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UnderMine Free Download GAMESPACK.NET By this point in time, the roguelite genre has become positively saturated in the modern indie scene, spurred on no doubt by key success stories (like Dead Cells) over the last few years. This can be both a good and a bad thing; on one hand, fans of the genre are spoilt for choice when looking for another game to get into, but this also means it’s that much harder for new entries to stand out from the pack. UnderMine – the latest release from Thorium Entertainment – struggles to differentiate itself from its peers in this respect; however, it more than makes up for a lack of originality by demonstrating a strong awareness of what makes the genre great. This is a fun game through and through, and it absolutely nails its gameplay loop. UnderMine takes place in a kingdom being ravaged by earthquakes, which all seem to be originating from a mysterious mine. To deal with the problem, the king opts to utilize the bottomless supply of bodies that makes up the kingdom’s peasantry by throwing peasants in the mine one at a time in the hopes that someone – anyone – will solve the problem. As the player, this means that you take control of a new peasant for each run into the dungeon, and when they inevitably die, all their upgrades and remaining gold gets passed on to the next poor sod to get sent in.TOP/BEST ADULT VIDEO GAMES IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA)

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It’s quite the humorous take on the repetitive structure of a roguelite, and the writing keeps the overall tone similarly lighthearted. For example, the obituary for one of our first dead characters (killed by a fly) highlighted that they were survived by sixteen children, all of whom were pointed out to also be peasants. Each run sees your new peasant dropped into a randomly-generated dungeon that bears more than a passing resemblance to those found in the old Legend of Zelda games or Binding of Isaac. You’re equipped with a pickaxe which you can either swing or throw like a short-distance boomerang, and the goal is simply to move from room to room in the hopes of finding stairs to take you to the next floor down. Along the way, each room is usually patrolled by a mixture of monsters and cave-dwelling wildlife which you have to dispatch, usually resulting in gold or other goodies being dropped. Things get a lot more interesting when you factor in the relics which you can find on each floor, each of which grants you special extra boons for the remainder of that run. None of the relics that we found so far proved to be truly game-breaking, but they each represent a noticeable leap in power or function that rarely goes unappreciated. Getting boots that prevent you from falling into pits, for example, seems like a lame upgrade, but it can massively improve your survivability in most rooms.

Discover Secrets.

Unlike many of its genre peers, UnderMine manages to give you a nice sort of ‘power trip’ each run; relics are consistently reliable and always feel like another big step up for you. Going right along with this, UnderMine also uses a robust persistent upgrade system that calls to mind one of the best parts of Rogue Legacy. After each death, your peasant will drop around half of their gold, while the remainder will pass on to the next character to be spent back at the hub. Here, you’re given a brief respite before jumping back into the dungeon where you can buy items to give you a little bit of an extra edge to start off, or you can invest them in gradually pricier upgrades to things like health and damage output. Though the jumps are relatively small with these upgrades, they nonetheless begin to add up quickly over the course of several runs, and it’s nigh-on impossible to not be tempted back in to do ‘one more run’ to test out a new relic or upgrade you’ve unlocked. Repetition over the course of many runs, then, is neatly sidestepped by the organic introduction of more content as you progress. For example, you’re prone to come across a blueprint every now and then on a trip which can then be taken back to the blacksmith to get a brand-new item which then has a chance of appearing in future runs.Ancient Dungeon

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You also eventually progress far enough to find wholly new areas on deeper floors with their own sets of enemies, traps, and unlockables, and you can even unlock shortcuts to get to these areas faster on subsequent runs. It feels like you find something new or interesting on just about every run, which greatly incentivizes you to keep pushing on to unveil more secrets and see just how far you can make it this time around. All of this is backed by a 32-bit art style that’s masterfully executed. Environments are rife with all sorts of fine details, like the somewhat warped real-time reflections of objects near pools of water, and the sprite-work and animation are full of expression. Pixel art may be seen as kind of trite these days, but it’s abundantly clear that the developers were anything but lazy in going with this direction. The only downside is that the general ‘underground’ aesthetic slightly dampens the visual diversity of each area, but this is really just a nitpick. UnderMine is the debut game from Thorium Entertainment, a two-man studio with a clear knack for developing satisfying progression loops. As a roguelite dungeon crawler, you can expect to die (a lot!) in the hopes that you will make it just a little further next time. But even as you realize your death is only a room or two away.

Deadly Bosses.

