Digger

Overview

Dig the supporting dirt from beneath a stone and it does not fall on the same beat you dig — it hangs for one tick, marks where it wants to land, and only then comes down, and that one-frame delay is the whole game: the window in which you step aside, or in which a chasing ghost wanders under the stone and gets crushed for it. Digger is Lutz Roeder's HTML5 canvas take on the classic grid-dig arcade formula, written in plain JavaScript and playable in any modern browser. Each room is a twenty-by-fourteen tile grid of loose earth scattered with diamonds, pushable stones, and a handful of ghosts that patrol on a fixed turn-left rule. Your job is to tunnel through the dirt, scoop up enough diamonds to unlock the exit, and reach that exit before the room timer hits zero. What sets it apart is how much the physics do the work: stones roll off one another onto open diagonals, a stone landing on the converter tile turns into a bonus diamond, and every falling stone is equally lethal to a ghost (ninety-nine points) and to you. It appeals to players who like routing puzzles layered onto reflexes — reading the board, deciding which wall of earth to breach, and timing a crush instead of simply running.

How to Play

The goal of each room is to collect the diamond quota shown in the HUD, then step onto the exit tile; collecting beyond the quota just banks extra points at three points a gem. Move and dig with the four arrow keys — any tile of loose earth you walk into is carved away, while solid wall blocks you entirely. ESC restarts the current room and spends one of your twenty lives, Delete or Home skips ahead to the next room, and on touch screens a swipe in any direction digs and moves while a three-finger tap restarts. Stones can be shoved sideways with a deliberate two-press nudge when the cell beyond them is clear, and anything that falls resolves on the next tick, so you always have one frame to get clear of the drop.

Tips & Strategy

The richest score in the game is a crush, not a gem: tunnel under a stone so it is left hanging, then let a patrolling ghost walk beneath before you step clear, and that single drop is worth ninety-nine points — over thirty times a plain diamond. Remember the ghost AI always turns left when it hits an obstacle, so you can predict its loop and plant a falling stone on the corner it must pass. Treat the timer as the real enemy in tight rooms: if you are one diamond short with seconds left, the cheaper move is ESC and a fresh attempt from a twenty-life budget rather than a doomed sprint into a dead end. Never stand directly below a stone that has nothing beneath it, and when two stones are stacked, expect the top one to roll off onto any open diagonal the instant you carve the earth beside it. Pushing a stone is a deliberate two-input nudge, so use it to reroute the maze rather than to flee — once gravity has a stone, you escape by stepping clear, never by shoving.