Thanks for watching! I'm both happy to be reviewing another obscure old game, as well as sort of annoyed, since this game took far too long to beat considering how... sub-par.... it is. Nonetheless, this video deserved to be made as there are really no extensive reviews of this game anywhere on the internet, especially not in English. So, here it is, Diggles! Any other obscure early 2000s games that you think deserve a review and deep dive like this? Let me know, and maybe one day I'll review it! Subscribe: ua-cam.com/channels/-nI.html... Buy me a Coffee: ko-fi.com/jauwn Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Jauwnio Join our Discord!: discord.gg/Y8VhXPpunX
Somehow you keep making me wanna play these games... Here's kinda an obscure game: Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir I played the latest version on a ps3 emulator and really enjoyed it though. It's a side scrolling type like hollow Knight
Some suggestions of weird games I barely remember from that time period: Krazy Ivan: a game where you play as a Russian mecha pilot, fighting aliens. it was fairly short and easy, but had a weird vibe to it throughout. Some of the enemy designs were quite surreal, and some of the powerups would change the game's colors in weird ways. Extreme Tactics: a pretty janky RTS game which had the main gimmick, interesting for the time, of being able to design your own units by slotting parts together. You played as a race of bird people aliens, with FMV cutscenes between missions. One thing I distinctly remember is that, in one of the cutscenes, the janky CGI made it look like your birdman commander was briefing you while having a massive boner. The Reap: A shmup where you played as part of an alien invasion conquering humanity. It had a weird (but cool) artstyle where the whole game looked like pre-rendered FMV. The first boss was a giant spaceship with an equally giant buzzsaw on the front, which I thought was awesome as a kid.
@@jauwnFascinating! I wonder what the precedents are of trying to rewrite video games... I thought "maybe somebody would try to re write stuff in here" but without arrays damn no wonder it's buggy
It was popular for whatever reason during my university years (2006). People were amazed how stupid it was, how vast was research tree and how meditating it was, plus at that time they have all the time in the world to play it. They usually just got high or drunk and played it for hours. I never got past second level and NONE of people I know have beaten Fenrir - I think that it was about 10-15 of us who played it at that time. A single person got to the lava level and just gave up, while most wasted their time on levels 2-3 for ages. Hoverboards were cool, man, and people usualy just wanted to develop to them and teleporters. If there was info that there's heavily pixilated mammaries in the end and fairy wearin dominatrix-like outfit I swear more people would've beaten it :D
This game, I bought on release on CD-Rom. Over the years as tech advanced, I wasn't able to play it any longer. I actually tracked down a dev, and he wrote a patch to fix a crashing issue with modern graphics cards and sent it to me. I was able to play again after years! Now I have a PC that has no CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive and from this video learned it's on Steam! THANK YOU SO MUCH JAUWN! This has been one of my all time favorite games ever. I really appreciate what you made here. I am beyond happy. I still have the CD and the patch from the former dev to make it work! But knowing it's on Steam and I can play it again just planted a smile on my face.
I knew that the kind of spirit that says "let's actually try and play NFT games like they were real games" was an adventurous one. This is great stuff! I'm glad to see another person willing to deep dive into strange games that people may have missed. There's so much out there.
That weed-smoking baby was EVERYWHERE in german magazines. It was super iconic - and that game was actually received very well. Germans just love manager games.
The interesting thing is, since it was officially licensed and localized on Russia, the game actually gained some sort of a cult following there. I remember the picture of a baby smoking a joint was literary everywhere as a meme, PC geek guys (and the majority of gamers played on PC at that time) just looked at this and went "this pic goes HARD gonna share it with my friends and use it as an avatar". I think many people didn't even know the source. Then again, maybe it was a fan art or a coincidence, but it was very similar to the art style of the game box, and the game featured such a scene. I'm trying to remember obscure games I want you to cover, but for now I keep thinking only about this weird game I stumbled upon recently D.I.R.T.: Origin of the Species. It's probably terrible, but the obscurity of it and the general vibe of the lost epoch is interesting.
There is some interesting share between east and west europe. Was quite the surprise to me to hear how popular Gothic is in Poland. But then, we have Bohemia, CD Project Red, Techland, GSC, Haemimont, Flying Wild Hog, CBE, Warhorse, etc...
i freaking love old pc games like this. you know. when a "pc game" used not to be defined by genre. and even a game within the genre. is not following any sort of guidelines and stuff. it hard to find games that are too similar within the same genre.
That's a wonderful way of putting it. Back in those days, everyone was still trying to figure it out. There were no game engines, tutorials, or even really any standards for quality. Thus yielded some of the absolute strangest games
@@Kenionatus i never realized it's as old as DF. to be fair. even if it's a colony sim. the game itself is still different. it's kind of RTS mix with colony sim. more adjacent to dungeon keeper.
I followed an italian youtuber that reviewed trash italian games. Sadly only few were origin, all the other were originals, the majority are stolen codes from East Europe games
Watching this I was stunned at how many diggles you've had by the end of the first world already, and look at all those frozen ones at the end of the third world! I first started playing the game somewhere in 2006/2007 as it was included on gaming magazine CD then replayed it immediately when it released on Steam and I enjoyed my time with it. The most important thing about the jankiness and managing those little guys is that the more diggles you have - the less likely it will be that they perform the task to the end. I found out that for the best results in the campaign you should get as much done with the first 5 guys you start with. Micro-manage the hell out of them and make them become masters at certain professions ( digging, combat and cooking mostly ). You can prevent population growth by simply setting the working hours of the given pair to conflicting ones so they will never have free time to "do it". Then when you actually have some competent personel, go to the second world and only allow for sexy-time when you feel like an extra pair of hands are necessary. The main reason for diggles not doing the tasks ordered is that someone in that particular task's workchain ran-out of working hours and went to sleep, leaving the game's task manager confused as to who should continue with the task - kinda like real life sometimes. The needs of the diggles will increase with each generation so while the first may be hard working masters of their craft - by the fifth gen. you will end up with guys who have great potential but get bored quickly or straight out get depression because they hadn't had time to talk with their boy/girl-friend that one time. Besides that I don't know what's with all the crashes you've experienced. I didn't use any speed hacks and only experienced a single crash during my whole playthrough. That includes multiple-hour sessions in the free-game "skirmish" gamemode. It really is a leisurely time with the diggles. It's more about planning out and executing those plan's in the long term rather than an engaging gameplay in the modern sense. Maybe someone finds this info usefull.
Oh I cheated to get all the frozen diggles haha. All footage after the beginning of the Crystal world is after I gave up 20 hours in and started spawning diggles like a maniac. I have no idea why I got so many crashes either. Others didn’t report as many as I did, I can only assume that after using turbo mode once it permanently corrupted my game and made it crash even when I wasn’t actively using it. If I start a new save and never use turbo at all, it works fine
The way production chains are done reminds me of classic settlers. You want bread for your soldiers? you need a bakery. But the bakery needs flour and water. Flour comes from the mill, but it needs access to grains. The grains come from a farm. But it's not always a 1:1 ratio. Two mills can supply three bakeries, but a mill needs two farms to keep going. And you can't just use all your little guys as specialists. You need to keep some "unemployed", because those not designated to a profession are there to carry stuff around. And you need warehouses, since they won't bring stuff from one production to another, but bring them to a warehouse first, and then bring them from the warehouse to the next stop in the chain. And the farmer needs a hoe. Which has to be produced in a forge. But the forge needs iron and coal. And the miners need tools as well. And food. But iron miners and coal miners eat different things from each other and from the soldiers. So you need a hunter and a fisher. Who again need tools. And they need places where they work. Which requires stone and wood. Stone comes from yet another mine. And wood comes form a forest. The trees are felled, then cut into boards. Those are different steps that happen at different facilities. Oh, did I mention that the woodcutter and the carpenter also need tools? And that is just to have a steady food supply for the soldiers. But soldiers also need swords and armor...
i love how old games are textured, like the spiderwick game with grungy over realistic textures to flat simple models and i wish it was used more in modern games for no reason at all its just pretty
I'm surprised how well this game from 2001 was re-purposed for 1080p without it looking broken. The crispiness in the polygons and textures makes it more charming.
This may sound odd, but I do appreciate that they released the game with the original bugs intact. Gaming history is getting harder to preserve as time and technology marches on, and we can learn a lot from old games by looking at their flaws as much as their strengths, even moreso in some cases. Just look at the Diggles modding community, or really any modding community- these are people who could see that this game had a lot of unique and interesting potential despite its many technical issues, and were inspired to learn how to take the game apart and put it back together, by themselves or as a team. That sort of creative drive can lead to folks learning new skills and even going on to make their own games. Heck, you yourself learned some german just by using the cheat engine. To use a dwarf-ish sounding phrase, sometimes you gotta dig through a lot of mud to find gold. That said, I would be interested in seeing some kind of remastered version of Diggles, or something inspired by it.
