• Home
  • News
    • News Archives
  • Reviews and Previews Database
    • Hardware & Software Review
    • Retro Reflections
    • Beeps and Beers
  • GamingThoughts
    • Interviews
    • Memorable Music
    • Jaggy’s Corner
  • Game Of The Year(s)
    • Games of the Year 2020
    • Games of the Year 2019
    • Games of the Decade
    • Games of the Year 2018
    • Games of the Year 2017
    • Games of the Year 2016
    • Games of the Year 2015
    • Games of the Year 2014
  • Chalgyr’s Game Room Staff
Chalgyr's Game Room
  • March 4th, 2021
  • Home
  • News
    • News Archives
  • Reviews and Previews Database
    • Hardware & Software Review
    • Retro Reflections
    • Beeps and Beers
  • GamingThoughts
    • Interviews
    • Memorable Music
    • Jaggy’s Corner
  • Game Of The Year(s)
    • Games of the Year 2020
    • Games of the Year 2019
    • Games of the Decade
    • Games of the Year 2018
    • Games of the Year 2017
    • Games of the Year 2016
    • Games of the Year 2015
    • Games of the Year 2014
  • Chalgyr’s Game Room Staff
Chalgyr's Game Room
  • Home
  • News
    • News Archives
  • Reviews and Previews Database
    • Hardware & Software Review
    • Retro Reflections
    • Beeps and Beers
  • GamingThoughts
    • Interviews
    • Memorable Music
    • Jaggy’s Corner
  • Game Of The Year(s)
    • Games of the Year 2020
    • Games of the Year 2019
    • Games of the Decade
    • Games of the Year 2018
    • Games of the Year 2017
    • Games of the Year 2016
    • Games of the Year 2015
    • Games of the Year 2014
  • Chalgyr’s Game Room Staff
  • Follow us
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    • Youtube
    • Instagram
    • Steam
    • RSS
Home
Reviews and Previews
Platform - Current
Xbox One

Undermine – XB1 Review

August 6th, 2020 Pierre-Yves Review, Reviews and Previews, Xbox One comments
comments Share
You are reading
Undermine – XB1 Review
Pierre-Yves by Pierre-Yves
on August 6th, 2020

Manager and Site Administrator—Currently a reviewer for Chalgyr's Game Room covering all platforms

Platform: Microsoft Xbox One

Developer(s): Thorium

Publisher(s): Thorium

Genre(s): Action, Roguelike

Mode(s): Single Player

Other Platform(s): PC

Source: Provided by Publisher

Tagsaction, Microsoft Xbox One, review, Roguelike, Thorium, Undermine, XB1, XB1 Review

Have you been craving crazy Roguelike adventures through super dangerous dungeon terrain? How about never being the same person? Don’t even want the pressure of resurrection? Then do we ever have a deal for you! Welcome to Undermine where you are nothing more than a series of peasants being sent to their deaths against crazy monsters and even crazier bosses while the heroes don’t seem to be in the picture. Figures, good help is so hard to find…

Seriously though, good help is hard to find and short of your amazing little canary as you delve into the depths, any help that you want you’re going to have to rescue or do favours for first. Undermine is a top down, interconnected room based Roguelike that has you, a mere peasant with a pickaxe, delving at the whim of a wizard in order to solve all of the problems that are currently plaguing the place. The bigger problem to start off with is that everything is shaking so you already know you’re in for it but first, you have to make it there.

Straight up, this is one of those times where you either “have it” or have to “git gud”. Undermine is tough but as long as you play your cards right it’s not unfair. A lot like Rogue Legacy in some regards, as you are never the same person, you’ll be leveling up the gear that can be taken with you on your spelunking. Upgrading your pickaxe lets you do more damage, upgrading your clothes gives you more health, adding a counter-balance lets you boomerang throw your pickaxe further and sporting a nice pair of leather gloves lets you increase the damage output. For all of these shiny upgrades though, you’ll need gold and in the beginning, and as there’s no way back, you’ll basically be losing half of it and crying about it.

So what’s a peasant to do? Upgrade your gold bag! By doing so you’ll lose less and less on every return which is going to allow you to buy more upgrades. I was a little disappointed that there was no “bank” so Undermine really runs on a use it or lose it philosophy. This can at times be rather unfortunate as you are for example carrying 678 gold pieces yet what you want to buy is 700. Whelp, tough luck, you aren’t getting that upgrade this time. So what’s a peasant to do? Take it with them or try to spend it on little things if you’ve rescued the help for it such as a bomb or a key to start off a run through the mines.

Undermine is brilliant in what it does. Truly. Sure you can’t bank your gold but the progress, or lack thereof that you seem to make, is truly calculated and you only tend to start to notice this several runs in. In your first attempts while making your way to the first mid-boss, things seem, balanced? Slightly easy on the first floor, slightly tougher on the next, but nothing that you cannot handle. Then the midboss. Tough in the beginning until you learn the attack patterns, it’ll be a bit tough, but that’s basically the name of the game. Then you unlock a few things, you go a bit further, maybe make it to the first boss, and then probably die. Well you do if you’re me at any rate.

