French indie survival title Dig or Die prepares to leave Early Access on July 10 with a GIANT list of features

Dig or Die, a survival game in the vein of Terraria and Starbound, has been in development for three years. Through constant iteration and a strong focus on implementing community feedback, the game has managed a 91% positive rating on Steam, with over 160,000 units sold. Now, Gaddy Games, the French development team behind Dig or Die, have announced that the project will be moving out of Early Access on July 10.

According to the press release, “As employee of CRAFT & Co., a space exploration agency, your latest contract has gone awry and you find yourself stranded on a distant planet. Your objective is to establish a base and accumulate resources in order to build a spaceship and find your way back home. When the daylight fades, however, you’ll have to fight back massive hordes of monsters who just like you, don’t take kindly to unwanted intruders. You will build your defenses, create barricades and turrets to protect yourself against your opponents.”

The list of Early Access features is robust, to say the least. I never do this, but I’m afraid I have to put some of this “under the jump” or “past the leap” or whatever you want to call it. Click the thing to see the features:

- Engaging gameplay:

• Fun from the start: no awfully slow digging, so you can concentrate on the exploration, fights and strategy.
• Game's final objective: you must build a rocket ship to escape the planet.
• Strategy survival: the game is a survival game in a strategic meaning. No hunger needs, the whole point of the game is to survive to the massive attacks each night. And to do that, you will have to explore the world to gather resources and craft your defenses.

- Dynamic Fights:

• No swords, magic or flying clown monsters here! It's a consistent science-fiction world, with fast and fun laser guns fights!
• Intelligent monsters: they will find the best path to attack your defenses. And be careful: even if they can't move through walls, they can still destroy them!
• Difficulty progression: only the species of monsters you have already killed before attack during the night (they must have taken ill!). So you can progress at your own pace and choose when you are ready to move forward and fight stronger monsters.
• AI companion: your crashed ship contains an AI that survived and will give you useful advices (or not!). Build him a drone so he can follow you and even help you fight the monsters!

- World Simulation:

• Massive world with global real-time simulation of the environment, physics, water cycle and lighting.
• Electricity: build solar panels or functional hydroelectric generators to power your base’s most advanced items!
• Plants simulation: plants naturally grow and spread if their life-conditions are met. Create some farms with artificial sun lamps and irrigation.
• Procedurally generated world: Major areas locations are specific to benefit from a logical game progression, but detailed layout of surface, caverns, ores, etc. are unique at each playthrough.

- Crafting and Building:

• Crafting: You dig minerals, harvest plants and kill some monsters and bosses in order to craft better items and defenses. But the digging is really fast, your inventory space is infinite and all crafting recipes are displayed, so you don’t waste all your time on grinding or wikis and can concentrate on setting up better defenses.
• Base construction: You build a fortress, not a holiday house. So you won't find hundreds of flowerpots or tapestries, but rather turrets, strong walls and useful machines. Remember the Starship Troopers or Aliens movies atmosphere!

But wait…there’s more! The launch version will receive a massive update on July 10 with the following new features:

- 3 new game modes:

• Under the Sea

Players start in a cave located under a huge ocean of 300 blocks high, with a huge water pressure. Ideal for exploring a new world full of surprises, and / or having fun with the water physics engine.

• Sky World

A world composed of hundreds of flying islands, procedurally generated, offering high replayability value.

• Base Defense

 This is a tower defense inspired mode. No exploration here, players only build a base and defend it against the successive waves of attacks.

- Random Events:

Random events trigger about 1 time a day and add variety and surprises to the game

* Heat Wave: no rain, fast evaporation, some plants spontaneously burn.

* Rain Flood: massive rain flood.

* Meteor Shower: meteor falling from the sky and destroying everything... have fun!

* Volcano eruptions.

* Earthquake: increases all structures' weight.

* Restless Night: more monsters (occurs only at night).

* Quiet Night: no monsters (occurs only at night).

* Gravitational Waves: a very rare stars alignment lowers the gravity (jump higher, buildings stronger).

* Acidic Water: water and rain turns into acid (green color, and damage to players).

* Drowsiness: all monsters move slowly.

* Mating Season: monsters aggro distance is increased a lot, and they move fast.

* Lucky Day: monsters drop every time. Crital hit for players at every shot.

* Sun Eclipse: instant night during the day (with monsters attacks).

* Mist: lights range are reduced, day darker, screen is grayed out.

* Electromagnetic disturbances: electric system shuts down.

* Sharkstorm: combination of Flood + raining sharks :-)

- Soundtrack: 9 new tracks

Dig or Die will be released on Steam for $11.99 on July 10, 2018.