I agree, we cannot pretend that bugs do not exist, we are often blinded by nostalgia, pretending bugs are something only new games do and that the jankiness is a result of lazy developers when in fact games always had jank and bugs on account that literally creating a virtual world is tough ! Also if you would like some similar games, as in the 2d sidescrolling colony sim , I would wholeheartly recommend Craft the World, Oxygen not included , Ratopia , and Hammerting (though it seems to have some more mixed reviews) .
@@thewallachianbard6975 yeah a lot of times I see "back in the day games released complete" bullcrap. Patches were hard to deliver so you'd get stuck with half the spells not working in original Final Fantasy or tons of content cut from Fallout 2... Daggerfall shipped with game breaking bugs.
Ah yes, getting game breaking bugs is part of the experience. IF COURSE You know, the OG version is still archived, it's not like it's lost. Selling with with bugs and all is simply a trap for consumers
wow this is bringing back memories! I remember playing this as a kid after school. I enjoyed how slow it is at times, mostly because that made it perfect to play while doing boring math homework. I also really liked the humor, maybe it was hard to translate. That's definitely been the case with some other German games that I played in German and then watched a Let's Play in English. But yeah anyone checking the game out now needs to use mods and fixes! Some of the errors REALLY suck and make you loose a lot of progress. Never actually finished the game because of that
I knew some people out there would have played this game! I do have a pretty sizeable German audience, and everyone knows early 2000s German games are some of the best / weirdest (ahem...Gothic anyone?). Very happy to have covered it!
I live in Finland and I have some good memories of playing the game as a kid. I never remember having many crashes with the game but I had a high tolerance for bugs in games back then 😅 really glad it was covered here though!
neither did i and i played vangers and space rangers thats even more obscure even black and white is memorable but how did this game passed the radar and i sometimes hear of dungeon keeper
I am from Czech Republic which shares borders with germany and Wiggles is along side games like Settlers IV, Gothic 2 & 3, Cultures 2: Gates of Asgard or State of War are hidden gems. I remember being like 8 years old and asked my father to read the name Wiggle for me and he called it "Rody trpaslíků" (Dwarven dynasties) which was completely off but hey, younger me just wanted to play this game... And then the soundtrack scared the shit out of me so I never touched that game again during that time. (It was fully dubbed and translated to czech btw) Until cca 2020 during lockdown I came across picture of dwarfling fliping a bird and holding bomb behind his back. Wave of nostalgia came over me so I googled. Came across name Wiggles and... Some random 'stralian show? What the hell? Then it released on steam and man, best dark fantasy soundtrack sofar along side hustle of a game but worth it in my eyes.
So many German games had a professional Czech dub back then. Nowadays not even KC:D, a Czech game, has one. It's understandable since game distribution is much easier nowadays and English has become a de facto lingua franca, but it's a pity nonetheless.
I'm from Germany and i thought him calling it "Diggles" was some sort of joke. Never knew about the different name before. Another favourite game of this era was "Die Rache der Sumpfühner" (the wrath of the swamp chickens), i wonder if this game was ever exported. It was a Moorhuhn clone with some changes and features.
If someone came out with a cleaned up, working out of the box version of this I might give it a shot. Looks kinda neat in a nightmare inducing kind of way.
I'm kind of in love with the idea of a game that is so organically terrible that it pushes it's players down breadcrumb trails to it's code and encourages them to fix it themselves That's an insanely engaging idea I bet someone's gonna run with someday
Imagine a puzzle game with a built-in scripting language which the player can alter. So the goal of the game is to rewrite the scripts of entities in the world to make them do what you want to finish the goal of each level. You have to fix bugs and add new functionality to succeed.
Man did I spend a good chunk of my childhood on this game. I remember when Oxygen Not Included came out my first thought was "hey it's kinda like a 2D Diggles 😅 Also thankfully my nostalgia overrides any bugs
It's around the same era as Black & White, feels and plays like it and has the same graphics style. Overall it's a unique game from the time when making unique games was considered a good idea. Kinda miss these times especially because I didn't have my own PC back then.
I played the game as a Kid, I loved it for the atmosphere and in my version it was possible to make time go 4 times faster with hotkeys. That helped a lot, but I hadn't advanced past sulfur world. Several years ago I've reinstalled the game (without knowing there are QoL mods) and was able to almost reach lava level. I've stopped in the crystal world and I don;t remember why. The key to manage the game turned out to be: - keep your population in check, not larger than 16-20 citizens. The weakest have to be expelled form the tribe. - don't bother with the tech tree. Get the most important upgrades (backpack, healing potions, storage shelf) and live with a campfire and basic utilities. No need to dig huge caves either. - Dig to explore. A lot. No point in researching weapons if you can find those weapons in some random cave. And the knowledge books are mandatory. with that my small dwarf clan was able to blast through first 2 levels at a record pace (still took hours) Thanks for showing how the game ends! Now I wonder would my gameplay style be enough to fight the evil fairy. I think I need to give this game one more chance.
Before I started using the console to spawn in food this was how I played, pretty much. Barely using more than the basic upgrades is the easiest way to be able to pack everything up and move it constantly while still being able to keep up with the ever increasing demands.
This reminds me a lot of Lego Rock Raiders from around the same time. I'd always get angry at how bad the AI was in that game, but those little Lego guys are brainiacs compared to the Diggles. Fun concept but way too slow and frustrating.
Yup, same as me. I might do a video on RR in the future, that game always frustrated me as a kid as well and I never was able to beat it, got stuck on the 3rd to last level
Lego Rock Raiders, man that made me remember a core memory of mine. Back when my parents bought that game for me they installed it and left our phone number with them during the registration, and lo behold one of the marketing staff called our home wanting to know feedback about the game. My then 6 year old ass only complained about how rarely you got to drive the big crusher.
@@Karaksonen Haha at that age I was super afraid of the monsters and couldn't play any further than the level where they show up. It's worth mentioning for anybody interested that there's a fanmade remake of Rock Raiders called Manic Miners. It's pretty much a full overhaul with tons of fixes and new features. Definitely the best way to play even if it doesn't quite match the grainy atmosphere of the original.
Thank you! I hope to make more in the future. As I am sadly not European in the slightest, I rely on recommendations from viewers to be able to find these games.
Core memory unlocked: I played this game as a child!! And I honestly had a ton of fun with it. The exploration and procedural generation felt hugeee to me. The weirdest thing was seeing Diggles reproducing- which you didn't show, you can't fool me :p
This game used to be really popular here in Poland. It was published and localized by CD Projekt (the one of The Witcher/Cyberpunk 2077 fame) and it supposedly was a very good dub.
Watching this reminded me of another old German game that's also abandonware. It's called "The Sting!" and the German title is "Der Clou 2" My dad used to pirate a lot of games and music when I was a teen and this was one of those. From what I can remember it's a pretty obscure cartoony heist/thief game played from the isometric point of view in a semi-open world city. I remember being pretty infatuated with it as a teen. I only recently rediscovered the game after years of searching for it using vague memories and keywords on google.
It's an amazing game, I remember getting stuck in the mausoleum mission due to having to activate two things at the exact same time and not realizing there was a mechanic for that in the game.
When you’re on weird old games from Europe I would recommend Agent Hugo. A bizarre but honestly surprisingly competent James Bond parody starring a machine gun fitted, boat driving goblin spy. Also the gun auto target every civilian between you and the enemy to ensure a clean shot against the bad guys. It’s also a children’s game.
Damn, that was definitely a missed opportunity. Someone should make a new one with fixed mechanics. I'd definitely play it! That was a fun watch! Thanks & Cheers! 🍺🍻🍺
I find it funny how he called the faery an elf, but yes, elves are traditionally considered creatures of fae, which is pretty much just an umbrella term for a multitude of magical creatures that appear throughout European folklore, which includes but isn't limited to dryads, sylphs, sprites, pixies, wisps, leprechauns and brownies. Typically, the fae are chaotic neutral and have an affinity for nature. Dryads, sylphs, sprites, wisps and pixies are classed as faeries, and are usually tiny forest spirits that are often seen as tricksters who like to play pranks on unsuspecting humans, while leprechauns and brownies are classified as elves, and are often depicted as very secretive creatures who are shown to enter peoples' houses at night and help out, often in exchange for small pieces of food. I have no idea how thus comment turned into a rant about the different types of fae spirits.
