The Mystery of the Surface

The Mystery of the Surface is a decent Dig Dug / Pac-Man clone from Russian developer DOKA.

Your goal: get rid of all the dirt on screen by digging through it. While you do this, enemy robots begin to appear one by one, chasing after you. Get caught by one of these, and the game is over. Since these robots cannot make their own path but can only traverse the path you have created from clearing dirt, creating the right path that "cuts off" these enemies until the last possible moment becomes an important strategy to the game. Other than that, there is nothing much here that brings the addiction of Dig Dug to a new level. The game is in Russian, but there so little text you need to read it doesn't matter much ;) Worth a look for arcade fans, but not truly timeless. Big thanks to DOKA for releasing this relatively unknown game into the public domain in 2003 :)

Review By HOTUD