UnderMine Review | Action adventure roguelike

UnderMine is one of the best games I've played this year. But, I'm a gamer who enjoys a more grinding to power-up roguelike experience. If you feel the same way then I one hundred percent recommend the game. I'm having a blast! The absolute polish, good humor, and ridiculous amount of items in the game is impressive.

Let me go into detail why I'm loving UnderMine so much. The most important detail of UnderMine is the game loop. The developer created a reason why you can continue playing, even after death, and it's one of my favorites yet. Because you're not continuing after death, c'mon, death is final everyone knows it.

Instead, you play as a new peasant every run and most characters in the game can't tell the difference. They're just peasants! It's a slick design and the peasants are generic enough for it to work perfectly. Anyway, your job is to dive into the mine and figure out what's with all the tremors.

But it's incredibly dangerous down there! The randomly generated mine is filled to the brim with enemies but the rooms can be just as deadly. Some rooms are mostly an open pit, others have sharp rotating blades , and some have floor spikes. That doesn't even cover all the dangers.

Someone needs to inform OSHA of the working conditions. The good news is it's a gold mine. Use your pickax to knock some gold loose to collect it for new gear. The bad news is that you're going to die and drop it all. I'm sorry. That's where your familiar, a Canary, comes in handy.

They'll carry as much gold as they can back to the top for your replacement. Hopefully, they'll put it to good use since it's their turn to clean up the mine. Moving on to relics, the most exciting mechanic in the game. These are super powerful items you can find in the mine.

Usually behind a locked door so bring lots of keys! You won't find one relic on a run but more like one relic per floor. The relics just keep stacking and stacking to turn UnderMine from a normal game into insanity. And anything that can happen will be allowed to happen.

For example, there's a relic that gives your attack chain lightening. That's awesome! However, lightning also affects water so now if there's water in the room you can electrocute yourself. Yes, even to death. Is it an upgrade now? I'm not so sure. The game lets you become crazy powerful but there's no guarantee you'll win.

You still won't have enough healing and with all the new opportunities to kill yourself, the mine is just as dangerous. You never know what relics will show up on a run and it keeps UnderMine from growing stale. I've never had a boring run. Never. Before we go too far we must talk about my favorite mechanic.

At times it's the most frustrating mechanic but I love it too much. You probably noticed green slimes climbing out of the woodwork to steal my gold on the ground. They rush over, snatch it, and flee to the edge of the room as quickly as possible. With a slight pause at the edge that's just long enough to give you hope you might get the gold back before they hop off into the oblivion where you'll never see that gold again.

It's infuriating and yet I still love it. How can you stay mad at them, they're so cute! Also, hitting them off the screen is satisfying. Whack! It's like you took a great big golf swing to make them fly out of the room. That little extra to shoot them out of there instead of killing them is the best.

The slimes make combat complicated too. If some gold accidentally falls on the ground of course they're coming to steal it. Do you greedily go for the gold? I go for it every time and every time I pay the price with my health. It's too dangerous in most rooms to focus on collecting the gold without finishing off the enemies.

How about another scenario? A few relics turn gold into a weapon, it's brilliant. Do you knock the gold loose knowing fully well those gluttonous green bastards are going to show up and bring chaos? You'll probably lose at least a few gold pieces but the extra damage could save your life.

It's a tricky decision but I love these frantic moments in UnderMine. Anyway you spend the gold you collect in the mine on permanent upgrades. In the hub area, you can purchase upgrades to your health, damage, and the gold sack . These are straight upgrades and some players are going to find them boring.

But this isn't where your real power comes from. You want to pick up whatever you can afford, it seems inevitable that you'll have them all if you play enough. The best you can do it focus on melee or ranged damage first. There are a few other special item upgrades but no spoilers.

While a comparison to Rogue Legacy can be made here it's not worth looking too deep. They both can feel like a grind to get more powerful but Rogue Legacy had branching upgrades with more choices. However, UnderMine is more consistent since the peasants do not start with a crippling birth issue.

Now, I mentioned before you use keys to unlock doors and to save them for relics. But that isn't always the best use. You might need one to open the shop door so you can purchase food for restoring your health. You could choose to risk it and take the relic and hope for food later.

Bombs are in the same boat. You can use them offensively or you can save them for chests and secret walls. There's a ton of decisions that go into a successful run. I really enjoy the resource management and making tough decisions that can cause the entire run to fall apart.

Curses are another tough decision you need to consider on a run. There are a few places you can pick one up but one example is purple chests. If you choose to open the chest you'll get one or more curses depending on the strength of the item. For example, I had a curse that gave all enemy attacks poison.

It was a slow death sentence. You should keep in mind there are a few ways to remove a curse but none of them are readily available. There's no way to count on it. However, if you're confident in your abilities then, by all means, become cursed. If I didn't take damage for the rest of the run the poison curse wouldn't have mattered.

I'm not that skilled. Even though there are a bunch of relics already in the mine you can add new ones. You'll find blueprints and purple gems called Thorium on your runs. If you bring them back to the blacksmith they will craft the relic. You get the item to take with you but once you die it's lost down there until you find it again.

It stresses me out to start with a relic because if it's a bad run it feels like a waste. You should keep in mind the blacksmith isn't available from the start. The main wizard guy who sends you into the mine has also sent everyone else. Unfortunately, they need saving.

Your first task is to find the blacksmith and if you keep searching there are quite a few other shopkeepers to recover. Rescuing them opens up more options for spending gold before you dive into the mine again. Overall, UnderMine is one of the best games I've played this year.

It has so many possibilities on a run with all the items and different ways they interact with the world. I never have a run that feels similar to another. The hectic gameplay is great too. Once you're locked in a room it's up to you and your skill level to get the heck out.