Genuinely from the bottom of my heart thank you for this video. I've compared this game to the white whale of my childhood video game wise. I only had hazy memories as I was 6-8y old around the time I had the game. I have fond memories trying to play this game and for years now I've searched forums and games lists for it. The war like flashbacks I received seeing your thumbnail of that dumb diggles face was so welcome. Thank you thank you. I've never seen your videos before but consider me subscribed. This not only unlocked a treasured memory for me but was super informational so I can be prepared for when I inevitably purchase it. I only ever got past the tutorial once and it's time I revisit it.
Hi, just finished the game. Would 100% recommend playing. Took me about 30 hours. I think I could finish under 10 hours on the second run. I agree with some poinst, mainly the annoying slow pace of the game, but other than that, I think the game is amazing. Many of the issues you encountered can be solved if playing accordingly. Do not have many task available, so Diggles do what you need. Use doors, so they can't walk outside base. Dig only 2 tiles per time, so it doesn't trigger world generation, so you can have compact bases. Do not carry old useless buildings to next worlds - improves mood problems. And so on. And mainly , dont forget to often save the game! Can save you time by being better prepared for uncomming problems. I think the world expleration, castles and quest were amazing and jokes funny. Story great. Also many interesting mechanics and side quests. That you could solve only if you paid attetion to details. The lava world sucked tho in my opinion. You could see it was rushed in the end. And the random elf boss fight at the end was WTF
@@xromasik looking back on this experience one year later, it was not nearly as bad as I made it seem. It’s very frustrating and you need to play it in a specific way or else you’ll have problems; but if you play by Diggles Rules, then Diggles Rules.
I've never played this game, but I was (still am) a big fan of SEK's other game, Paraworld. There is a decent enough community surrounding Wiggles on the german side, as the Paraworld forum (Para-welt, which is active to this day as well!) has a section dedicated to it, so I thought that would be worth mentioning. Maybe even a future suggestion to check out Paraworld itself, as it's a rather unique RTS with dinosaurs and an even crazier storyline. Which, as a bonus, also comes with some big community mods (that are thankfully much easier to install).
I'm starting to believe that the algorithm is reading my mind because I've been fruitlessly looking for this game for so long that I've convinced myself that I made it up. Thank you for this video. It may seem dumb, but this was very important to me.
Im still having a orignal "Wiggles" CD-Rom. Didnt understand why its didnt got a big hit, now i know why. Still great memories. I almost bought a steam copy, but you saved me. I will stay with my great nostalgic picture of that game, its better that way. Thanks for your sacrifice. 👍
The long time thing sounds worse than it really is in the end. Yes, it can be frustrating at times. But it also makes sense that it doesn't run much faster. Because after 24 days the dwarves give up and disappear to Odin. And their skills with them and if you don't have well-developed offspring is the end of progress.
I swear the people that made "Goblins of Elderstone" played this game and were like "Oh hey, I bet I could make this game, but with Goblins!" Because everything that you talked about that makes the Diggles such a headache to manage is identical to the Goblins of Elderstone, but instead of going on strike the goblins riot and start fires or straight up kill each other, which snowballs their riots over their needs not being met because whoever they killed can't make the stuff they need. Not to mention that most of the goblins start rioting because they either get so engrossed in their work they refuse to eat or sleep and then riot about it, or riot because the specific item they need for their job isn't delivered to their job site yet so they riot instead of going and getting the item. (Guards in towers will often revolt because no one brought them a spear yet despite there being 90 spears in the village inventory for instance) Basically the game death spirals into needs being impossible to keep up with after you get like 50 goblins, which is nowhere near enough to fill the demand for all the jobs you need lol. The game is just very poorly designed, might make a good retrospective like this video you made, but it's not an old game, it just suffers from old colony sim hiccups. Shame because the concept is cute but the game itself is a slog just because of the AI of the goblins being infuriating.
As someone that's still got the original Gamestar demo CD with Diggles on it - you did a great job here! If you want an absolute banger of a game with an incredibly disappoiting sequel: Startopia! The bane of many hours of my teenage life and all-around great sim game.
As another users said, this was one of the first games to be released legally in Russia, I think. The art was bold and right in the middle of the first legal stores with games. It was a new thing, as legal games would cost INSANE amount of money, so they started making regional prices with what was called "jewel box" - basically you could either own a Collector's Edition in these huge boxes with all the nice stuff, or just a small plastic box like the ones CD-R come in, not even the DVD box set. These cost literally a fraction of a price of a Full edition. I don't exactly remember the price points but imagine the Full edition going for 50 bucks, with the average salary around 300, while the jewel edition cost, like, 4. And it's still an official, legal game, not a pirated copy you buy from a folding stand in the underground crossing. And for the lesser popular games there was even a Rent option - if you returned the Jewel in mint condition, you could take another already opened one for like a dollar. Well one another thing I remember from Diggles that you didn't touch upon was that it was technically possible for Diggles to develop "later" tech earlier in the levels, which immediately soft-locked you. I developed the Nice Kitchen that required Electricity, that I didn't have as the Coal wasn't yet available for me, so the Diggles outright refused to cook at the campfire and Simple Kitchen I had, and I watched them starve, the little idiots. But then again, the whole idea behind the game is actually great, I think with a good remaster it could be actually really good.
As a German this video brought a smile to my face! I still remember playing this game on my dads PC back in 2002 and just having fun watching these little guys do something. Tbh I was too young to really understand what the goal was and never got past the 2nd level so I never even knew there was a crystal or lava world. Thank you for making this video and taking me down memory lane!
Creatures was another old old game with similar qualities yet an actually very impressive coding job that allowed the creatures to "learn." There's a very informative (& very very old) YT doc on here that goes into the coding design - would be awesome to see you cover it as a gamer!
Incredible, this game walked so games like Craft the World, Oxygen Not Included , and other such 2D Colony sims (maybe even the 3D ones) could run ! It is insane how experimental some game developers were back in the day, to think somewhere out there someone is working on a project which as broken as it may be today- will have a dedicated community for decades to come and will in the future inspire a whole genre !
Played the game in Polish back in the day. Had fun, but never got to finishing the first level after the tutorial. A few years back I tried playing it and got a bit further, but got bored. For a while I thought I was probably the only person being able to play it in English at a good FPS and all since before the game got re-released there was some issue with the framerate I was able to circumvent with some old old crack of the game I got in some magazine. Had to mess with config files though since it was in Polish originally and was called Wiggles rather than Diggles, but frankensteining the two together worked pretty well for the time. Thanks for covering the game so I don't have to finish it :D
I liked this game quite a bit two decades ago. It was quite janky, but that was kind of the norm in early 2000s, so it wasn't a surprise - Oni, Halo, Tomb Raider, Age of Empires, StarCraft, Stronghold, Wizardry 8, Arcanum, Safari Biathlon, Hired Team Trial and the like all had their own bits of weirdness. Farthest I ever got was the laser puzzle, but I couldn't complete it without half of my army as it happened that most of the cooks and farmers were male, leading to starvation. That and the framerate bug that capped the game at 15 or so FPS made me quit, but nostalgia is still strong. When I first saw Oxygen Not Included, I figured this was probably the source of their inspiration.
A minute in and I'm already confused, why did they name it "Wiggles" in Germany? My mother's tongue is German, neither of these words mean ANYTHING in German so there's no chance anyone would have found "Diggles" offensive in the early 2000s
I have no idea. I asked the same question to the person who suggested me this game: "is Wiggles a pun in German like it is on 'dig' in English?" and the answer was no, not at all. I can only assume that maybe it just sounds funny?
I played this game as a kid back when I was living in Poland, had no ideas what to do in that game and never really went past first level. This video brings me back....
I remember when I was about 10 when I found this at a Ross and begged my dad to get it. He did, installed it and tried playing it. It did not work. I remember staring at the box wanting to play it for weeks. My dad never got it to work. This video cured my past wonder and curiosity i forgot I had, thanks.
Thanks for playing through and reviewing this odd specimen of a game! I think there's always something to be learnt from failed experiments - especially from games with a peculiar personality.
WHAAAATTT?!?!?!?!? I loved this game as a kid! But as a german, googeling "wiggles" I couldn't find anything! I cant belive I found it again now!!!! ❤❤❤
This was really interesting to watch! Man I love deep dives like this, you cover everything so well. I personally had never heard of this game, but despite all its flaws the idea of it seems kinda fun. Well, atleast the aesthetics are. I wonder what a reworked version would be like, I think a game like this has potential.
