hey. so this game is pretty cool. its like a satire of trendy start-up culture or whatever and ngl its sometimes a lil cringe and wont age well but thats okay. i know roguelikes are poppin but thats a big ask upfront sometimes. i gotta put in alot of work before i even know if the game sucks or not lol. im a renaissance man, you gotta court the yalp. anyway i kinda like this “series of mini runs” approach cuz the investment to payoff ratio is a bit more consistent and thats just like….. better
speaking of better, going under is set up in a very non-egghead way. instead of crunching numbers, combat focuses on a more “chaos baller” style of engagement. things are exploding, youre grabbing chairs and keyboards, victory is determined by how much you can go wit the flow, think on your feet. most of the skills make more things explode, or give you command of the explosions, or make people date you. i thrive in chaos, i love to go hyatt (she makes that noise cuz its like zelda) and i too hate capitalism and love spongebob
anyway games pr sick
see you later gamer dweebz xoxo
speaking of better, going under is set up in a very non-egghead way. instead of crunching numbers, combat focuses on a more “chaos baller” style of engagement. things are exploding, youre grabbing chairs and keyboards, victory is determined by how much you can go wit the flow, think on your feet. most of the skills make more things explode, or give you command of the explosions, or make people date you. i thrive in chaos, i love to go hyatt (she makes that noise cuz its like zelda) and i too hate capitalism and love spongebob
anyway games pr sick
see you later gamer dweebz xoxo
This review contains spoilers
Games are always a sum of their parts, and it's very possible for a game with sub-par gameplay to be rescued by the composition of its other overlain elements. Going Under is an extremely well-composed game that ties a knot between its anti-corporate prose and systems extremely well, but its combat is so voluminously bad that it became impossible to care past a certain point.
Writing-wise, I thought Going Under would be a surface level 'capitalism bad send tweet' game, but it goes beyond just platitudes and uses every inch of the game's setting, character interactions and gameplay mechanics to convey the wasteful, discomforting nature of corporate America. From its UI choices, metaphors in items and stats, UX-drenched artstyle, even down to the fact that combat involves constantly discarding disposable, cheap weapons - it understands its subject matter far better than its salespitch would make you believe, both in terms of style and substance. Character writing is also really great, with a supporting cast that feels more nuanced than the often black-and-white interpretations that games are (in)famous for. I think the only thing I disliked about it is that the dungeon villains are extremely one-dimensional 'person I argued with on twitter' caricatures, and there's no way to make these writing archetypes look like anything other than pathetic. I also think Jackie's a pretty mediocre protagonist, it doesn't feel like the game knows if it wants her to be a blank slate to project onto or a girlboss: You get tonal whiplash where one moment she acts naive and clueless so the game can explain systems to you, and then another she'll hear to the most innocent, supportive comment possible and respond with indignant sarcasm - And I promise this isn't a 'you should smile more often'-tier complaint, it's genuinely unwarranted each time, with the only real exceptions being some dungeon characters, Marv, and Ray.
Anyway uh, combat's fuckin' terrible! I knew going into this it would have roguelike tropes that I despise, and yeah, those are there. But man, the core challenge and game mechanisms reek too. I have a shitton of things I'd like to wail on, but it'd be easier to say this: It's trying to fit the weighted feel of BOTW's combat into a genre that demands snappiness, and it causes 90% of losses to be the result of shit you cannot react to due to visual clutter and overbearing wind-up frames. At the very least, it FEELS good to hit things, and the appeal of fighting with an amassed loadout of random shit ticks off a very fun part of my brain. But it stops being fun when you take 5 consecutive hits because a wave ganged up on you, your i-frames suck, and a bomb appeared out of nowhere.
Styxcoin's re-visit was where I gave up, I realized at a certain point that there was no way to effectively win fights without just letting enemies kill themselves off of stage hazards, and that was when 8 hours of suffering finally ticked and made me say, 'why bother?' My backlog's too large to give a shit about one zelda roguelike in a sea of literally limitless options.
It's hard to be mad about this game when it's good points are so well-integrated and many of its 'bad' and 'tedious' elements also complement its narrative. But once you reach the breaking point as a player, your motivation's gone. If I took most people's advice and quit after beating Marv, I would've given this an easy 8/10, because I liked the focal parts of its game loop a lot! But, y'know.
