Dig Dug...the card game

The card game exploding with fun!

What is Dig Dug?

Dig Dug was an arcade video game created by Namco in 1982 based on the adventures of a super digger whose job it was to get rid of monsters underground by inflating them till they explode. Dig Dug (the protagonist) could tread through several layers of dirt using a pump as his main weapon of choice. In addition, boulders trapped underground could be set up to cleverly land on enemies and destroy them as a result. In later levels, fruits giving the player bonus points were unlocked based on a certain merit of completion (achievement). 

The card game created here centers around the gameplay mechanics from Dig Dug and how they may be applied to a 2-4 player interactive card game. Each player is dealt 7 cards to begin and may play kill a monster, pick up a card, and discard a card or hinder another player on their turn. As the game progresses, it is quickly realized that fruit cards, vegetable cards and ghost cards are the key bonuses to getting ahead. With each monster killed, 200 points is added to your total score. Kill a swarm of monsters, and your points simply rack up. While you keep the monsters you have killed, you discard those you choose to run away from. You could always send a ghost toward another player's combat in order to add to their monster count and have them run away with no reward in hand. 

Dig Dug is a great card game which can be played with friends and family for hours upon hours of exploding fun!

Game Time

A game of Dig Dug can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour or even longer depending on the strategy of every player. 

Contents

• 105 Dig Dug Cards in a deck.

Set Up & Rules

• When the game begins, the cards are shuffled and each player is handed 7 cards off the top of the deck.

• The last player to have eaten pineapple goes first. If no one has ever eaten pineapple, the oldest player goes first. Play continues to this player's left from then on. 

• The first player will draw a card face up from the stack for everyone to see. If it is a monster he MUST fight it. If it is not a monster, he places the card in his hand and discards another card of his choosing. 

• On a turn, a player must do all of the following:
  
  - Draw a card from the deck. If it is a monster card, he/she may fight it or run away.- Discard a card to allow a maximum of 7 cards in a hand. (The player may discard       the card previously picked up).- Kill monsters in hand with the appropriate items. Place monster card(s) down and then place appropriate item card(s) to take eliminate monster.
• 
  NOTE: A player must make sure that no other players would like to add on to his monster count (say with a special card such as a fruit or a vegetable) before he kills his monsters. 

• Once a monster/monsters is killed the card is collected by the player (not considered to be part of his deck), and is used to keep track of his/her current score.

•  On the other hand, the item used to defeat the monster is placed in the discard pile.

• Should a player want to effect the current combat of another player, they may claim the card they wish to use when before the targeted player begins combat. The special card is then placed in the discard pile and is out of use.

• If a player lacks the number of items to defeat a monster, he/she may run away causing the monster card(s) to be placed in the discard pile along with any item in use. This will only be the case when a player flips a card off the top of the deck.

• If a player defeats a monster/monsters on his/her turn, he/she must pick up another card from the deck per monster card collected.

Game Overview

A typical playthrough of Dig Dug displays the challenge in balancing out items and monsters in a 7-card hand. Players must choose the special cards to keep wisely and must use them efficiently to hinder players with high scores or gain a competitive advantage over all other players. Dig Dug can be played with friends or family. 

There are a few different types of cards, each with their own special abilities and effects. 

Monster Cards

There are a 2 different types of monsters in Dig Dug, Pookas and Fygars. While Pookas come on in small numbers, they are more common throughout the game. They are also worth less since they come in small numbers. Fygars come in larger numbers and are therefore worth a lot more than Pookas on any one card kill. However, Fygars are much harder to kill and it might require a combination of items to take one card out. 

 

Item Cards

Item cards generally come in 2 forms. There are pump cards (small, medium, large) and boulder cards (small, medium, large, humungous). Pumps typically blow up 1 to 3 enemies at a time depending on the size of the pump. Boulders deal about the same amount of damage per card, except for the humungous boulder which can destroy any number of monsters in one combat move granting the player a huge point advantage. As a result, these cards are quite rare and such instances occur a handful of times during gameplay. 

Special Cards

Certain cards have the power to give players a significant bonus in play or during combat. Cards such as Carrots and Mushrooms add additional monsters to combat while other cards like Pineapples are meant specifically to hinder other players by ending combat there and then without any remorse.

Creative Process

When thinking over what old-school arcade game would be the best to replicate, we were leaning on a lot of the popular ones such as Asteroids or Frogger. We thought over the mechanics of each game and figured that in order to make a card game out of any of these, the rules would be quite similar. However, with Dig Dug, we realized that we could create a unique card game based on individual strategy and gameplay. 

As we fleshed out a solid idea for the cards, we decided to implement all the elements from the game but to alter the manner in which the player interacts with these elements. For example, instead of adding points to your score every time a fruit or vegetable is picked up, these cards can now be collected and saved to give a player a tactical advantage over the rest of the competition. Pumps and boulders are used quite similarly to the manner in which they are implemented within the game while Pookas and Fygars are pretty much replicas of their original selves from the game. 

We had originally given some thought to including the mechanic of Frygars' ability to breathe fire on the player as well as the possibility of a boulder dropping on the player's own head, as in the game. However, the end decision was simply that the game mechanics would be further complex should we have implemented such features. As a result, we decided to leave them out and remain with the game the way it was. 

Another mechanic we had considered was that of passing a monster on to the next player on the left should a player have run away from it. But the problem we faced when attempting to implement this was simply that all other mechanics of our game would not run well should a monster be passed on at the beginning of a turn leaving the player to veer from the rules of each turn should a monster pass into his/her turn. 

Conclusion

For a simple arcade-based card game, I feel we've most certainly accomplished what we had originally set out to do. We created a straight-forward fast-paced game which is fun and entertaining with elements of bonus rewards and sabotage intertwined within a framework of attack verses defense type gameplay.