I was a kid playing this game back in the day. Loved the concept, but never beat level 1. As you said its slow even then and yeah it didn't run very well on my pc. Good job digging it up.
Great exploration, my dude! Watched this while Rimworld w/ 400+ mods was on the other monitor and it's extremely interesting to see the history of the genre.
Think Jauwn summed it up very well in the epilogue. Great ideas, passion and ambition went into this game by the look of it. But funding and time constraints obviously dug the devs a hole. Pun not intended. Edit: Forgot to mention just how much I enjoyed the vid. Heh I often think of games like this. Wondering what might have been achieved if the resources were available.
20:58 Diggles actually take new mates when the previous one dies, just need to have a single of the opposite sex in the same free time near (or use the love potion) 29:56 Quest items and dwarves left behind actually just spawn in the new world, you don't need to take them trough the gate.
I never had one find a new mate, but that might have been a me problem. And regarding quest items - I think my speed cheating may have broke that, because it only worked for me on level 1-2. After that they would just disappear, lol.
@@jauwn Yeah, mods can brake stuff in already fragile game :D everything else in the video is true, altghough it was not an obsticle for me, I finished the game as a kid when it was released in the old days, had a lot of fun. And finished it recenlty on Steam, the 100% achievement though was not as fun as it was not exactly clear what you need to do and there is particular sequence in how you need to do quests, have to follow online guides and as you said in the video, need to add that code fix lol.
Yeah, tjose constant crashes are tied to the rather popular speed-hacking of the registry files. If I remember correctly (considering I last played and modded Wiggles around ca 2006) anything higher than 16 times speed in speed up fucked with some background function of how the soundtrack is implemented. Overall the game was phenomenal considering the time frame, the sheer size of the levels aswell as the pretty well done german synchro coupled with the, at that time, very on point zeitgeisthumour really elevated it towards like an 8/10 game, IF you wre up to slow stuff. Gotta admit tho, I did not recall the Fairy lady streaking in the credits, only remembered how, well, alluring her design was. Still pretty much ""appropiate" in the same vain movies like American Pie were popular at that time *shrugs*
I really appreciate you taking the time to make this, it sounds truly insufferable but I loved the review. A very fascinating look at an extremely obscure game
Yeah, this is indeed a typical game you'd get here in Germany. I remember my sister's boyfriend playing it when it came out and shouting curses at the computer when it crashed. He never wisened up to the art of saving often.
@@MariaIsabellaZNN Yeah, agreed on all accounts. Don't have enough scare quotes for the humor myself. It's just so 2000s German. Artwork like the Hugo games, that drug smoking stuff, the jank.
I remember watching my father play this game on my grandma's computer. I have no idea how I remembered it, because I was maybe like 5yo. But man, I'm so happy that I finally found it after those years. This unlocked core memory 🙏
My parents played this game when I was a kid and I watched them play it, seemed like they had a lot of fun (and even beat it), I didn't play it all that much myself though. I didn't know it was released on steam and GOG recently, I may grab it some day. Cooking hamsters into shashlik (homyashlik as we call it) is an iconic part in our family :P
I like that Fenrir in this game started as a golden retriever puppy. I love the idea of him just being super friendly to Freki and Geri and them being like "wut."
Just recently found your channel and im so glad i did. I love your way of portraying things in a comedic light and actually reviewing off the grid games. Love it, thank you for making content like this
Guarantee if this game was remade then it would actually be a great game. The concepts are all amazing but I totally agree with it being an issue of execution rather than being fundamentally flawed.
I have font memories of playing this game, though me and my siblings never played the campaign mode to my recollection. We used to waste hours sitting in front of the family PC just watching them and sending them to unfortunate ends.
Thanks for watching! I'm both happy to be reviewing another obscure old game, as well as sort of annoyed, since this game took far too long to beat considering how... sub-par.... it is. Nonetheless, this video deserved to be made as there are really no extensive reviews of this game anywhere on the internet, especially not in English. So, here it is, Diggles!
Any other obscure early 2000s games that you think deserve a review and deep dive like this? Let me know, and maybe one day I'll review it!
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I just realized this video was just released. cool video watching rn and new subscriber
Somehow you keep making me wanna play these games...
Here's kinda an obscure game: Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir
I played the latest version on a ps3 emulator and really enjoyed it though. It's a side scrolling type like hollow Knight
this might not be obscure enough but there's a more recent indie game called Aggelos that I feel is underappreciated
or maybe Hexen, a Doom-like dark fantasy game
Some suggestions of weird games I barely remember from that time period:
Krazy Ivan: a game where you play as a Russian mecha pilot, fighting aliens. it was fairly short and easy, but had a weird vibe to it throughout. Some of the enemy designs were quite surreal, and some of the powerups would change the game's colors in weird ways.
Extreme Tactics: a pretty janky RTS game which had the main gimmick, interesting for the time, of being able to design your own units by slotting parts together. You played as a race of bird people aliens, with FMV cutscenes between missions. One thing I distinctly remember is that, in one of the cutscenes, the janky CGI made it look like your birdman commander was briefing you while having a massive boner.
The Reap: A shmup where you played as part of an alien invasion conquering humanity. It had a weird (but cool) artstyle where the whole game looked like pre-rendered FMV. The first boss was a giant spaceship with an equally giant buzzsaw on the front, which I thought was awesome as a kid.
"The Diggles AI script is about three thousand lines of If/Else statements"
So that's where YandereDev got his coding style.
That is literally who came up to mind when he mentioned the If/Else coding lmfao
Apparently the language this game is written in doesn’t natively support arrays, which makes this even more impressive
And the credits include a bunch of made up Japanese names
Hmmm...
@@jauwnFascinating! I wonder what the precedents are of trying to rewrite video games... I thought "maybe somebody would try to re write stuff in here" but without arrays damn no wonder it's buggy
of course it is. the game is obviously n incompetent hack coders mess. it was made by THQ after all.
it had countless compatibility issues on release.
A brothel in a colony sim is the most early 2000s german game design I've ever seen.
I swear, the moment I saw the thumbnail I thought to myself "This looks 2000s German game as fuck." I was right.
To quote Milo Edwards "How can a country be so repressed and so horny at the same time?"
@@kyucumbeari didn't realize what the vibe was, but it IS that german feel and i don't even know how XD
Every colony sim that doesn’t feature brothels is objectively trash 😤😤
@@dihexa7256 based
It was popular for whatever reason during my university years (2006). People were amazed how stupid it was, how vast was research tree and how meditating it was, plus at that time they have all the time in the world to play it. They usually just got high or drunk and played it for hours. I never got past second level and NONE of people I know have beaten Fenrir - I think that it was about 10-15 of us who played it at that time. A single person got to the lava level and just gave up, while most wasted their time on levels 2-3 for ages. Hoverboards were cool, man, and people usualy just wanted to develop to them and teleporters.
If there was info that there's heavily pixilated mammaries in the end and fairy wearin dominatrix-like outfit I swear more people would've beaten it :D
What a great story!
The elf fairy lady definitely is someone's fantasy
This game, I bought on release on CD-Rom. Over the years as tech advanced, I wasn't able to play it any longer. I actually tracked down a dev, and he wrote a patch to fix a crashing issue with modern graphics cards and sent it to me. I was able to play again after years! Now I have a PC that has no CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive and from this video learned it's on Steam! THANK YOU SO MUCH JAUWN! This has been one of my all time favorite games ever. I really appreciate what you made here. I am beyond happy. I still have the CD and the patch from the former dev to make it work! But knowing it's on Steam and I can play it again just planted a smile on my face.
I am so glad that you enjoyed the video!
You could've just gotten an external DVD drive; it's double the price of Diggles, but you can use any discs.
I wonder if the patch would still be useful for the steam version
@@PhoebeTheFairy56 I'm not sure, the patch is for Windows 7 and received it in 2010.
just buy an external dvd reader
I knew that the kind of spirit that says "let's actually try and play NFT games like they were real games" was an adventurous one. This is great stuff! I'm glad to see another person willing to deep dive into strange games that people may have missed. There's so much out there.
For real. There are more obscure games than all the long form scripted review type UA-camrs combined could ever cover.
@@jauwn thank you for the original and quality content! :D
That weed-smoking baby was EVERYWHERE in german magazines. It was super iconic - and that game was actually received very well. Germans just love manager games.
