I recently played The Dig for the first time, which passed me by when I was younger. I had heard of it I didn’t realise it was another Lucas/Spielberg game. I’d just come off a couple of other Lucasarts games and it was quite different.
Looking back it seems quite divisive, I think because it was so different to the comedy Lucasarts adventures, but there’s still a lot of love for it floating around the internet, and now I’ve added to it here if you fancy a long read: https://p7uen.neocities.org/posts/2023-06-23-The-Dig
That was a nice piece. I remember becoming hooked on this game from the moment I heard about it. I think that was due to its history of being a Spielberg project that was deemed too expensive to make our something like that.
The first time I played the game was a demo version from a magazine CD and I knew I wanted the full game, I love a bit of good sci-fi.
Once The Dig was released, I went all in. Bought the game on day of release and ordered the novel as well. I also remember finding the soundtrack CD at a record fair.
You probably have to use the way back machine to find it, there was a website called The Dig Museum. It had information about earlier versions of the game and some of the unused graphics that hide in the released code.
Finally, the one puzzle that used to drive me crazy was the rebuilding of the skeleton. I’m sure those nights had to be arranged pixel perfect!
I had trouble with the skeleton even after looking at pictures of the solution! I save my sanity and spare time by very happily using walkthroughs when I’m playing old games, I used to think it was cheating but I’m over it now.