Animals That Live Underground — And Why Only the Mole Made It Into the Game
More animals dig and live in the ground than you'd think.
Each builds a burrow of a different shape, for a different reason.
The mole is a master digger.
Pushing soil aside with broad, shovel-like forepaws, it carves tunnels through the earth.
For a mole, a burrow is both home and hunting ground — it eats the earthworms and bugs that fall through the dirt walls as it travels its tunnels.
Those little mounds that bulge up above the surface are the leftovers of that excavation.
The prairie dog is a squirrel-family animal that lives on the North American plains, where many of them gather to form a large underground town.
Burrows are divided by purpose, and when a predator appears they send the alarm to one another with their distinctive call.
A badger's burrow is called a "sett," and it gets used across generations, growing larger all the while.
Some setts have many entrances.
So underground turns out to be a busier neighborhood than you'd expect.
For some it's a hunting ground, for some a town, and for others a home handed down generation after generation.
Only the mole made it in
Somewhere along the burrow Mocha is digging, there is one neighbor who settled in first: a mole.
There's a reason it was the one I picked.
What defines a prairie dog town or a badger's sett is space — wide burrows, many rooms, many entrances.
But this game's burrow is a single unbranched tube, so there's nowhere to show that kind of structure.
The mole is different.
What defines a mole isn't space, it's movement — traveling through the wall and popping out unexpectedly.
That translates perfectly well into a single tube, and it happens to be exactly the kind of threat a runner needs.
Static obstacles and moving ones
Rocks and roots hold still.
What they demand is reaction: see it, dodge or jump, and you're fine; be late and you're hit.
The mole is different.
It drifts slowly back and forth along the wall while popping in and out of it.
Dodging based on where it is gets you hit; you have to read which way it's heading and go the other way.
It's an obstacle that asks for prediction rather than reaction.
Because of that, moles don't appear early.
They start showing up once you've descended a while.
Demanding prediction from someone who hasn't settled into the controls just produces deaths that feel unfair.
It keeps the difficulty curve in order: learn to react, then learn to predict.
Its movement speed is deliberately slow, too.
Something darting quickly back and forth turns prediction into luck.
Moving slowly is what gives the player time to read the direction and respond.
Different burrows, different neighbors
In the Moonlit Burrow, meteors cross the ring instead of moles.
The principle is the same moving obstacle, with one rule changed.
Where a mole goes back and forth, a meteor travels one direction only, and much faster.
So the counterplay inverts.
With a mole you can wait for it to turn and slip behind it; with a meteor waiting is fatal, and you have to commit to crossing well ahead or dropping clearly behind.
Changing a single rule on the same kind of threat turned out to change the whole character of the burrow.