I've been enjoying the game for the last month, thanks to Dig Deep having been a featured "best of" game in the App Store. As I played, I realized that the game is at least partly a humorous critique of capitalist colonial exploitation.
Consider - the owners of the mining corporation are never exposed to the risk of loss; the indentured employees of that evil corporation are literally dumped from orbit like yesterday's garbage, alone, unassisted, and armed with nothing more substantial than a pickaxe.
The "expeditions" have no altruistic or scientific motivation. The miners are tasked with a single goal - fall downward forever, without hope of rescue, while despoiling and tearing apart an alien planet for a meager amount of gold.
And ... as the player, one is forced to play the villain, or at the very least the villain's unappreciated servant. The aliens should be the player's natural allies against the real enemy (the faceless mining company), but the player's servitude is complete and unavoidable. None of the local inhabitants have any reason to accommodate the player's presence; all the so-called "monster" aliens are left with the sad duty of attempting to stop the player from ruining their homes. For the player, there is no redemption or escape from the nightmarish circumstances; one merely falls, endlessly, while killing the innocent defenders and scratching out a little bit of gold. The aliens bleed and die, winning only a moment's respite from the rapacious invaders plummeting downward.
I would love a sequel in which the oppressed proletariat rise up (and up, and up) along with the exploited native population to unceasingly tear apart and cast down the system that initiated this colonial extraction of raw material.