UnderMine - Review | casual-ben

Table of Contents

What is UnderMine about?

UnderMine is an action-adventure roguelike created by Thorium Entertainment with emphasis on exploring a dungeon, killing monsters, combining relic mechanics and beating back those bosses. As we fight our way through we discover new areas, learn about the background of the mine and will die many many times. The endless stream of new peasants are supported by a bird, which will bring back your gold and unlocks after you die. So be sure that even if you die, the story will go on with the next peasant.

Summary:

Random Dungeon Layout on each run
Hundreds of items and combinations to discover
Each 4 floors you will face a boss with unique attack patterns
Steam Achievements

How to play UnderMine?

Before we can start exploring the mine, there is an Archmage who wants something from us. He tells us, that there are mysterious tremors and a missing blacksmith. So we try to explore and free that blacksmith. In order to to so we get a key for the door to the mine and a journal to see more info. The journal shows us that our ally the Canary will help us pick up gold, getting more gold, and it can steal from Pilfers? What are Pilfers? We will see!

The first levels of the mine will be a scripted tutorial, but after that the mine is generated randomly. The controls are:

Interact with E
Move with WASD
Jump with space
Attack with left click
Throw with right click
Bomb with R
and drink a potion with holding Q

Can be played with a controller to, but then interacting and throwing your pickax is way harder i think. In order to beat the enemies on the tile, we have to hit them till dead, pretty simple. But evading there attacks is more difficult. Jumping around will help. Bombs do help us to get through stone blocks and get things like keys.

Then we meet some green slimy things and those are trying to steal our gold! Bad slime, bad slime! Those are called pilfers, because they stealing our gold.

On our way we’ll find relics. Relics are buffs which will be always active. They can make you hugely powerful or helping you keeping you alive. We get a Butcher’s Cleaver will let us sometimes get food dropped by the monsters. Food regenerates our health if we were hit. Then we find a mysterious violet flame. Can’t hit it and if we throw our pickax over it then it will burn. But dropping a bomb on it works! We got a Gold Buff and a Poison Curse. All the enemies will now poison us…

Next we find a unique bomb relic which will let our bombs explode in a small rain of fire. Its ok, but not that useful for now. Finally found the Blacksmith. He’s called Wayland and was trapped behind some rocks. Now he’ll go back above ground, how he does that, we don’t know. We can only go down… He left an pickax upgrade and a blueprint. That’s useful. The upgrade will let us do more damage, and the blueprint will unlock new relics.

On our way down we find a shop. The shop currently sells us 3 items, which could be relics, potions, food, keys or bombs. If we talk to the owner he tells us, that we can get into a loyalty program. This will unlock a new shop upstairs. There we can buy upgrades which will increase the shop variety.

Later we meet Dodson he is a bomb smith. Yeah why not having a job like that. We have to get a special key to unlock his cage. But where do we get that? By going down we will find a way and that is in fighting a mini boss. The rockpile mimic will roll around and try to hit us or use an straight earthquake hit. Dodging is very important, but we can beat him and free Dodson. Dodson will give us access to the bomb shop. We also got some blueprints. Being happy about that fight, i went into the next room and died 😀 damn! So now there will be a new peasant spawning on top and we get to meet the Archmage again.

After freeing the bomb smith and blacksmith Arkanos tells us that we he’ll supply us with a small variety of items. The glasses are nice. With having them we can see the health of the enemy units. There is a mirror in the room too. That mirror will transform our peasant into someone new. Lastly we will have a look at the new shops. The bomb smith can supply us with more powerful bombs which we will need in order to push through harder rocks. Our blacksmith will supply us now with permanent upgrades. If you talk to him directly you can craft the relics from the blueprint too. This unlock will cost us thorium crystals, but then the relic will be available on regular runs. Lets head back into the mine.

First we will see bluish crystals. Those cannot be bombed by our current bombs. In order to get through we have to get that bomb upgrade. In the next room we find an Auglycerin. I was a bit naive and just used it and had to quickly pick up all that gold that was dropping out of that potion 😀 Next there is a Bottled Lightning will will sometime creates and electric arc going for the next enemy. But we have to be careful will those small patches of water, if we do not want to be electrocuted 😀

Black Rabbit is a little girl we are going to meet down the road. She looks like a crafty merchant. She does gift us a free blueprint. How nice of her. In response we broke a jar and that made her a little angry by spawning all those pilfers. That was fun hihi.

Next we’re meeting Beltram a mysterious figure who wants us to collect 3 mushrooms he cannot find. What will happen if we do? We don’t know, but we want to help regardless. On our way down, we do find a Shiitake mushroom, but tha’t’s all we find for now.

Last but not least we get to fight our first real floor boss. Its Selt, Queen of Sand. A giant worm crawling through the ground. She will try to ran over us, hitting us in a straight line with a earthquake and spawning larvae. Its a fight we haven’t been prepared for, so sadly we die… Hey but that was a good tutorial to show the game!

Now our goal is to get deeper and deeper. Explore all there is and find out the truth about the mine and that Archmage. He’s a little bit suss. Each run will be in a randomly generated dungeon with random relics and monsters.

If you truly beat the game, and I mean completing the story and beating the last boss, there is still something you can do.

Unlock all relics and upgrades
Going into the OtherMine and old school roguelike run. You start with nothing, no gold and no upgrades and try to win a full run.

My Conclusion

Short runtime and its great if you’re into exploring. I do like this one, but I’m not that good at it this moment. Will get better, but that might take some time. I do want to experience the rest of the story, so I’ll keep playing.

Where to buy?

YouTube

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