So what’s the point of the rambling? Each time you start off from the beginning and work your way down, you’ll be collecting gold. Each time you die, you’ll be spending that gold. As you spend that gold and get tougher, so does the dungeon. New mobs start to show up to make even the beginning floors interesting as time moves forward which I really appreciated. More than this though, Undermine doesn’t use your traditional shortcuts as you defeat bosses and make it further and further. Instead, you’ll have to plan some of your upgrades carefully in order to unlock new ways forward which in turn, allow you to skip over the starting zones and get right to where you need to be.

HOWEVER, the beginning floors, the Gold Mines, are where you’ll want to spend several runs there alone just to increase the power of your gear as each new dungeon seriously raises the difficulty and while learning attack patterns is one thing, surviving them is another. You’ll be wanting the health boosts. You’ll be wanting more attack power. And finally, you’ll be wanting new and shiny items from both the blacksmith and the alchemist in order to help you out. These items, unlike everything else, use crystals that need to be handed in and the first times that you do, they are unlocked and from there, available to pick up in the dungeon. Sadly, you can’t just buy one of these to dive back in like “resurrection” or a “damage reduction cream” but you’ll be seeing them again soon enough after a few runs. 

From here it’s a lot of rinse, repeat, have fun, die, die again, die again again, try a new boss, die again, beat the boss, get into a new dungeon and then die again. Spend some gold, get tougher, spend some more gold, increase the tools at your disposal, and keep on rinsing and repeating BUT never does it feel unwelcome. Undermine is designed in such a manner that it’s just fun even if you died again and again. Part of that is the Roguelike charm, the other part is that it looks a bit like A Link to the Past and it’s just fun to keep playing. Only helping this is that most runs will net you about 10-25 minutes so you’ll get a few in within an hour and then you notice that you’ve been playing for six hours and should have gone to bed a while ago because you have to be up for work in six hours. Whoops. 

9

Summary

So overall, Thorium’s Undermine is a fantastic Roguelike on both the PC where it has released from Early Access and on the XB1 where players are now playing for the first time. Top down and only designed to keep being entertaining hours down the line as you push further and further into the mine, here is a Roguelike that is both accessible to players new to the style and to long time veterans looking for a new challenge. Check back next week for some Let’s Plays as we were wonderfully treated to both an XB1 and a PC code to cover Undermine!

Facebook Twitter Pinterest E-mail
Previous article Kickstarter for New Title Puzzle Explorers: A Tangledeep Story
Next article Gameplay Trailer of Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town
Pierre-Yves

Pierre-Yves

Manager and Site Administrator—Currently a reviewer for Chalgyr's Game Room covering all platforms

Facebook Comments
Related Posts
8.5
Natsuki Chronicles - PS4 Review

Natsuki Chronicles - PS4 Review

March 4th, 2021
8.3
Undermine - Switch Review

Undermine - Switch Review

March 3rd, 2021
7.8
Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV: Diplomacy & Strategy Pack - PS4 Review

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV: Diplomacy & Strategy Pack - PS4 Review

March 2nd, 2021
Member of:
Our Streamers!

Jagtress on Twitch. Support her on Patreon!

Susan Jagtress N, writer, gamer, streamer


S. M. Carrière on Twitch

S. M. Carrière


Louis, aka Esefine on Twitch

Louis, aka Esefine

Other sites you should check out!
RSS Digitally Downloaded
  • Indian developer, Tentworks Interactive, is giving us a 1950's city builder March 4, 2021
    News by Matt S.Ahhh, the '50s. The boomers were just being born, and at that age, they were cuter than the odious wealth hoarders they would become. Ronald Reagan wouldn't drive feral libertarianism as the world economic standard for another 30 years. In fact, back then, the world was just emerging from a nasty World […]
    Matt S.
RSS Super Phillip Central
  • Taxi Chaos (PS4, XB1, NSW) Review March 3, 2021
    After covering the games reviewed last month as part of the Review Round-Up for February, we enter March with our tires squealing with a new review right out of the gate. Taxi Chaos doesn't hide its Crazy Taxi influence and inspiration, but is this clone worth its pretty pricy ticket to ride? Let's find out […]
    Phil Stortzum
RSS The Gay Gamer
  • Captain Toad and chill (or, move over Animal Crossing, this is the relaxing game I want and need in these difficult times) February 11, 2021
    So many people found solace in Animal Crossing: New Horizons last year. I was not one of them.I expected to be one of them, of course. Not only have I enjoyed every previous entry in the Animal Crossing series (with the possible exception of Wild World), but I've returned to the GameCube version at least […]
    Bryan Ochalla
Scanline Thoughts – Displate
Shop Kandy – Etsy
Days Past Games
JenEric Designs
Renaissance Press
© Chalgyr's Game Room 2009-2020. All rights reserved.
Produced by An awesome team!
This site uses cookies: Find out more.