The interesting thing is, since it was officially licensed and localized on Russia, the game actually gained some sort of a cult following there. I remember the picture of a baby smoking a joint was literary everywhere as a meme, PC geek guys (and the majority of gamers played on PC at that time) just looked at this and went "this pic goes HARD gonna share it with my friends and use it as an avatar". I think many people didn't even know the source. Then again, maybe it was a fan art or a coincidence, but it was very similar to the art style of the game box, and the game featured such a scene.
I'm trying to remember obscure games I want you to cover, but for now I keep thinking only about this weird game I stumbled upon recently D.I.R.T.: Origin of the Species. It's probably terrible, but the obscurity of it and the general vibe of the lost epoch is interesting.
Russia had its share of weird games too, Vangers for example
There is some interesting share between east and west europe. Was quite the surprise to me to hear how popular Gothic is in Poland.
But then, we have Bohemia, CD Project Red, Techland, GSC, Haemimont, Flying Wild Hog, CBE, Warhorse, etc...
i freaking love old pc games like this. you know. when a "pc game" used not to be defined by genre. and even a game within the genre. is not following any sort of guidelines and stuff. it hard to find games that are too similar within the same genre.
That's a wonderful way of putting it. Back in those days, everyone was still trying to figure it out. There were no game engines, tutorials, or even really any standards for quality. Thus yielded some of the absolute strangest games
I instantly had to think of Settlers and especially Cultures. The same kind of cute, adoable simulation games.
I mean... From a modern lens, it's clearly a colony sim. It even came out the same year as Dwarf Fortress.
@@Kenionatus i never realized it's as old as DF. to be fair. even if it's a colony sim. the game itself is still different. it's kind of RTS mix with colony sim. more adjacent to dungeon keeper.
Would recomend the youtubers "tehsnakerer" or "accursed farms"
Both do a lot of obscure game reviewing
Aaaah, bizzare German games from the 2000s. Always a treat!
Those, and Polish ones.
I followed an italian youtuber that reviewed trash italian games.
Sadly only few were origin, all the other were originals, the majority are stolen codes from East Europe games
@@emib6599what's his name?
@@BalthazarB2 To this day I have no idea what the lyrics to Knightshift's menu music are, but boy is it stuck in my head.
@j0JP thanks
Watching this I was stunned at how many diggles you've had by the end of the first world already, and look at all those frozen ones at the end of the third world! I first started playing the game somewhere in 2006/2007 as it was included on gaming magazine CD then replayed it immediately when it released on Steam and I enjoyed my time with it.
The most important thing about the jankiness and managing those little guys is that the more diggles you have - the less likely it will be that they perform the task to the end. I found out that for the best results in the campaign you should get as much done with the first 5 guys you start with. Micro-manage the hell out of them and make them become masters at certain professions ( digging, combat and cooking mostly ). You can prevent population growth by simply setting the working hours of the given pair to conflicting ones so they will never have free time to "do it". Then when you actually have some competent personel, go to the second world and only allow for sexy-time when you feel like an extra pair of hands are necessary. The main reason for diggles not doing the tasks ordered is that someone in that particular task's workchain ran-out of working hours and went to sleep, leaving the game's task manager confused as to who should continue with the task - kinda like real life sometimes.
The needs of the diggles will increase with each generation so while the first may be hard working masters of their craft - by the fifth gen. you will end up with guys who have great potential but get bored quickly or straight out get depression because they hadn't had time to talk with their boy/girl-friend that one time.
Besides that I don't know what's with all the crashes you've experienced. I didn't use any speed hacks and only experienced a single crash during my whole playthrough. That includes multiple-hour sessions in the free-game "skirmish" gamemode.
It really is a leisurely time with the diggles. It's more about planning out and executing those plan's in the long term rather than an engaging gameplay in the modern sense.
Maybe someone finds this info usefull.
Oh I cheated to get all the frozen diggles haha. All footage after the beginning of the Crystal world is after I gave up 20 hours in and started spawning diggles like a maniac.
I have no idea why I got so many crashes either. Others didn’t report as many as I did, I can only assume that after using turbo mode once it permanently corrupted my game and made it crash even when I wasn’t actively using it. If I start a new save and never use turbo at all, it works fine
@@jauwnhow does it behave with an external tool like cheat engine?
@@caracassalkatraz1284 I was not able to figure out how to modify anything using Cheat Engine, not even the speed modifier worked.
The way production chains are done reminds me of classic settlers.
You want bread for your soldiers? you need a bakery.
But the bakery needs flour and water.
Flour comes from the mill, but it needs access to grains.
The grains come from a farm.
But it's not always a 1:1 ratio. Two mills can supply three bakeries, but a mill needs two farms to keep going.
And you can't just use all your little guys as specialists. You need to keep some "unemployed", because those not designated to a profession are there to carry stuff around.
And you need warehouses, since they won't bring stuff from one production to another, but bring them to a warehouse first, and then bring them from the warehouse to the next stop in the chain.
And the farmer needs a hoe.
Which has to be produced in a forge.
But the forge needs iron and coal.
And the miners need tools as well.
And food.
But iron miners and coal miners eat different things from each other and from the soldiers.
So you need a hunter and a fisher.
Who again need tools.
And they need places where they work.
Which requires stone and wood.
Stone comes from yet another mine.
And wood comes form a forest. The trees are felled, then cut into boards. Those are different steps that happen at different facilities.
Oh, did I mention that the woodcutter and the carpenter also need tools?
And that is just to have a steady food supply for the soldiers.
But soldiers also need swords and armor...
i love how old games are textured, like the spiderwick game with grungy over realistic textures to flat simple models and i wish it was used more in modern games for no reason at all its just pretty
its late 90/s early 2000's style. they were experimenting with textures, realistic photos and low quality drawn textures
Love this era of games just for that
I'm surprised how well this game from 2001 was re-purposed for 1080p without it looking broken. The crispiness in the polygons and textures makes it more charming.
To me it looks ugly, but in a charming, unique kind of way, because I can't recall any modern game (even indie) with such an artstyle
This may sound odd, but I do appreciate that they released the game with the original bugs intact. Gaming history is getting harder to preserve as time and technology marches on, and we can learn a lot from old games by looking at their flaws as much as their strengths, even moreso in some cases. Just look at the Diggles modding community, or really any modding community- these are people who could see that this game had a lot of unique and interesting potential despite its many technical issues, and were inspired to learn how to take the game apart and put it back together, by themselves or as a team. That sort of creative drive can lead to folks learning new skills and even going on to make their own games. Heck, you yourself learned some german just by using the cheat engine. To use a dwarf-ish sounding phrase, sometimes you gotta dig through a lot of mud to find gold.
That said, I would be interested in seeing some kind of remastered version of Diggles, or something inspired by it.
I agree, we cannot pretend that bugs do not exist, we are often blinded by nostalgia, pretending bugs are something only new games do and that the jankiness is a result of lazy developers when in fact games always had jank and bugs on account that literally creating a virtual world is tough !
Also if you would like some similar games, as in the 2d sidescrolling colony sim , I would wholeheartly recommend Craft the World, Oxygen not included , Ratopia , and Hammerting (though it seems to have some more mixed reviews) .
and tell me, do they warn the customers that the game is an unstable, almost non-functional mess? Sound like an unhinged sadomasochist to me.
@@thewallachianbard6975 yeah a lot of times I see "back in the day games released complete" bullcrap. Patches were hard to deliver so you'd get stuck with half the spells not working in original Final Fantasy or tons of content cut from Fallout 2... Daggerfall shipped with game breaking bugs.
Ah yes, getting game breaking bugs is part of the experience. IF COURSE
You know, the OG version is still archived, it's not like it's lost. Selling with with bugs and all is simply a trap for consumers
Fun Fact about SEK: It's also short for Sondereinsatzkommando, the german special forces unit, that's probably why they chose this name aswell
wow this is bringing back memories! I remember playing this as a kid after school. I enjoyed how slow it is at times, mostly because that made it perfect to play while doing boring math homework.
I also really liked the humor, maybe it was hard to translate. That's definitely been the case with some other German games that I played in German and then watched a Let's Play in English.
But yeah anyone checking the game out now needs to use mods and fixes! Some of the errors REALLY suck and make you loose a lot of progress. Never actually finished the game because of that
I knew some people out there would have played this game! I do have a pretty sizeable German audience, and everyone knows early 2000s German games are some of the best / weirdest (ahem...Gothic anyone?). Very happy to have covered it!
@@jauwn Thank you for covering it! Even though it has his fair share of problems , it was one of my favourite childhood games :D
I live in Finland and I have some good memories of playing the game as a kid. I never remember having many crashes with the game but I had a high tolerance for bugs in games back then 😅 really glad it was covered here though!
