Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: UnderMine
Developer: Thorium Entertainment
Publisher: Thorium Entertainment
Genre: Action, Adventure, Roguelite, RPG
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: February 11, 2021
Price: $19.99
Roguelite games are getting more and more prevalent as time goes on. Probably it is an easy choice for game developers, especially in the indie scene, as games of this genre offer tons of replayability. Playing one is pretty much playing a different game each time you play, and despite the high difficulty at the start, eventually, you will be leveled up enough to make minced meat out of bosses. You have to spend hours grinding, but that is part of the fun.
Thorium’s UnderMine is another one these games. It has now found a new home on the Nintendo Switch, like many other indie games before it. It did not reinvent the roguelite wheel and does not try to do so, and Thorium knows it. Running with the risk of their game drowning in the sea of roguelite games, they somehow made UnderMine standout with its cutesy visuals, charm, and overall appeal that highlight its amazing gameplay and feedback loop.
The game is presented in an isometric view, similar to the Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon. It looks really nice and detailed. I like the elemental effects shown on screen, like dust and water and burning foliage. The game also performs really well on the Nintendo Switch, with only a tiny bit of slow down when things get really busy. It also has a really good soundtrack with catchy tunes that range from march-like melody to encourage you as you begin your journey to upbeat ones during boss battles to highlight urgency. This game has a very high production value and yet still has that air of being relaxed and laidback.
In this game, you play as one of the endless stream of peasants sent to an underground mine to investigate the tremors that the village above are experiencing. You meet with the Arkanos the Archmage in the Hub (where you start and end up respawning when you die) who tells you what is going on and what you need to accomplish, and with that knowledge, you go through an adventure. Armed with your pickaxe, you soon find yourself battling against a myriad of monsters that pepper the procedurally-generated floors below. Your goal is to go from room to room, defeating all the monsters within to advance to the next one, and seek out an entrance to the next floor below. But it is not easy as it sounds, especially during the first few hours of your adventure.
As you progress from room to room, aside from killing monsters, you will have to gather resources, mainly gold ores, which are used for buying upgrades for your HP, attack power, and other upgrades. You will also find, albeit rarely, Thorium crystals, a type of gem that you can use to craft Relics. Any crafted Relics become available on your succeeding runs, but of course, you will encounter them randomly. These Relics are special accessories that grant you temporary boons on your runs, most of the time, at least. There is at least one relic found on each floor. They can grant you a higher attack power or higher movement speed or allow you to gather more gold and so on. Some relics even grant you additional blessings on top of the boon, and most of them stack up with one another. So the more relics you have, the better you run will be. Most of the time.
Now, some Relics, instead of blessings, will grant you curses. Curses like slower movement or attack speed, less gold to gather, getting burned when hit by enemies, and so on. Basically, bad stuff will happen you when you are cursed, as usual, and they also stack up with one another. There are some ways to get rid of the curses, but most likely, you will be stuck with your curses for the remainder of your run.
And as you probably know already, a run ends when you die. And in this game, you will die. A lot.
Aside from having your character getting permanently killed (technically) when you die, you lose all of your equipped Relics (including all the blessings and curses that come with them) and a good portion of the gold ores you have collected (half of them at the start of the game). Your bird ally (Familiar) that comes with you will help you gather loose gold ores and will also bring a portion of your gold back to the Hub. You get to control another peasant for another run, and you may speak to Arkanos again to reflect on what just transpired and get new info on when you need to do next time to get a better results in your succeeding runs. Controlling a new peasant doesn’t really matter, as all of them have the same move set and attack and build, but with a different gender, clothes, and name. If for some reason, you don’t like the character that you have on a run, you can change it to another by using a magical mirror found in the Hub.
Whenever you die and respawn back at the Hub, you mainly get to spend your remaining gold ores at the Forge, the blacksmith’s shop. There you can buy upgrades for your HP, swing damage (the amount of damage that you unleash on enemies when you swing your pickaxe at them), throw damage (damage that you unleash when you throw your pickaxe), throw range (the distance that your pickaxe can reach when you throw it), and gold bag (you get to keep more of your collected gold ores upon each upgrade). The upgrades get more and more expensive and thus will compel you either go through more runs or just get better in the game so that you can go through more rooms and floors and thus, collecting more gold ores.
