A Game About Digging A Hole Together digs into co-op

A Game About Digging A Hole was a small game about doing one thing well: point a drill at the ground and keep going. It went further than anyone expected. On 29 September its developer confirmed what players had been asking for since launch, with a Steam page for A Game About Digging A Hole Together — a sequel that keeps the minimalist digging and adds friends.

The announcement is unusually candid about how it came together. Ben, who built the original in a few weeks as a side project while working on Solarpunk, handed development to Mipumi Games, the studio that handled the console versions of both games. Keeping the accessible core intact while making everything around it bigger meant the original's code, which was never written with a sequel in mind, had to be rebuilt from scratch. That rebuild is what makes proper multiplayer and crossplay possible, and what gives the team a foundation that works across platforms from day one.

What is actually new

Online co-op supports up to four players, with crossplay across platforms. The world is bigger and each run lasts longer, with multiple terrain types instead of one endless stretch of dirt. Tools are split into four categories with more upgrade paths, there is more to find and collect underground, and the whole operation has moved to a beach: a bright, holiday-brochure setting where collected finds can be assembled into a collection back on the sand. Quality-of-life improvements are promised throughout, and digging alone is still on the menu for anyone who would rather not share a hole.

No release date yet

The Steam page is live and lists the release date as to be announced, so the safest reading is that the reveal is the news and the launch window is not. Console versions of the original were Mipumi's work, and the studio's stated goal of a cross-platform foundation points at a simultaneous launch rather than a PC build followed by ports. That is a promise to hold the studio to, not a date to write in a diary.

For anyone who missed the original, the appeal is not complicated. It is a game about the satisfaction of a hole getting deeper, and the sequel's job is to add reasons to keep going without adding the busywork that usually arrives with a bigger budget. Four tools categories, collectibles and a beach hub all point in the same direction: more to do between runs, not more to manage during them.

Our opinion

Handing a hit side project to another studio is the moment these stories usually go wrong, and the fact that Mipumi had already done the console ports is the best argument that this one will not. Rebuilding from scratch is expensive and unglamorous, and it is the honest choice when the alternative is bolting netcode onto code that was never meant to hold it. The beach setting is the detail worth watching: the original worked because the setting was almost nothing, and a brighter, friendlier hub risks turning a game about a single obsession into a game about a checklist.

The bigger question is whether co-op is what the audience actually wanted or just what the loudest part of it asked for. Digging a hole is a solitary, slightly meditative pleasure, and four players shouting over a shared shaft could sand that down. If the team gets it right, the solo mode stays the quiet game people loved and the co-op becomes the version you play on a Friday night, which is a genuinely hard thing to balance. If it gets it wrong, the sequel will be busier, louder and less worth playing than the few-week side project it came out of.