Gothic is a national treasure xD@@jauwn
@filegnaru got any tips for other (odd/weird) German games? They seem to fit me somehow.
I’ve never heard of this game. It looks pretty damn neat, not gonna lie
EDIT: I will admit that the Diggles’ designs are nightmare fuel
It is definitely very neat! But it takes a special type of patience to actually play it.
@@jauwnI’m a goddamn masochist of a gamer so I might just be the target audience here LMAO
It's on sale on GOG for $3 right now so knock yourself out
neither did i
and i played vangers and space rangers thats even more obscure
even black and white is memorable but how did this game passed the radar
and i sometimes hear of dungeon keeper
Vangers is definitely up there in obscurity though
I am from Czech Republic which shares borders with germany and Wiggles is along side games like Settlers IV, Gothic 2 & 3, Cultures 2: Gates of Asgard or State of War are hidden gems.
I remember being like 8 years old and asked my father to read the name Wiggle for me and he called it "Rody trpaslíků" (Dwarven dynasties) which was completely off but hey, younger me just wanted to play this game... And then the soundtrack scared the shit out of me so I never touched that game again during that time. (It was fully dubbed and translated to czech btw)
Until cca 2020 during lockdown I came across picture of dwarfling fliping a bird and holding bomb behind his back. Wave of nostalgia came over me so I googled. Came across name Wiggles and... Some random 'stralian show? What the hell?
Then it released on steam and man, best dark fantasy soundtrack sofar along side hustle of a game but worth it in my eyes.
Haha the Wiggles are huge not only in Australia but also we had them growing up in America too. So no wonder they couldn’t call it that here
So many German games had a professional Czech dub back then. Nowadays not even KC:D, a Czech game, has one. It's understandable since game distribution is much easier nowadays and English has become a de facto lingua franca, but it's a pity nonetheless.
Hell yeah brother, the Gothic games were my childhood. I still play them. I am from Romania.
I'm from Germany and i thought him calling it "Diggles" was some sort of joke. Never knew about the different name before. Another favourite game of this era was "Die Rache der Sumpfühner" (the wrath of the swamp chickens), i wonder if this game was ever exported. It was a Moorhuhn clone with some changes and features.
"Dwarven dynasties" is fairly on topic at least
I'm in a colony sim binge lately and to me this seems like an interesting trainwreck to slap me out of this colony sim stupor.
Hey, give us your top 5 from your binge.
If someone came out with a cleaned up, working out of the box version of this I might give it a shot. Looks kinda neat in a nightmare inducing kind of way.
I love the weird looks, and ya it’s a shame people can’t make a commercial sorta sequel to this
I'd love that
Give it a try
Its so much fun
Once a year i install it
same
I'm kind of in love with the idea of a game that is so organically terrible that it pushes it's players down breadcrumb trails to it's code and encourages them to fix it themselves
That's an insanely engaging idea I bet someone's gonna run with someday
Bethesda
Imagine a puzzle game with a built-in scripting language which the player can alter. So the goal of the game is to rewrite the scripts of entities in the world to make them do what you want to finish the goal of each level. You have to fix bugs and add new functionality to succeed.
@@augustday9483you’re thinking of baba is you
@@augustday9483 TIS-1000 and EXAPUNKS may be of interest to you.
@@sufficient4834 my bf is a fallout modder and yes, pretty much
Man did I spend a good chunk of my childhood on this game.
I remember when Oxygen Not Included came out my first thought was "hey it's kinda like a 2D Diggles 😅
Also thankfully my nostalgia overrides any bugs
Exactly! :D
It's around the same era as Black & White, feels and plays like it and has the same graphics style. Overall it's a unique game from the time when making unique games was considered a good idea. Kinda miss these times especially because I didn't have my own PC back then.
I played the game as a Kid, I loved it for the atmosphere and in my version it was possible to make time go 4 times faster with hotkeys. That helped a lot, but I hadn't advanced past sulfur world.
Several years ago I've reinstalled the game (without knowing there are QoL mods) and was able to almost reach lava level. I've stopped in the crystal world and I don;t remember why. The key to manage the game turned out to be:
- keep your population in check, not larger than 16-20 citizens. The weakest have to be expelled form the tribe.
- don't bother with the tech tree. Get the most important upgrades (backpack, healing potions, storage shelf) and live with a campfire and basic utilities. No need to dig huge caves either.
- Dig to explore. A lot. No point in researching weapons if you can find those weapons in some random cave. And the knowledge books are mandatory.
with that my small dwarf clan was able to blast through first 2 levels at a record pace (still took hours)
Thanks for showing how the game ends! Now I wonder would my gameplay style be enough to fight the evil fairy.
I think I need to give this game one more chance.
Before I started using the console to spawn in food this was how I played, pretty much. Barely using more than the basic upgrades is the easiest way to be able to pack everything up and move it constantly while still being able to keep up with the ever increasing demands.
This reminds me a lot of Lego Rock Raiders from around the same time. I'd always get angry at how bad the AI was in that game, but those little Lego guys are brainiacs compared to the Diggles. Fun concept but way too slow and frustrating.
Yup, same as me. I might do a video on RR in the future, that game always frustrated me as a kid as well and I never was able to beat it, got stuck on the 3rd to last level
@@jauwn @recon_p ROck Raiders got a fan remake that polishes it all up plus Bonus content, you might get a kick out of that!
Lego Rock Raiders, man that made me remember a core memory of mine.
Back when my parents bought that game for me they installed it and left our phone number with them during the registration, and lo behold one of the marketing staff called our home wanting to know feedback about the game.
My then 6 year old ass only complained about how rarely you got to drive the big crusher.
@@Karaksonen
Haha at that age I was super afraid of the monsters and couldn't play any further than the level where they show up. It's worth mentioning for anybody interested that there's a fanmade remake of Rock Raiders called Manic Miners. It's pretty much a full overhaul with tons of fixes and new features. Definitely the best way to play even if it doesn't quite match the grainy atmosphere of the original.
@@recon_p I played horror games like Resident Evil as a kid so... took more than a weird rock monster to scare me lol.
I got a notification on discord that this game is free on GOG right now. All I could think of was this video.
this feels like a golden age youtube gaming video and i say that with the utmost respect. keep it up!
Wow that means a lot! As someone who grew up with golden age UA-cam that’s such a good compliment
This is a really well made look back at one of the many obscure European games that tried something different. Excellent work.
Thank you! I hope to make more in the future. As I am sadly not European in the slightest, I rely on recommendations from viewers to be able to find these games.
@@jauwn I look forward to it whenever you decide to do another retrospective.
I’m realizing more and more I can watch you play/talk about anything. Really nice to find a new creator I can enjoy regardless of what they put out.
Core memory unlocked: I played this game as a child!! And I honestly had a ton of fun with it. The exploration and procedural generation felt hugeee to me.
The weirdest thing was seeing Diggles reproducing- which you didn't show, you can't fool me :p
This game used to be really popular here in Poland. It was published and localized by CD Projekt (the one of The Witcher/Cyberpunk 2077 fame) and it supposedly was a very good dub.
Most Polish dubs from the time were amazing.
I love the crypto "games" videos you make, and i am glad that your expanding beyond just that, i enjoy seeing obscure odd games like this one.
Not gonna lie, just from the intro, this game looks like something I would have loved in 2001
Watching this reminded me of another old German game that's also abandonware. It's called "The Sting!" and the German title is "Der Clou 2"
My dad used to pirate a lot of games and music when I was a teen and this was one of those. From what I can remember it's a pretty obscure cartoony heist/thief game played from the isometric point of view in a semi-open world city. I remember being pretty infatuated with it as a teen. I only recently rediscovered the game after years of searching for it using vague memories and keywords on google.
I had this one, maybe as free game from a magazine.
It's an amazing game, I remember getting stuck in the mausoleum mission due to having to activate two things at the exact same time and not realizing there was a mechanic for that in the game.
As someone obsessed with colony sims I feel like I *need* this downloaded.
If I do get it on steam Ive gotta to leave it running every npw and then and try to get either 420, 666, or 710 hours on it.
This is the most german game ever
When you’re on weird old games from Europe I would recommend Agent Hugo. A bizarre but honestly surprisingly competent James Bond parody starring a machine gun fitted, boat driving goblin spy. Also the gun auto target every civilian between you and the enemy to ensure a clean shot against the bad guys. It’s also a children’s game.
Damn, that was definitely a missed opportunity.
Someone should make a new one with fixed mechanics. I'd definitely play it!
That was a fun watch!
Thanks & Cheers!