You will also be able to meet different NPCs in your adventures and they end up back in the Hub to set up shops and you can buy further upgrades from them, or maybe some items that you can use in your next run. The most common items that you will need are the bombs and keys. Bombs are used to blow up rocks and walls (to uncover secrets and open secret rooms). They also damage enemies, and also you, if you are not too careful. Keys are used to open locked objects such as doors, cages, chests, etc. These items can be obtain when you kill enemies or blow up rocks or within chests. You can also buy them from vendors, and it the case of bombs, can be upgraded for more damage.
Another collectible that you will obtain in during your runs are potions. There are many different kinds of potion available in the game. Most of them will grant you boons on top of your current ones, but they are only within a limited time, like temporary attack up or speed up, or maybe grant you the ability to temporarily not fall into holes in the ground, etc. Some potions will heal you or give you large amount of gold ores. Aside from consuming potions, you can also get healed by eating food, which are also either dropped by slain enemies or from blasted rocks or from treasure chests or just lying there out in the open. Unlike in Enter the Gungeon, the game allows you to eat food even when your HP is full, so keep that in mind and leave the food for later (they don’t disappear even when you go to another room).
When you find the entrance to the next floor below, you have the option to go through it or continue going through the rest of the other rooms to obtain as much gold ores and relics and other collectibles as possible. You do risk getting killed by enemies (they do get progressively tougher the further down you travel), but the greater the risk, the higher the reward. Once you clear a room, the enemies do not respawn, so that makes backtracking to the entrance a bit easier. The spike traps and other obstacles can still kill you, though, so always be on your toes.
Dying and dying some more is part of the experience in this game. Whether each death encourages you to try even harder on the next run or makes you rage like a lunatic, it is up to you. But eventually, with much patience and perseverance, you will get to win them all.
Overall, UnderMine is one surprisingly good game. I thought that it will just be another Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon or Rough Legacy clone, but this game really hooked me in right at the get go. It is not as brutal as Binding of Isaac and not as complex as Enter the Gungeon and the character progression is not as tough as in Rogue Legacy, but the game managed to get bits and pieces from those games, gave them a bit of its own spin, throw them all together in a pot, put a dash of charm and wit and humor, and voila: enjoyment for hours. I really liked it, and though I ended up dying a lot, the game was never unfair and usually, I only have myself to blame for dying. The game has a well-balanced risk and reward system, with a very good feedback loop. You want more upgrades? Work for it, and when you work hard, you get rewarded. Though you start from scratch on each run, you get better and better on each try, both with the upgrades for your character and you yourself with the skills and knowledge of the game that you gradually acquire. I highly recommend this game to anyone, whether you are a fan of the roguelite genre or not. If you are already a fan, then this may come as a typical run-of-the-mill variety but still something quite new. If you are not yet a fan, then probably this game will make a fan out of you. So give it a try, spend hours upon hours of grinding and frustration and self-doubt but they all pay dividends in the end. You will enjoy playing this game and you will get good at it, and when you will eventually finish it, you will feel good about yourself for being able to overcome much adversity, and maybe, you’ll be a better person in the end.
REPLAY VALUE: Very high
PROS
- Amazing visuals: it looks like The Binding of Isaac meets Zelda, but less brutal
- Excellent music
- Lots of secrets to discover, like secret rooms, secret shops, shortcuts, etc.
- Excellent feedback loop that keeps you playing more
- Epic boss battles
- Wide variety of relics, blessings, and curses to randomly enjoy (and suffer from) upon each run
- Lots of achievements to unlock
- Lots of NPCs to interact with
- Some game elements are left unexplained and it is fun to discover what they do
- The Pilfers that try to steal your gold ores keep you on your toes
- Good use of HD Rumble
- Plays well in handheld mode
CONS
- Can take some time to level up attributes and buy additional upgrades, as they become very expensive very fast
- Character animation looks a bit stiff
- Jumping in lieu of rolling/dashing to avoid enemy attacks is a bit off; it is still effective but doesn’t feel as intuitive
- The pickaxe being the only weapon available is a tad boring
RATING: 4.5/5 golden deaths and awesome runs
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