The head designer, Haruki Negi, wanted the game to appeal to a more casual audience, specifically children and newcomers to the Dig Dug franchise.

For the multiplayer portion, Mori created a "gondola system", which stripped host-controlled parties in favor of pre-made servers for players to join; the team added this to help encourage teamwork with other users.

[1] Enemies could be defeated by either using a pump to fill them up with air until they pop, or by drilling alongside fault lines in an island to sink the sections they are standing on.

[1] Players could create their own avatars or even select ones based on characters from other Namco video games, including Mappy,[2] The Tower of Druaga,[2] Valkyrie no Densetsu[3] and Wonder Momo.

[7] Dig Dug Island was first conceived in 2004 by Kazutoshi Mori, who worked for Japanese online game developer VerX, a subsidiary of Vector Corporation.

[2] Haruki Negi was assigned as the project's designer,[2] who wanted the game to appeal to a more casual audience, namely children and newcomers to the Dig Dug franchise, being made to be easily accessible and simplistic in nature.

[10] In 2009, VerX began to permanently close Dig Dug Island and the sister game Tancle, itself based on Namco Bandai's Tank Battalion franchise.