🍺🍻🍺
It reminds me of Craft the world to a degree, if you want something closeish and more functional
I find it funny how he called the faery an elf, but yes, elves are traditionally considered creatures of fae, which is pretty much just an umbrella term for a multitude of magical creatures that appear throughout European folklore, which includes but isn't limited to dryads, sylphs, sprites, pixies, wisps, leprechauns and brownies. Typically, the fae are chaotic neutral and have an affinity for nature. Dryads, sylphs, sprites, wisps and pixies are classed as faeries, and are usually tiny forest spirits that are often seen as tricksters who like to play pranks on unsuspecting humans, while leprechauns and brownies are classified as elves, and are often depicted as very secretive creatures who are shown to enter peoples' houses at night and help out, often in exchange for small pieces of food.
I have no idea how thus comment turned into a rant about the different types of fae spirits.
She's an elf in the game lore.
@@Glibbers Well, my point about the elf actually being a faery still stands, considering she has wings, which elves aren't usually depicted as having.
Genuinely from the bottom of my heart thank you for this video. I've compared this game to the white whale of my childhood video game wise. I only had hazy memories as I was 6-8y old around the time I had the game. I have fond memories trying to play this game and for years now I've searched forums and games lists for it. The war like flashbacks I received seeing your thumbnail of that dumb diggles face was so welcome. Thank you thank you. I've never seen your videos before but consider me subscribed. This not only unlocked a treasured memory for me but was super informational so I can be prepared for when I inevitably purchase it. I only ever got past the tutorial once and it's time I revisit it.
I’m so glad my video was able to bring back memories of your childhood. I had no idea this game was so special to so many people!
Hi, just finished the game. Would 100% recommend playing. Took me about 30 hours. I think I could finish under 10 hours on the second run. I agree with some poinst, mainly the annoying slow pace of the game, but other than that, I think the game is amazing. Many of the issues you encountered can be solved if playing accordingly. Do not have many task available, so Diggles do what you need. Use doors, so they can't walk outside base. Dig only 2 tiles per time, so it doesn't trigger world generation, so you can have compact bases. Do not carry old useless buildings to next worlds - improves mood problems. And so on. And mainly , dont forget to often save the game! Can save you time by being better prepared for uncomming problems. I think the world expleration, castles and quest were amazing and jokes funny. Story great. Also many interesting mechanics and side quests. That you could solve only if you paid attetion to details. The lava world sucked tho in my opinion. You could see it was rushed in the end. And the random elf boss fight at the end was WTF
@@xromasik looking back on this experience one year later, it was not nearly as bad as I made it seem. It’s very frustrating and you need to play it in a specific way or else you’ll have problems; but if you play by Diggles Rules, then Diggles Rules.
I've never played this game, but I was (still am) a big fan of SEK's other game, Paraworld. There is a decent enough community surrounding Wiggles on the german side, as the Paraworld forum (Para-welt, which is active to this day as well!) has a section dedicated to it, so I thought that would be worth mentioning. Maybe even a future suggestion to check out Paraworld itself, as it's a rather unique RTS with dinosaurs and an even crazier storyline. Which, as a bonus, also comes with some big community mods (that are thankfully much easier to install).
RTS with dinosaurs? What is this, Original War? :P
I'm starting to believe that the algorithm is reading my mind because I've been fruitlessly looking for this game for so long that I've convinced myself that I made it up.
Thank you for this video. It may seem dumb, but this was very important to me.
It seems you are one of many that felt the same! I had no idea this was a long forgotten game for so many people
2001 was a wild and wonderful year
Considering some happenings in and following September I don't think many people would necessarily use the word wonderful to describe it.
Interestingly enough this game came out 6 days after September 11th, although the U.S release was not until March of the following year
I still think about that achievement in Ratchet & Clank 3 Up Your Arsenal that references 2001, when the first Ratchet & Clank released.
most of my favorite medias got release in 2001
@@Elhao nobody cares about 9/11 only americans
Im still having a orignal "Wiggles" CD-Rom. Didnt understand why its didnt got a big hit, now i know why. Still great memories. I almost bought a steam copy, but you saved me. I will stay with my great nostalgic picture of that game, its better that way. Thanks for your sacrifice. 👍
The long time thing sounds worse than it really is in the end. Yes, it can be frustrating at times. But it also makes sense that it doesn't run much faster. Because after 24 days the dwarves give up and disappear to Odin. And their skills with them and if you don't have well-developed offspring is the end of progress.
Holy fucking shit, I've been looking for this game for years, I remember playing it as a kid, and would you look at that, Jauwn makes a video on it.
I would not have the patience to finish this game. I'd probably be one of the 60% not finishing the tutorial😂
nice jauwn is reviewing a game that isnt cryptobase, i was afraid he was going to continue suffering
Oh just wait until you finish watching it then and you'll find the suffering has not changed
@@jauwn yeah i noticed
I swear the people that made "Goblins of Elderstone" played this game and were like "Oh hey, I bet I could make this game, but with Goblins!" Because everything that you talked about that makes the Diggles such a headache to manage is identical to the Goblins of Elderstone, but instead of going on strike the goblins riot and start fires or straight up kill each other, which snowballs their riots over their needs not being met because whoever they killed can't make the stuff they need. Not to mention that most of the goblins start rioting because they either get so engrossed in their work they refuse to eat or sleep and then riot about it, or riot because the specific item they need for their job isn't delivered to their job site yet so they riot instead of going and getting the item. (Guards in towers will often revolt because no one brought them a spear yet despite there being 90 spears in the village inventory for instance) Basically the game death spirals into needs being impossible to keep up with after you get like 50 goblins, which is nowhere near enough to fill the demand for all the jobs you need lol. The game is just very poorly designed, might make a good retrospective like this video you made, but it's not an old game, it just suffers from old colony sim hiccups. Shame because the concept is cute but the game itself is a slog just because of the AI of the goblins being infuriating.
As someone that's still got the original Gamestar demo CD with Diggles on it - you did a great job here! If you want an absolute banger of a game with an incredibly disappoiting sequel: Startopia! The bane of many hours of my teenage life and all-around great sim game.
As another users said, this was one of the first games to be released legally in Russia, I think. The art was bold and right in the middle of the first legal stores with games. It was a new thing, as legal games would cost INSANE amount of money, so they started making regional prices with what was called "jewel box" - basically you could either own a Collector's Edition in these huge boxes with all the nice stuff, or just a small plastic box like the ones CD-R come in, not even the DVD box set. These cost literally a fraction of a price of a Full edition. I don't exactly remember the price points but imagine the Full edition going for 50 bucks, with the average salary around 300, while the jewel edition cost, like, 4. And it's still an official, legal game, not a pirated copy you buy from a folding stand in the underground crossing.
And for the lesser popular games there was even a Rent option - if you returned the Jewel in mint condition, you could take another already opened one for like a dollar.
Well one another thing I remember from Diggles that you didn't touch upon was that it was technically possible for Diggles to develop "later" tech earlier in the levels, which immediately soft-locked you. I developed the Nice Kitchen that required Electricity, that I didn't have as the Coal wasn't yet available for me, so the Diggles outright refused to cook at the campfire and Simple Kitchen I had, and I watched them starve, the little idiots.
But then again, the whole idea behind the game is actually great, I think with a good remaster it could be actually really good.
3 and a half minutes in is when you went from algorithm feeding me funny nft game guy to my newest sub, excellent work
assuming that means you liked my little intro card... thanks! it took me like 6 hours to make but it was worth it
@@jauwn thank you for your art
As a German this video brought a smile to my face! I still remember playing this game on my dads PC back in 2002 and just having fun watching these little guys do something. Tbh I was too young to really understand what the goal was and never got past the 2nd level so I never even knew there was a crystal or lava world. Thank you for making this video and taking me down memory lane!
Actually so nice seeing you review real games even if a bit mediocre! :D
Creatures was another old old game with similar qualities yet an actually very impressive coding job that allowed the creatures to "learn."
There's a very informative (& very very old) YT doc on here that goes into the coding design - would be awesome to see you cover it as a gamer!
Incredible, this game walked so games like Craft the World, Oxygen Not Included , and other such 2D Colony sims (maybe even the 3D ones) could run !
It is insane how experimental some game developers were back in the day, to think somewhere out there someone is working on a project which as broken as it may be today- will have a dedicated community for decades to come and will in the future inspire a whole genre !
Played the game in Polish back in the day. Had fun, but never got to finishing the first level after the tutorial. A few years back I tried playing it and got a bit further, but got bored. For a while I thought I was probably the only person being able to play it in English at a good FPS and all since before the game got re-released there was some issue with the framerate I was able to circumvent with some old old crack of the game I got in some magazine. Had to mess with config files though since it was in Polish originally and was called Wiggles rather than Diggles, but frankensteining the two together worked pretty well for the time.
