A game that is only about digging a hole — solo side project, 1M copies in six months

Solo dev 'Ben' spent his spare time making a $4.99 game whose whole loop is digging — A Game About Digging A Hole sold 250K copies in week one.

DoubleBee · rokaplay Bou·tique

创意是什么Make the game exactly what its title says: you dig a hole in your new house's garden, sell what you find, upgrade your shovel — and the simple loop is the whole product.伤筋动骨

当时的题目

Developer Ben created the game in his spare time; the publisher's own release says the whole thing was built in about two weeks. It launched for $4.99 on Steam via indie label rokaplay Bou·tique on February 7, 2025.

它是怎么成立的

A Game About Digging A Hole does exactly what its name promises: you buy a house, walk into the garden, and dig a hole. There are no enemies to fight — you collect buried resources, sell them, upgrade your shovel and bag, and dig deeper toward a mystery at the center of the earth. The whole game is that one loop.

Its developer, Ben (working as DoubleBee), said on the Steam page that he created it in his spare time; the publisher's November release describes the game as built in about two weeks. rokaplay Bou·tique launched it on February 7, 2025 at $4.99 — deliberately less than a cup of takeaway coffee.

Before launch, short clips were already spreading: 5 million views on TikTok, 2.2 million on YouTube Shorts and 14.5 million on Instagram Reels. Within a week it had sold 250,000 copies with more than 3,500 'Very Positive' Steam reviews, and by August 2025 the publisher announced total sales past one million — a six-month result from a one-mechanic side project.

妙在哪

The literal title is the pitch: 'a game about digging a hole' explains itself in six words and gives viewers a reason to click.
One core loop — dig, sell, upgrade — is understandable in a ten-second video, which is exactly the format that spread it.
A $4.99 impulse price turned curiosity into purchases instead of wishlists.
No marketing spend: social clips, streams and 'Very Positive' reviews compounded into organic discovery on Steam's top-sellers chart.

做出来什么

250,000 copies in the first week with 3,500+ 'Very Positive' Steam reviews; over one million copies sold by early August 2025, roughly six months after launch.

可以借走的

A brutally simple premise can be the whole differentiator: when a game's title is its entire pitch, the video clips make themselves, and a coffee-priced download lowers the risk of trying it.

后来

The game became one of 2025's breakout indie hits, with more than 1.2 million PC players by November 2025 and over 150 million combined views across TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Publisher rokaplay announced console versions for PS5, Xbox, Switch and more for December 2025, while its creator moved on to a bigger project, the co-op survival game Solarpunk.

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