Add to this their rapid vertical movement and you have a miners best transportation friend.

To refresh you people on what this is, and to inform newcomers, this column is where I fully review and critique games from the XNA Community that appear on the Xbox Live Game Marketplaces Indie Games area, and I try to find titles that truly shine within the lot of almost nine hundred games the listing has currently.

Granted theres a ton of other review sites and such that also do this, but more publicity cant hurt, can it.

Unintentional rhyming aside, the title and the game fit considering the relation they have: Gems, and mining.

Despite seeing how popular it was on the Indie Games listing, I was curious and confused: How does one make a game about mining that popular That addictive That good How about if the game has the same addictive elements of a game like Harvest Moon, but you eschew the farming elements and instead incorporate a gigantic randomly generated mine.

Needless to say, this fully worked on me as I feverishly dove through the mine time and again to dig as far as I could and grab whatever minerals and ores I could get my grubby little paws on.

The world above the mine is sparse, populated by a few trees, your miners tent that functions as a save point, and the store.

The store contains everything you need: Tools and tool upgrades, kerosene and gasoline refills, and consumable ladders and elevators, the latter at two different kinds of depths.

Everything you need to become a filthy rich person by digging through dirt.

The entire underground of the mine looks like a giant dirt pit that had me flashing back to games like Dig Dug, and the digging portions of Super Mario Bros.

USA, not The Lost Levels).

However, thats all you see unless portions of dirt are within the radius of your kerosene lantern.

When inside that view radius, the dirt is uncovered as it were, and youre able to see whether a block has gems, ore, or if its a large rock youre digging under thats ready to come falling down and crush you.

In fact, the only negative effect of being killed, whether it be falling from a great height or being crushed to death by a boulder, is that youre teleported back to the Store and your bag of materials is emptied.

But it does sting when you need the money and everything you just dug up is gone without a trace.

This happened to me several times, and I swore profusely at my lost progress.

See, the kerosene lamp runs on consumable kerosene, thus giving your radius of dirt identification a time limit.

For a good reason this was done, no doubt, otherwise people wouldnt leave the mine until they had a full bag every time, but the concept wore on me late game when I dove down over a thousand depth and a fraction of my lanterns bar was already gone.

In Harvest Moon, the player can customize their fields and crop area however they want, usually with maximum gain for an intent.

In Miner Dig Deep, this concept remains the same with the inclusion of the elevators and ladders.

Granted, I barely ever used the ladders since once you buy the Hookshot, the ladders are useless, but the elevators were invaluable.

Designed for a 30-depth and a 100-depth length, these two items would be placed on a square next to the miner.

Then, they would proceed to dig straight down for their length, cutting through anything in the way.

Miner Dig Deep Music