Thanks for covering the game so I don't have to finish it :D
I liked this game quite a bit two decades ago. It was quite janky, but that was kind of the norm in early 2000s, so it wasn't a surprise - Oni, Halo, Tomb Raider, Age of Empires, StarCraft, Stronghold, Wizardry 8, Arcanum, Safari Biathlon, Hired Team Trial and the like all had their own bits of weirdness. Farthest I ever got was the laser puzzle, but I couldn't complete it without half of my army as it happened that most of the cooks and farmers were male, leading to starvation. That and the framerate bug that capped the game at 15 or so FPS made me quit, but nostalgia is still strong. When I first saw Oxygen Not Included, I figured this was probably the source of their inspiration.
That Ghost Master dig hurt my soul, but this is quality content. I'm looking forward to other videos from you
Haha I have played and beat Ghost Master (recently, actually), and while it's enjoyable, it's hard to ignore the missed potential
@@jauwn Yeah, I would have loved to see more of it. There are even unfinished level(s) in the files if I'm recalling correctly
This is a great video review, I'm really enjoying these older abandonware reviews. And I hope to see more game reviews of all types in the future
5:11 I'm not even surprised because even games like *Red Dead Redemption 2* only 72.7% of the players finished the first chapter.
Loving these bad old game reviews! Your deadpan delivery suits the videos really well.
This game was quite popular in the ex-Soviet Union, and was known under the name Гномы (Gnomes).
Brings back great memories
A minute in and I'm already confused, why did they name it "Wiggles" in Germany? My mother's tongue is German, neither of these words mean ANYTHING in German so there's no chance anyone would have found "Diggles" offensive in the early 2000s
I have no idea. I asked the same question to the person who suggested me this game: "is Wiggles a pun in German like it is on 'dig' in English?" and the answer was no, not at all. I can only assume that maybe it just sounds funny?
@jauwn the game is German, so maybe the pun simply came later at the English localisation stage?
I played this game as a kid back when I was living in Poland, had no ideas what to do in that game and never really went past first level. This video brings me back....
This video made me feel vindicated over never getting past beginning of the second level as a kid.
I remember when I was about 10 when I found this at a Ross and begged my dad to get it. He did, installed it and tried playing it. It did not work. I remember staring at the box wanting to play it for weeks. My dad never got it to work. This video cured my past wonder and curiosity i forgot I had, thanks.
Man, the things you do for fun!! This was fantastic, what an utterly fascinating game.
Please do more reviews like this! You are so good at doing this and this video is so rewatchable!
Thanks for playing through and reviewing this odd specimen of a game! I think there's always something to be learnt from failed experiments - especially from games with a peculiar personality.
WHAAAATTT?!?!?!?!?
I loved this game as a kid! But as a german, googeling "wiggles" I couldn't find anything!
I cant belive I found it again now!!!! ❤❤❤
This was really interesting to watch! Man I love deep dives like this, you cover everything so well.
I personally had never heard of this game, but despite all its flaws the idea of it seems kinda fun. Well, atleast the aesthetics are. I wonder what a reworked version would be like, I think a game like this has potential.
It is so cool to see you growing as a creator in both style and dynamics of editing! Watching your videos chronologicaly is insane
I like this series; you're doing a unique series I don't see from other content creators.
Thanks! I want to try and continue this as a second type of content to complement the usual NFT game dunks
you should get the last 3 achievements in Diggles and make a video on it to show your dedication to the cause.
I was a kid playing this game back in the day. Loved the concept, but never beat level 1. As you said its slow even then and yeah it didn't run very well on my pc.
Good job digging it up.
Thank you so much for this video. Wiggles was a very important game of my childhood and I greatly enjoyed this revisit.
I've been looking for this game for years now and now my nostalgia is ruined by realism
but nice video! :)
Great exploration, my dude! Watched this while Rimworld w/ 400+ mods was on the other monitor and it's extremely interesting to see the history of the genre.
I thought I had dreamt this game up as a kid, so happy to see it again :D
Roller Coaster Tycoon Has such a huge place in my heart
Think Jauwn summed it up very well in the epilogue.
Great ideas, passion and ambition went into this game by the look of it.
But funding and time constraints obviously dug the devs a hole.
Pun not intended.
Edit: Forgot to mention just how much I enjoyed the vid. Heh
I often think of games like this. Wondering what might have been achieved if the resources were available.
You published this at the right time, that 2000 graphics + art style is nightmare fuel for halloween! Good thumbnail!
this game quickly literally feels like playing dont-starve-together with a whole class of kinder-gardeners.
20:58 Diggles actually take new mates when the previous one dies, just need to have a single of the opposite sex in the same free time near (or use the love potion)
29:56 Quest items and dwarves left behind actually just spawn in the new world, you don't need to take them trough the gate.
I never had one find a new mate, but that might have been a me problem.
And regarding quest items - I think my speed cheating may have broke that, because it only worked for me on level 1-2. After that they would just disappear, lol.
@@jauwn Yeah, mods can brake stuff in already fragile game :D everything else in the video is true, altghough it was not an obsticle for me, I finished the game as a kid when it was released in the old days, had a lot of fun. And finished it recenlty on Steam, the 100% achievement though was not as fun as it was not exactly clear what you need to do and there is particular sequence in how you need to do quests, have to follow online guides and as you said in the video, need to add that code fix lol.
Yeah, tjose constant crashes are tied to the rather popular speed-hacking of the registry files.
If I remember correctly (considering I last played and modded Wiggles around ca 2006) anything higher than 16 times speed in speed up fucked with some background function of how the soundtrack is implemented.
Overall the game was phenomenal considering the time frame, the sheer size of the levels aswell as the pretty well done german synchro coupled with the, at that time, very on point zeitgeisthumour really elevated it towards like an 8/10 game, IF you wre up to slow stuff.
Gotta admit tho, I did not recall the Fairy lady streaking in the credits, only remembered how, well, alluring her design was.
Still pretty much ""appropiate" in the same vain movies like American Pie were popular at that time *shrugs*
I really appreciate you taking the time to make this, it sounds truly insufferable but I loved the review. A very fascinating look at an extremely obscure game
Yeah, this is indeed a typical game you'd get here in Germany. I remember my sister's boyfriend playing it when it came out and shouting curses at the computer when it crashed. He never wisened up to the art of saving often.
It's very quintessential early 2000s Germany PC gaming I have to say. Looks, ""humor"", constant crashes and all.
A low point, even for us.
@@MariaIsabellaZNN
Yeah, agreed on all accounts. Don't have enough scare quotes for the humor myself.
It's just so 2000s German. Artwork like the Hugo games, that drug smoking stuff, the jank.
I love the crystal designs. Looks great for an early 2000s PC game.
I can definitely imagine how laggy this would have been when it first released.
Each Diggle on the pole is a symbolic representation of one family.
Each Diggle on the pole is a symbolic representation of one family.
Yaknow I think a complete remake could turn this hidden uh common diamond, into a neat little hidden gem.
What's up my Diggles!? Just enjoying this nice review.
I remember watching my father play this game on my grandma's computer. I have no idea how I remembered it, because I was maybe like 5yo. But man, I'm so happy that I finally found it after those years. This unlocked core memory 🙏
My parents played this game when I was a kid and I watched them play it, seemed like they had a lot of fun (and even beat it), I didn't play it all that much myself though. I didn't know it was released on steam and GOG recently, I may grab it some day. Cooking hamsters into shashlik (homyashlik as we call it) is an iconic part in our family :P
Dliggles sounds like a slur for the children working in the mines so we can buy what you have infront of yourself right now
0:48 Close your eyes while listening to that description and tell me this game wasn’t the precursor to Dwarf Fortress. The release dates even line up!
I like that Fenrir in this game started as a golden retriever puppy. I love the idea of him just being super friendly to Freki and Geri and them being like "wut."
Everyone: Dwarf.
This guy: *D o r v e s .*
Just recently found your channel and im so glad i did. I love your way of portraying things in a comedic light and actually reviewing off the grid games. Love it, thank you for making content like this
Guarantee if this game was remade then it would actually be a great game. The concepts are all amazing but I totally agree with it being an issue of execution rather than being fundamentally flawed.
I have font memories of playing this game, though me and my siblings never played the campaign mode to my recollection. We used to waste hours sitting in front of the family PC just watching them and sending them to unfortunate ends.