You’ll already be looking forward to spending some hard-earned gold back at your base to unlock your choice of permanent upgrades that compliment your playstyle. This adventure leans heavily into the most satisfying aspects of the genre, so even though it only provides two primary attack options (melee and ranged) that don’t change, the sheer variety of relics, blessings, and other modifiers keep each run feeling simultaneously fresh and familiar. Equal parts Zelda, Rogue Legacy and Curse of the Dead Gods, UnderMine delivers a top-down dungeon crawler that, while not without its share of faults, provides a satisfying experience overall. The combat is punchy and challenging, and the amount of gold you receive increases just steadily enough that you’ll seldom feel like a run wasn’t worth your time. If you’re a fan of the slow-but-steady progression emblematic of roguelite games, you’ll find a lot to like here. The story, while technically present, unsurprisingly takes the backseat in this game. You begin as a generic, randomly named peasant who has been summoned by Archmage Arkanos to locate the cause of earthquakes that have been increasing lately in the mine. Oh, and since you’re already headed in that direction, you wouldn’t mind finding a lost blacksmith and sending him home, would you?PERISH

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After you’ve saved the blacksmith, you’ll iterate through recovering a handful of other characters that, once relocated to the surface, act as merchants that sell the permanent upgrades necessary to power up your successors for future runs. These characters are fun, if a bit bizarre in some cases, but the upgrades they offer are indispensable and feel great to purchase. While it isn’t necessarily a key part of the narrative, a common theme in UnderMine focuses on the lack of individuality of your current character. Each time you die, you start your next run as a randomly named but nearly identical peasant who has received a portion of the gold you held last time you died. Then you pick up where your predecessor left off. In fact, your series of doomed miners are so indistinguishable from one another that many NPCs don’t realize that they’re talking with different people. Even when they do recognize that you’re playing a different character, they comment that it doesn’t matter because that previous sucker is most definitely dead. It’s a bleak but funny reminder that, no matter how unique we think we are, we’re all just interchangeable cogs in a societal machine. Having made this point, Thorium seems to have no qualms about forcing the player to send peasant after doomed peasant to their untimely demise. It makes for a delightful bit of nihilistic comedy. UnderMine starts with a simple premise.

Rescue Characters.

You’re a peasant. It means you do what others tell you to do and don’t ask questions. That’s what the resident all-powerful wizard thinks anyway. He summons you to his wizardly abode once the game begins and tasks you with venturing into the mine (and beyond) to solve the mysteries behind the strange earthquakes occurring recently. He’d do it, but… well, y’know: he’s important, and you’re a peasant. So off you go, ill-equipped for the task and with no real clue what to do. When you die — and you will die, make no mistake about that — that’s it. As with other roguelikes, you’ll lose a big chunk of your money and all the artifacts uncovered on the way, but your particular peasant is dead too. Another one hops down into the fray, a new name and fresh face in a never-ending parade of peasants marching to their certain dooms that the wizard can’t even be bothered to notice. There’s a pervasive quirkiness in UnderMine that goes well beyond the comically callous wizard. You’ll find all manner of lovely weird folk underground, from talking mushrooms desperate to give their sporelings new life to shopkeepers trapped behind locked doors who, with nothing else to do, set up shop anyway. Behind a locked door in a dungeon.

UnderMine has a wider story you’ll gradually dig out the further you go, and the earthquakes are just the beginning. It’s a reason for five distinct dungeon areas brought to life with charming pixel art, and while the overarching story isn’t bad by any means, the visual identity and strange world unfolding around you stand out much more strongly than the actual story. UnderMine’s approach to roguelike dungeon crawling is a more accessible one than many. Each dungeon area is relatively contained, meaning you won’t be searching through dozens of rooms vainly trying to find an exit before you either die in-game or stop caring in real life. It takes a significant piece of the grind and annoyance out of restarting and makes sticking with UnderMine for long sessions easier. The roguelike elements themselves also help with that. You’ll lose all your special artifacts upon death, true, but not all your gold. The hardy peasant(s) keep enough of it to spend on goods back at the base, and assuming you’ve bothered to free the various shopkeepers and smiths you come across, you can upgrade your peasant with a better chance at survival. Enhancements, such as bag durability, are a must so you retain even more gold after death. Then there are improvements for your pickaxe, your health, your bombs — it’s all pretty standard, though useful, stuff.

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You can say the same for UnderMine’s gameplay and dungeon design in general, but it’s proof that innovation and darn good gameplay don’t always go hand-in-hand. Chances are, you’ve seen a good bit of UnderMine elsewhere. The ultimate goal is reaching the bottom-most area, gathering as much gold and other precious materials along the way. Your peasant has a canary, like all good miners, plus a standard attack, a ranged one, and a bomb attack. There’s a cave area, a dungeon area, and so on. Some foes, such as bats, slimes, and giant centipedes with suspiciously glowing rear ends, are straight out of Zelda and numerous other RPGs. Each dungeon room is full of traps, from pressure plates to something very similar to Zelda’s blade trap foes, and it’s hard not to see them as imitations in some way. How UnderMine handles these things is what raises it above being a knock-off, though. The action element, while simple, just feels good. UnderMine is also very fair, even when it’s brutal. The randomly generated rooms might be full of gold and health-restoring food, or the layout could have a legion of monsters and a maze of pressure plates that might as well scream D E A T H. UnderMine’s signature quirkiness shines through in dungeon design and helps keep things fresh too. Slime creatures called Pilfers steal your gold if you aren’t fast enough (and make amusing sounds when you punt them into oblivion). Back to Freedom UNCENSORED

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