The Dig

The Dig is a graphical adventure game, originally released in 1995, published by LucasArts. It was the eleventh game to use the SCUMM engine.

Like LOOM and Full Throttle, The Dig is a more serious game, lacking the outright humour to be found in most of the LucasArts adventures (even, to some extent, the Indiana Jones games). It is also the only one of the LucasArts adventures that fits in the science fiction genre. The plot begins with the standard science fiction cliché of an asteroid on collision course with Earth, and a team sent to place nuclear explosives in order to drive it off its collision path. After the explosion, however, the team find an alien artifact which beams them to an alien planet. Its story is well-conceived and strongly developed, and widely considered its best component; complaints are levelled at its serious atmosphere, occasionally frustrating puzzles, and over-reliance on dialogue.

The game was released only on CD-ROM, with a full voiceover soundtrack. It has a surprisingly heavy-hitting credit list for a computer game; the project leader was Sean Clark, but it is based on an idea by Steven Spielberg and has writing credits for Spielberg, the noted author Orson Scott Card, and the well-known Infocom author and RPG designer Brian Moriarty.