Going Under Review | PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC.

Going Under is the newest rogue-lite dungeon crawler to be released, adopting the rogue-lite gameplay without losing a push for narrative in the process. It pokes fun at toxic work culture, specifically in the silicon valley space, making it an interesting think piece on the very same industry the game is a part of.

Going Under takes place in the newest Silicon Valley startup, a soda company called Fizzle. Despite being a soda company, it's one ingrained in technology as the staff uses algorithms to come up with various new flavors their customer base could like.

We play as a new unpaid intern at this company, a woman named Jackie. Unbeknownst to her, she just signed up for a job that'll have her cleaning up the basement of this company, a boring job, or at least it normally would be. At this company, however, the basement is filled with dungeons each with their own failed apps at their core.

Despite being failures, the remains of the apps could lead to future success, as we do learn from our mistakes. Now Jackie must travel down to the dungeons of Fizzle, exterminate all the monsters lingering beneath the building, all while getting coffee of course.

It's a heavily satirical story on the toxic work culture present in silicon valley. While the premise has been played to death, Going Under somehow manages to stay charming despite the redundant parody tropes this subject has faced in recent years. At its heart, Going Under is a Dungeon Crawler themed around the idea of silicon valley tech startups.

Sliding down into the basements underneath your offices, you'll come across these dungeons filled with monsters and weapons. Jackie might seem like any ordinary intern but she has her own unique power. Ok, maybe it's not a power, but she can basically pick up anything around her and use it as a weapon.

Sure some might be more effective than others, for example, a keyboard might do more damage than a pencil. Jackie is able to hold a total of three weapons at a time, each with their own durability gauge to indicate when it might be time to switch out for a new weapon.

Additionally, when highlighting a weapon, the UI indicates if a new weapon is stronger or weaker than the current weapon being held, making sure you make a wise choice when swapping items. The random generating dungeons and weapons helped keep each run through the basement feeling new and fresh.

Part of keeping the gameplay fresh is all the extra skills you can earn during each run. Hidden away throughout dungeons are different types of rooms. Some contain monsters, some are shops where you can buy new items or health regenerators, and lastly, some hold skills.

Skills are buffs that earn you some sort of bonuses throughout gameplay. Earning extra cash to spend on shops every time you beat an enemy or doing more damage with heavier weapons are just some of the perks you can earn. These dungeons consist of three floors with the last one being a boss fight.

The real meat and potatoes of the gameplay though is the journey to that boss fight. During the first two floors of dungeons, rooms are randomly generated with different enemies and items in each room. Despite not being able to keep skills and weapons across every run, there is some lasting effect.

You can pick different coworkers, each that have a fun unique personality, and have them be your mentor. They'll assign you smaller side quests to complete in dungeons, like taking out a certain number of enemies or buying a coffee machine from a dungeon shop.

Completing these quests can then unlock more lasting skills for future runs. Across its 8-10 hour campaign, that's if you're going to the lengths of completion at least, Going Under was charming as much as it was funny. Dungeons offered a variety of things to do and complete through the multiple side objectives assigned by mentors.

However, if you run through just the basic objectives of defeating dungeon bosses, I can see this game coming off as shallow. The campaign can be done rather quickly and in that sense, gameplay can come off as simple. Personally, I enjoyed picking up the extra objectives as the environment and world, captivated me in its satirical narrative.

Team17 is well known for publishing games with a quirky, derpy, and fun personality, Going Under is no different. It has an art style to it that looks like if Gang Beasts were reimagined as a silicon valley tech startup. Characters look derpy, especially when you end up getting knocked out in a dungeon.

The blank stare of the characters is silly as much as it is charming. It's not an intensive game either. The performance was solid across multiple platforms, hitting 1080p on PS4 and Xbox One with a 60 fps performance. On Nintendo Switch, that's dropped down to 900p docked and 720p handheld at 30 fps.

It's a lower frame rate on Switch though it's bearable with the trade-off being portable play. Somehow Going Under got typical elevator music and remixed it into it perfect sounding dungeon crawling music with a hint of metal and funk. It's quite literally, chill music to vibe to and when crawling through dungeons, wandering around for the next item shop or skill room, it fits perfectly.

Going Under joins the likes of recent solid rogue-like and lite indie games such as Hades and Spelunky 2, that have just delivered consistently great gameplay for a genre so saturated. For Going Under, the combination of a well done satirical narrative, its solid gameplay environment, and it entwining together so beautifully, Going Under is silly sure, but it's fantastic.