Review by: Gavin Carter
Published: March 21, 2002

When I sit down to play strategy games, I have certain expectations in place for the experience. I expect that I will be given command over a large, well-disciplined force that will carry out my orders to the letter. I expect my troops to give me their all, putting off even sleep if necessary to complete their task. Thus, Diggles: The Myth of Fenris, a title that tasks you with the management of a misfit, lazy band of dwarves, was a new and unique experience for me, as it will be for most strategy fans. Developer Innonics has taken elements from such disparate releases as Lemmings and The Sims and mixed them together to create a brand new genre-bending title.

The story of Diggles reaches heavily into Norse mythology. The title begins with the supreme god Odin awakening the dwarven king from a peaceful, mid-morning slumber. It turns out that Odin’s beloved dog, Fenris, has broken his magical leash and run off to roam the underworld. For some untold reason, Odin lacks the power to retrieve his pet himself, and must coerce the dwarven king with promises of beer, demi-godhood, and beards, to commit his best clan to the task. The dwarves must find each missing link of the Gleipnir, and use its power to reel Fenris in. To help ensure success, Odin commits his smart-mouthed Elven fairy to assist the dwarves when so required.

Diggles begins with the king calling for a tournament to decide which clan is best suited for Odin’s task. As the dwarves begin to get excited, the helper fairy shows up to walk you through the basic control of your own dwarven clan, the Diggles. The title features several other clans that your dwarves will interact with throughout the course of their quest. From the drugged-up, pothead clan you encounter first to the light-hating, underground dwelling clan, a plethora of interesting characters exist in the world of Diggles. Your own troop, the games’ namesake, is the most generic of the clans, allowing you to mold them into whatever image you like.

The majority of gameplay in Diggles involves a combination of Dig Dug-style tunneling exploration and The Sims-style personal micromanagement. Diggles is played in full 3D, but for the most part, everything exists on the same 2D plane. The playing field is strongly reminiscent of looking at an ant farm: You can rotate the camera very slightly in any direction to get a better view, but for all intents and purposes your units can only move up and down and side to side. The Diggles start out on the surface of the world, and must tunnel down to advance. An elaborate system of tunnels exists at varying intervals beneath the surface, but your Diggles must search them out by creating horizontal and vertical passages through the rock. To plan out tunnels, you simply “paint” the screen with a green highlighting tool. Your Diggles will then, at their leisure, start chipping away at the marked locations to create the passages.

Your Diggles are hardly the hardened, organized troops of the standard RTS pantheon. In fact, they’re nothing at all like the stout, proud dwarves of the standard Tolkien fantasy mythos. They are simple, diminuitive, lazy creatures, who require food and rest and aren’t very good at anything when they start out. Much of the gameplay revolves around tweaking your dwarves’ work schedules so they get enough time for food, rest, and leisure. You alter their schedules by shading in areas of a clock, dictating exactly what portion of the day is spent doing work and what portion is spent at leisure. The Diggles have Sim-like statistics such as alertness and mood that will fall if you do not provide them enough leisure time. Allow these stats to fall far enough, and your Diggles become less likely to follow your orders or take work on by themselves.