- Controls
- One D-pad and one Pump button
- Every attack
- Warns you before it lands
- Save file
- Only in your browser
Two minutes underground
A little dirt, a lot of trouble
JustDig is a small arcade game about a board of dirt. You dig your own tunnels through it. Critters live in the tunnels that are already there, and they follow the paths you open. You can pop them with a hand pump, or you can dig under a rock and let gravity do the work.
If you played arcade games in the early 1980s, the shape will feel familiar. The characters, the art and the rules for each critter are new. The game was built to answer one question: how far can one shovel and one button go if every enemy plays fair?
Playing fair means every attack has a warning. A critter never hurts you without first showing you what it is about to do and where.
Who lives down there
Four characters share the board, and only one of them brought a shovel. Tap a move on any card to see it play. These are the same 32-pixel sprite strips the game uses, blown up four times.
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The Digger
YouYellow helmet, headlamp, one shovel and one hand pump. Digs one cell at a time and never turns halfway through a step, which feels polite right up until a Nib is behind you.
- Lives 3
- Pump reach 2 open cells
- Puffs to pop 3
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Nib
The biterA pink burrower with one antenna and big opinions about your ankles. It follows the tunnels you open, then chatters its teeth for a moment before it bites. That chatter is your cue.
- First seen wave 1
- Warning 0.4 s
- Worth 100 popped
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Puffin
The fire-breatherRound, green and beaked. It takes a long, rising breath, glows, and blasts it straight down the tunnel. The lane is marked before it fires, and a fresh tunnel or a rock in the way can stop it cold.
- First seen wave 3
- Warning 0.9 s
- Range up to 4 cells
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Mottle
The shortcutA lumpy purple burrower that thinks walls are a suggestion. It dives into solid dirt and comes up on the other side. The ground cracks first and a pink ring marks the landing spot. Step out of the ring.
- First seen wave 5
- Warning 1 s
- Moves through solid dirt
The supporting cast
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The Rock
Sits still until you dig out the cell beneath it. Then it shakes for just over a second, drops one cell at a time and flattens every critter on the way down. 200 points, plus 100 for each extra critter under it.
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The Gem
Worth 50 and a little ding. Grab another within two and a half seconds and the ding climbs higher, so a good route sounds like a scale.
The closet
The digger has four outfits. They only change color, and each one is earned on the board.
- AquaReady on day one
- EmberYour first rock kill
- OrchidReach wave 5
- StarlightScore 5,000
Three caves, one long way down
Every three waves the board drops into a new cave. After the Mooncake Depths it starts over in the garden, a little busier each lap.
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Waves 1 to 3Garden Crumbs Just under the lawn. Roots hang from the ceiling, mushrooms crowd the corners and the soil is a soft red-brown. The first wave always uses the same board, so you can learn it.
- Dirt
- Red clay crumbs
- Listen for
- Dripping soil
- Who's home
- Nibs, and the first Puffin on wave 3
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Waves 4 to 6Soda Caves Deeper, pinker and carbonated. Bubbles rise along the walls and crystals poke out of the rock. Digging here sounds a little higher, and every pop comes with a fizz.
- Dirt
- Raspberry rock
- Listen for
- Fizz
- Who's home
- Nibs and Puffins, and Mottle shows up on wave 5
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Waves 7 to 9Mooncake Depths The bottom of the map, and the sweetest-looking place to get bitten. Golden dirt, crescent moons and purple crystals. Digging drops to a lower crunch, and the whole crew is out at once.
- Dirt
- Golden mooncake crust
- Listen for
- A warm, deep cave hum
- Who's home
- Everyone: Nibs, Puffins and Mottles together
Three critters, three warnings
| Critter | What it does | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Nib | A pink burrower that chases you through open tunnels and bites when it gets next to you. | It winds up for a split second before the bite. Pump it first or step away. |
| Puffin | A round, beaked critter that gathers glowing breath and blasts it down a straight tunnel, up to four cells long. | The breath gathers for about a second and its lane is marked. Turn a corner. |
| Mottle | A burrower that ignores your tunnels. It dives into the dirt and comes up on the other side of a wall. | The dirt cracks first and a pink ring marks where it will land. Get out of the ring. |
The waves get busier, but the board never piles on. Only a few critters can be out at once. The rest wait their turn and arrive with a warning, never closer than five cells from you. If you go half a minute without digging, collecting or popping anything, the ground opens a fresh tunnel toward the nearest critter so the round keeps moving.
