Dig Dug Recreation

In June 2019, I completed my favourite project to date: a recreation of the 1982 arcade game Dig Dug. Although I took some artistic liberties, I think the result turned out to be pretty faithful to the original game. Putting Object Oriented Programming to full use, I managed to create a game that is much more complex than my prior forays in a way that, when looking at the code, actually seems simpler.

The first level of my recreation is faithful to the original game. However, every subsequent level is randomly generated with four enemies spawning in a random 'hole' dug in the map. Like in the original, there are two types of enemies: the goggled Pookas, and the green Fygars. They have the ability to pass through walls in their ghost form, allowing them to travel towards the player. If an enemy is the last of their allies alive, they will attempt to escape at the upper-left side of the play area.

The player, as Dig Dug, is able to inflate and kill enemies with their bicycle pump. As in the original, the pump requires multiple clicks to pop the enemy, otherwise releasing them after a short time. Dig Dug is able to dig through all of the dirt in the stage, allowing strategists to kite the enemies while raking up points from dirt dug. A personal favourite feature of mine from the original game is the music that plays when the player moves (and stops thereafter), which I have also brought over into my version.

When the game ends (via the player running out of lives), the score earned will be checked against the high scores stored via Pickle and sorted in if high enough.

Please check out the video below to see the game in action and, if you want to try it out for yourself, go to the GitHub repository for the game below:

Go to GitHub Page