there's a genuinely satisfying core here; anyone expecting a complete, polished package for the asking price should wait for a few more of the promised updates to land first.