How to play
- Dig. Hold a direction on the D-pad, the arrow keys or WASD. Each step through dirt takes a moment and finishes before you can turn.
- Pump. Face a critter within two open cells and hold Pump or Space. Three puffs and it pops. Let go early and it shrinks back down.
- Drop a rock. Dig out the cell under a rock. It shakes as a warning, then falls straight down. One rock can flatten several critters, and each extra one is worth more.
- Watch the warnings. Turn a corner on a Puffin. Leave the pink ring when a Mottle cracks the dirt.
- Clear the wave. Pop or crush every critter and the next wave starts by itself. Gems add points. You have three lives.
Every three waves the board moves deeper: from the Garden Crumbs to the Soda Caves to the Mooncake Depths. After the first wave, each wave picks one of six tunnel layouts and may flip it left to right. A run is built from a seed, so Retry same seed gives you the same boards again.
Settings worth knowing: a Relaxed pace with slower critters and longer warnings (it keeps its own records), left-handed controls, reduced effects, and separate switches for sound, music and atmosphere. Turning the phone pauses the game. Your run saves itself every few seconds.
Points and outfits
A popped critter is worth 100. A crushed one is worth 200, plus 100 for every extra critter under the same rock. Gems are 50 and a cleared wave is 250. The game keeps your best score and deepest wave for each pace.
Three outfits unlock along the way. Ember comes from your first rock kill, Orchid from reaching wave 5 and Starlight from scoring 5,000. They only change color. Nobody gets stronger by shopping.
Five screens
How it sounds
Every warning has a sound as well as a look, so you can play by ear. A Nib chatters its teeth before it bites. A Puffin draws a rising breath before it blasts. The dirt crunches and grinds before a Mottle comes up, and a loose rock grinds before it drops. Close your eyes and you can still tell which critter is about to move.
The pump is a balloon gag. Each puff pitches up a step, the critter squeaks on the second one, and the third ends in a pop. Rocks land with a heavy thud and a cartoon squish. Gems ring higher when you grab several in a row. Sounds lean left or right with the critter's place on the board, and the three caves each have their own bed: dripping garden soil, fizzing soda and a warm, deep cave hum. When something big happens, like a hit or a cleared wave, the background dips so you hear it.
The effects come from the Adobe Audition sound effects library. Each one was trimmed, level-matched and saved as a small MP3, about 1.3 MB for the whole set. If a sound fails to load, a simple synth tone plays in its place.
Four little characters, one strip of frames each
The digger, Nib, Puffin and Mottle are 32-pixel sprites. Each one has a strip of frames for every action and every direction it faces. The digger walks, digs, pumps, gets hurt, celebrates and gets knocked out. The critters walk, wind up, attack, puff up in three stages, recover and pop. Mottle also burrows.
You can watch every frame in motion while you play: pick a motion and a direction, and the game steps through the strip at up to six times size.
The concept art and the three painted cave backdrops started as AI-generated images. The game sprites were then drawn and animated pixel by pixel.
Your dig stays with you
There's no account, no tracker and nothing loaded from anyone else. The sounds ship with the game as small MP3 files. Your run, records, outfits and settings live in this browser's localStorage. If storage is blocked, the game says so and keeps the run for this session.
Build notes
Read the October 16 Advisory Hour post about the arcade inspiration, the pump, and the trailer.
A start-up loader checks every file first, a few at a time, and retries server hiccups. It shows a strip of dirt being dug as the files arrive. Every file is stamped with a build code made from its contents, so a phone never mixes an old cached file with a new one. If something still goes wrong, it names the file and offers to reset the app cache.
The rules run as a plain simulation, 60 steps a second, with no drawing code inside it. Three.js draws the result as flat sprites. That split makes testing easy. A pump bot, a descendant of MazeFall's Roomba harness, plays through the real rules. It looks one move ahead, pumps what it can reach and avoids what it can see coming. In a run of 40 seeds it cleared all ten waves of every one, with no stuck boards and a typical wave lasting about 13 seconds.
Read the design notes and the changelog.