Collection Digger

Digger is one of those games that a whole generation of DOS users played on a monitor in a school or an office, usually when they shouldn't have been. You dig tunnels through dirt, collect emeralds, drop bags of gold on pursuers, and try not to get cornered.

The design is pure arcade logic imported to a home computer. There's no story and no ending - only escalating speed and the constant tension of digging yourself into a dead end. The maze is destructible, so every mistake is permanent and geometry becomes your real enemy.

Dropping gold bags on the creatures chasing you is the mechanic everyone remembers. It requires you to run past danger deliberately in order to set up the kill, which is a lovely bit of risk design for a game from 1983.

The CGA colour palette - those specific cyans and magentas - is inseparable from the memory of it.

This collection covers the digger, the emeralds and the pursuers in their original pixel style.