I am always on the lookout for games that can recapture that classic Zelda type game that I grew up loving and when I saw the trailer for this game it looked like it was going to seriously fill that void that has been in my life for a while now. The last good Zelda-esque game I played was Deaths Door and honestly, that is a game that any Zelda fan should check out.
Undermine looked like a direct ripoff of Zelda, and this is something I am perfectly ok with provided it is done well. Unfortunately what I got was a lazy rogue-like game with randomized, procedurally-generated dungeons that are different every time which is not something I really want to play. Rogue-like games are all the rage right now for reasons I don't understand and if I knew that this was what I was getting into, I wouldn't have spent the 3 hours or so playing it that I did.
src
Undermine starts out in a fun enough type of way as you venture into a dungeon to relieve the kingdom that you are in of the earthquakes that are plaguing it. You are referred to by the King or some sort of overlord as merely "Peasant" and you are sent on your quest in the depths below.
It's fun enough and honestly, feels exactly the same as Zelda including the fact that you have bombs to blow up secret walls in the various rooms. You have a pickaxe that serves as your sword and you can throw this thing for a more limited damage but ranged attack. Sounds simple enough so far right? Well it gets bad pretty fast.
src
As you would expect, you are really weak at first and enemies are really difficult to kill. It doesn't much matter because they cant really do that much damage to you but unlike Zelda, you experience a great deal of difficulty regaining any health that you lose. "Hearts" don't drop from all enemies and the only way to regain health is if food drops from kills or other destructables and this is very rare that this happens. Basically, your lost health remains that way and this is problematic since as you would expect, the dungeon has a boss in it at some point.
src
I feel as though in a game of this sort that the first boss should be a bit of a pushover in order to ease you into the game but after 3 hours of doing the same dungeon over and over again where the layout of the map changes every single time you enter the gold mine, I didn't even come close to defeating it. You do have the ability to powerup you arsenal from collecting gold in the mines but herein lies two very big problems I have with the game.
Gold collection is a pain in the ass that could have been streamlined, and once you enter the dungeon the only way to exit it is if you die whereas you end up losing most of the gold you collected. Also, and this is the biggest problem I have with the game
src
After the 22nd time or so that you die in the same boring dungeon you might get a bit excited because you finally have enough gold to purchase and upgrade to your gear to make progress a bit easier. HOOORAY! There's just one really big caveat here though. As soon as you upgrade your gear the dungeon becomes more difficult thereby making the upgrade you just purchased all but useless. As you upgrade your gear, more powerful enemies appear in the dungeon that were not there before at all. So as far as I can tell you would actually be better off to NOT upgrade your gear.
What is the point of upgrading my armor and sword if this is only going to result in the dungeon scaling to be more difficult thereby negating the powering up?
There are very few rogue-like games that I actually have enjoyed with the one exception perhaps being Hades but even with that I can't help but feel like "what the hell am I playing here?" The game never ends, there is no story other than to repeat the same shite over and over again.
I would much rather have dungeons that are the same every time you enter them and while I can appreciate procedurally-generated maps the fact that it is done this way ensures that you are never going to have any prior knowledge about how to actually get to the boss quicker and more efficiently. On virtually every instance were I got to the first boss I was there with half health and to have a first boss as powerful as the first one is in this game is just frustrating.
Like I said before, in the 10-20 times that I have faced the first boss I haven't even come close to winning and to me, this is just wrong. The first boss should be something that you can defeat the 2nd or 3rd time you encounter them. I realize that I am not the best gamer in the world but I'm not terrible. For me to lose badly dozens of times in a row is something that I find unacceptable in a game and suggests to me that the game will only become more impossible once I finally do get past the first boss.
The way this game could be "fixed" would be if the equipment upgrades actually made any difference in how easy it is to progress but since all upgrades simply result in the game automatically becoming more difficult, there is no incentive to even do this.
I had high hopes for this game because I love Zelda type games even if they are low-budget. Undermine is a game that could have been great but I feel as though this game is critically flawed to the point where after just 3 hours I am going to give up on it. The game was only $5, but I don't think it is worth it.
So the search continues I guess