It features a full voice-acting cast, including voice actors Robert Patrick and Steve Blum, and a digital orchestral score.

The game uses a combination of drawn two-dimensional artwork and limited, pre-rendered three-dimensional clips, with the latter created by Industrial Light & Magic.

Unlike other LucasArts adventure games, which typically includes humor, The Dig took a somber approach to its science fiction motif.

In the game, the player takes the role of Commander Boston Low, part of a five-man team planting explosives on an asteroid in order to avert its collision course with Earth.

Discovering the asteroid is hollow, Low and two of his team are transported to a long-abandoned complex, filled with advanced technology, on a strange alien world.

Low and his companions must utilize xenoarchaeology to learn how the technology works, discover the fate of the alien race that built it, and solve other mysteries to find a way to return home.

Multiple reviewers said the game's puzzles were too difficult, and other aspects, such as its graphics, voice acting, and dialogue, received mixed receptions.

The Dig is a point-and-click adventure game, where the player, as Commander Boston Low, uses the mouse cursor to point to people, objects, and other parts of the environment to look at or interact with them, collect and use items in their inventory, and talk to non-player characters.

The crew consists of Commander Boston Low (voiced by Robert Patrick); Dr. Ludger Brink (Steven Blum), a German archaeologist and geologist; Maggie Robbins (Mari Weiss), a linguistics expert and reporter; pilot Ken Borden (David Lodge); and NASA technician Cora Miles (Leilani Jones), who is also running for Congress.

They encounter a strange form of spirit-like energy that guides them to a particular patch of ground, which they find to be soft and consistent with an opening that has been buried by time.

In this story, a crew of explorers in a spaceship visit an abandoned planet, discovering signs of an extraterrestrial civilization that left behind technological artifacts.

This version of the production was more similar to the released game, but it contained one extra character: a Japanese business tycoon and science-hobbyist named Toshi Olema, who uses his money to buy his way onto the Attila project crew.

[9] Toshi would have met a gruesome death when he stumbled into a cavern with acid dripping from the ceiling, and the other astronauts would have been unable to safely retrieve his body and bring him back with life crystals.

After the release of Jurassic Park in 1993, Spielberg received numerous complaints from parents who had ignored the PG-13 rating and brought their young children to see the film, only to discover that it contained some sequences of horror, blood, and violence.

[16] The music is relatively static during most of the game, used more as a backdrop than a prominent aspect of gameplay, and has been described as consisting mostly of "vague cadenzas, modulations and movements without much consequence for the material".

[15] The Dig was the first LucasArts game to have its soundtrack sold separately as an audio CD,[17] adapted as a linear continuity of finite pieces.

[32] However, the company's Bill Tiller later said that upper management considered it a commercial letdown, and speculated that its "budget had run so high that it couldn't make its money back."

[27] GameSpot's Jeffrey Adam Young agreed, saying of the puzzles, "some follow logic, others just call for trial and error, and yet others will leave you clueless".

[23] A reviewer for Maximum disagreed, saying that "with the exception of one or two that were just too obscure, [the puzzles are] set at just the right level to keep a serious adventure freak riveted (and not too hacked off).

[28] Dickens thought the writing was hit and miss, panning the dialogue as "relentlessly cheesy and clichéd", but approving of the overall storyline and its suspenseful atmosphere.

[19] The reviewer for Maximum noted that the story has a much more serious tone than LucasArts' usual wacky fare, and praised the "well developed storyline and characters".

[20] Yee summarized his review by saying, "The Dig brings otherworldly adventure, a real sense of exploration, and a true cinematic style to your earthbound PC.

With an imaginative story, an attractive visual backdrop and a wealth of intelligent puzzles, it belongs near the top of the adventure game class.

[17] About "Mission to the Asteroid", the opening song, he wrote, "Much of the composition conveys beauty and serenity, yet there is a certain tragic element created with the sweeping chord changes and sometimes elegiac motifs".

The novel also provides some background detail (such as the reaction on Earth after the discovery of Attila), in addition to explaining several mysteries left unexplored in the game.

Publishers Weekly panned the novelization, claiming it was severely restricted by the fact that it was based on a computer game, in which the hero merely collects objects and solves puzzles.