DIG UP Adventure - First Play!

10th September 2023

It's a Sunday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming.

​Digging up stuff can be hard work and quite the chore, unless what you're digging up is precious treasure. In this case it becomes an adventure... A DIG UP Adventure to be precise!

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Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?
Cards: DIG UP Adventure uses only a deck of cards of which there are several types in the game.

• Gemstone cards: These come in 6 player colours and display illustrations of gems on the cards in their respective colour. There are 9 cards in colour numbered 1-9 and 54 in total.

• Player 'favourite' cards: There is one of these in each player colour and they depict a single large gem, this is clearly different to the 1 normal gemstone card. These cards are double-sided and are also important for endgame scoring. 

• Adventure cards: There are 9 types of adventure card. They provide players with special actions when played and quite often are used to hinder opponents.
  Adventure cards have their own unique illustrations. 

• Idol cards: There are 4 of these and the idol they depict is a golden monkey that has one gem each of the 6 player colours. Idol cards are essentially a bit like wild cards.

• Skeleton cards: As the name suggests, these 4 cards all show cadaverous skeletons. As with the idol card, they display all gems in all 6 player colours except that skeletons are bad news!

DIG UP Adventure employs a colourful cartoony art style that depicts a pulpish 1930s era of treasure hunting and well.... adventure.
While gemstone cards have pretty nondescript and functional art, a series of evocative illustrations appear across the adventure cards.
It both looks good and suits the game's lightweight game play.

The game doesn't really make use of iconography, the closest would be the gemstone cards but their information is self-evident. Other than the idol and skeleton cards, all remaining cards relay their actions via text.
Players should have no trouble understanding DIG UP Adventure.

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How's it play?
​Setup
​Deck: As per the rules for player count, it may be required to remove all gemstone cards of 1 or 2 colours, add all other cards into the deck, then shuffle it into a face down deck.
​Players: Give each player a player card matching a colour in the deck. This will the player's 'favourite' colour in the game. This is also public knowledge.
Mines: Next, deal 9 cards face-down to each player. All players should then place them face-down in a 3x3 grid. This grid is 'numbered' 1-9 going from left to right and top to bottom.
Finally each player should flip the centre (position '5') card face-up. This grid will constitute each players personal 'mine'.

A player's mine at game start along with the purple favourite token.

Hand: Now deal 3 cards face-down to each player to form each player's hand.
First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In DIG UP Adventure, each player has the objective of placing face-up gemstone cards in their personal mine. They want to do this by placing gemstones of their particular colour in the 9 spaces numerically from 1-9.
The game uses a traditional turn order with the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
The active player's turn consists of 3 phases.
Play phase: During this phase, the active player may play up to 2 cards from their hand as per the following rules.

• Gemstone card: When a gemstone card is played, it must go into the player's mine on one of the 9 spaces and it replaces the card already there.
  That card is then taken into the active player's hand, if it was face-down, they do not have to reveal it to the other players.
  Where a gemstone card can be placed will depend on it's colour.
  • Favourite colour: A gemstone card that matches the active player's favourite colour can be placed anywhere in their mine's 3x3 grid.
  • Other colours: A gemstone of any other colour must be placed in the space that corresponds to it's number. E.g., if a '4' is played, it must be placed in the '4' spot on the grid, replacing the card already there.
• Idol & skeleton cards: When placed, these cans can replace any card in a mine.
• Adventure: When played, adventure cards should be revealed to all players. Each will have it's effect described in text. Adventure cards may allow the player to swap cards with an opponent or take a card from the discard pile etc.
  Adventure cards are never placed into a player's mine.
  

Discard phase: The active player may discard any number of cards from their hand into the discard pile. If for any reason a player has more than 3 cards in their hand, they must discard down to no more than 3.
Draw phase: The active player draws cards until they have 3 in hand.
Next player: Once the active player has finished their turn, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until any player has flipped the 9th and final card in their mine face-up, in which case the game continues until all players have had equal turns and then goes to scoring.

First any player who had any face-down cards remaining must now flip them to face-up.

Then players total the victory points (VPs) of all cards in their mine. The value, position and colour of gemstone cards in a player's mine will determine how many VPs those cards score according to following criteria.

• Favourite colour: Each gemstone card of the player's favourite colour in it's correct position, (e.g. a '7' in the '7' spot) will earn its player 3VPs
  ​Each gemstone card of the player's favourite colour in a incorrect position in the mine will earn the player 2VPS.
• Other colours: Every gemstone card of any other colour in its the correct position in the mine will earn the player 1VP.
  Each gemstone card of any other colour in any wrong position will earn the player 0VPs.
• Idol: Regardless of its position, each idol card in a player's mine will earn them 2VPs.
• Skeleton: Each skeleton card in any position in a player's mine is worth 0vps.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Despite the game's relative simplicity, I liked DIG UP Adventure thematically. I found the concept of revealing the face-down cards by digging them up quite appealing. The game's art also helped convey the theme of adventuring and treasure hunting too.

DIG UP Adventure is clearly a very light game. When making decisions players have a hand of 3 cards to choose from which can limit their options.

Even more significant is that gemstone cards are all essentially no-brainer decisions: E.g., if a player has a gemstone card of their favourite colour in their hand, it's obvious that it should be placed into their mine.
The same is more-or-less true of cards which would only score 1VP.
Theoretically, a player could keep a scoring card back to stop other players swapping them out with adventure cards but they can be swapped out of a player's hand too and the game can also end quickly: It only takes 8 good card plays to trigger the endgame and players can do 2 per turn, in principle a game could end in 4 rounds!
Players cannot actively place 'bad' cards that score 0 into their mine either (they can only be swapped in through the use of adventure cards) is even more limiting.

Ultimately it means that meaningful decisions come in the form of using adventure cards well - if and when players get them.
​Stealing useful cards from opponents is obviously a good tactic for example, or hitting them with skeletons.
There's also arguably a higher level of play in watching what opponents are doing and denying them useful cards.
Even so, there's still a degree of luck in what and when players get adventure cards.

Players will also need to adapt to what they draw and what gets played against them. While players will be working towards the perfect score which in this case is (9x3) 27VPs, it will be elusive to reach, especially since other players, either by choice or coincidence will be interfering.

For me, DIG UP Adventure was something of a frustrating experience. It's a game which involves a lot of luck and a lot of 'take that' from the adventure cards. A little of both or lot of one is fine but a lot of both just doesn't do it for me.

However, I'm probably overthinking it. I don't think that this is aimed at dedicated gamers.
While I think it could work as a filler, it seems to me with its quick to learn gameplay and easily relatable theme, it feels more like a family game, especially with it's rambunctious 'take that' gameplay that will probably appeal to young players.
One to play with the kids I think.