One input, two mirrored runners. Your keys drive the cyan runner and its
violet mirror at the same time: press left and the cyan one goes left while
the violet one goes right (up/down and digging are mirrored too). Holes are
shared on the one grid — dig with care, since a hole one runner makes is real
for the other. Move & climb with Arrows / WASD (no jump — you fall
with gravity). Dig down-left with Z/Q, down-right with
X/E (brick only; it refills and crushes anything inside). Solve each
level as a synchronized puzzle: trap the guards, grab all the gold, then get
both runners to the escape ladders at the top. P pause,
R restart.
Gold Dig
Grab all the gold and slip away, dropping trap-holes to bury the guards on your tail.
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How to play
Collect every piece of gold in a maze of brick, ladders and rails, then escape. You have no weapon at all — the only thing you can do to a guard is dig a hole in the floor beside you and let them fall into it, and the hole does not stay open for long.
Dig left or right into brick to open a temporary hole. It refills after a while, with whatever is in it.
Solid tiles cannot be dug at all, so parts of every level are permanently fixed.
Ladders can be climbed and stood on; rails are traversed hand over hand and you fall off the ends.
Empty space is a fall, so a hole you dug is also a hole you can drop through.
The escape ladders are inert until the last gold is collected, and only then become the way out.
Controls
Desktop: Arrow keys or WASD to move and climb; Z or Q digs left, X or E digs right. Keyboard recommended.
Phone & tablet: keyboard play recommended for precise digging and climbing.
Tips & strategy
A trap is temporary, so time it. A guard held in a hole that refills while you are still above it is back on your tail and no worse off.
Never dig the floor you are standing on unless you intend to be somewhere else. Falling into your own trap is the most common way to lose a level.
Learn where the solid tiles are before you plan a route. They are the parts of the maze that cannot be worked around.
Collect the awkward gold first, while the guards are still spread out and the escape route does not yet matter.
The exit only exists after the last coin, so plan the ending before you take it — finishing the gold in a dead end is a level lost at the final step.
Origins
Gold Dig revives Lode Runner, released by Broderbund in 1983 and written by Doug Smith while he was a student. You gather every piece of gold in a brick-and-ladder maze and climb out.
You have no weapon at all. What you have is the ability to dig a hole in the floor beside you, which a guard will fall into and be held by until the brick regrows — with the guard inside it, if you have timed it badly enough to still be standing there. Traps are therefore temporary and digging your own escape route is as likely to seal you in. The game shipped with a level editor, which is much of why people were still making stages for it decades later.
About Gold Dig
Gold Dig is an original take on the dig-and-trap puzzle-platform arcade genre, free to play instantly in your browser.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
