Dig your own tunnels for cherries and fling a bouncing power-ball at the monsters on your tail.
Was this fun?
How to play
You tunnel through a field of earth gathering cherries while monsters chase you down the passages you cut. Moving into solid ground digs it out, so you are building the maze you are being hunted in — every shortcut you make is also a route for whatever is behind you.
Collect all the cherries to clear the level.
Your power-ball travels straight along a tunnel, bounces, and must return before you can throw again — you are defenceless while it is out.
Heavy apples sit in the field. Undermine one and it falls, crushing anything beneath it.
Apples are scarce early and become more common as the levels climb, from two on the opening board up to five.
Monsters you defeat drop letters spelling EXTRA, and completing the word is worth a life.
Controls
Desktop: arrow keys or WASD to move and dig, Space to throw the power-ball
Phone & tablet: on-screen controls supported on touch devices
Tips & strategy
Dig straight corridors when you can. The power-ball travels in a line, so a crooked tunnel is one you cannot defend.
Never throw at something already close. The ball has to come back before you can throw again, and a monster that survives the shot reaches you during the wait.
Apples are worth more than the ball. They take several monsters at once and cost you nothing but the digging — but they are finite, so drop them on groups rather than stragglers.
Leave a couple of cherries deliberately. Clearing the board ends the level, and with it your chance to finish EXTRA.
Dig with escape in mind. A dead end you carved to reach one cherry is a dead end you may have to reverse out of later.
Origins
Cherry Digger recreates Mr. Do!, released by Universal in 1982, a dig-maze game that hands you two quite different ways to fight back and makes you choose under pressure.
You can hurl a bouncing power-ball at the monsters chasing you and then stand defenceless while it travels and returns, or you can undermine one of the heavy apples in the field and drop it on them. Clearing the cherries finishes the level, but the letters dropped by defeated monsters spell E-X-T-R-A for a free life, so the fast clear and the rewarding clear pull in opposite directions. Good players deliberately leave cherries on the board.
About Cherry Digger
Cherry Digger is an original free browser homage to the classic digging-maze arcade game, with Easy/Normal/Hard difficulty. Play instantly in your browser.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