Writing-wise, I thought Going Under would be a surface level 'capitalism bad send tweet' game, but it goes beyond just platitudes and uses every inch of the game's setting, character interactions and gameplay mechanics to convey the wasteful, discomforting nature of corporate America. From its UI choices, metaphors in items and stats, UX-drenched artstyle, even down to the fact that combat involves constantly discarding disposable, cheap weapons - it understands its subject matter far better than its salespitch would make you believe, both in terms of style and substance. Character writing is also really great, with a supporting cast that feels more nuanced than the often black-and-white interpretations that games are (in)famous for. I think the only thing I disliked about it is that the dungeon villains are extremely one-dimensional 'person I argued with on twitter' caricatures, and there's no way to make these writing archetypes look like anything other than pathetic. I also think Jackie's a pretty mediocre protagonist, it doesn't feel like the game knows if it wants her to be a blank slate to project onto or a girlboss: You get tonal whiplash where one moment she acts naive and clueless so the game can explain systems to you, and then another she'll hear to the most innocent, supportive comment possible and respond with indignant sarcasm - And I promise this isn't a 'you should smile more often'-tier complaint, it's genuinely unwarranted each time, with the only real exceptions being some dungeon characters, Marv, and Ray.
Anyway uh, combat's fuckin' terrible! I knew going into this it would have roguelike tropes that I despise, and yeah, those are there. But man, the core challenge and game mechanisms reek too. I have a shitton of things I'd like to wail on, but it'd be easier to say this: It's trying to fit the weighted feel of BOTW's combat into a genre that demands snappiness, and it causes 90% of losses to be the result of shit you cannot react to due to visual clutter and overbearing wind-up frames. At the very least, it FEELS good to hit things, and the appeal of fighting with an amassed loadout of random shit ticks off a very fun part of my brain. But it stops being fun when you take 5 consecutive hits because a wave ganged up on you, your i-frames suck, and a bomb appeared out of nowhere.
Styxcoin's re-visit was where I gave up, I realized at a certain point that there was no way to effectively win fights without just letting enemies kill themselves off of stage hazards, and that was when 8 hours of suffering finally ticked and made me say, 'why bother?' My backlog's too large to give a shit about one zelda roguelike in a sea of literally limitless options.
It's hard to be mad about this game when it's good points are so well-integrated and many of its 'bad' and 'tedious' elements also complement its narrative. But once you reach the breaking point as a player, your motivation's gone. If I took most people's advice and quit after beating Marv, I would've given this an easy 8/10, because I liked the focal parts of its game loop a lot! But, y'know.
Enjoyment - 8/10
Difficulty - 4/10
Going Under pits you against angsty co-workers, unfair working conditions and insufferable bosses. This hits too close to real life, but it works! Playing as a new marketing intern, you must progress through each company dungeon, battling enemies along the way, collecting new gear, and defeating bosses. This rougelike is a little bit uncommon, which is surprising because it is a solid game.
It also offers an assist mode that drastically reduces the difficulty of the game if you need it. Complete the main story, side objectives, unlock all the original skills, get specific kills on enemies and the platinum is yours!
🏆
Difficulty - 4/10
Going Under pits you against angsty co-workers, unfair working conditions and insufferable bosses. This hits too close to real life, but it works! Playing as a new marketing intern, you must progress through each company dungeon, battling enemies along the way, collecting new gear, and defeating bosses. This rougelike is a little bit uncommon, which is surprising because it is a solid game.
It also offers an assist mode that drastically reduces the difficulty of the game if you need it. Complete the main story, side objectives, unlock all the original skills, get specific kills on enemies and the platinum is yours!
🏆
Charming art style, great music, very silly writing. The only problem is that a roguelike/roguelite is mostly carried by its gameplay, and Going Under doesn't have those legs to stand on.
The combat never really evolves as you're frantically spamming the attack button every single run while scrounging for whatever has the highest damage. You don't get any invulnerability frames when dodging, nor can you use it to cancel animations so you're mostly committed to your attacks. Later on, combat gets so frantic and hectic that it's hard to tell what's happening and damage more or less becomes unavoidable.
You can pick a skill to start your run with but there's no reason not to choose the one that gives you five whole seconds of invulnerability. There are so many skills that completely dilute the item pool and unlike something like The Binding of Isaac, you don't have multiple pools to separate the skills from. Unfortunately, the skills you unlock earlier on tend to be much more helpful than the ones in the middle of the game, so you're just making it harder on yourself when you buy them.
When you hit the second part of the game, everything gets much harder without warning. All of the dungeons you were running before get enemies that are tankier and have attacks that are much harder to dodge. Thankfully you can hit a lever now to go back to the old dungeons but they don't properly prepare you for the end game.
I think this game is worth a shot on sale, but you shouldn't go in expecting something like Enter the Gungeon or Hades. It's a quick ten or so hour jaunt that's simple but fun.
The combat never really evolves as you're frantically spamming the attack button every single run while scrounging for whatever has the highest damage. You don't get any invulnerability frames when dodging, nor can you use it to cancel animations so you're mostly committed to your attacks. Later on, combat gets so frantic and hectic that it's hard to tell what's happening and damage more or less becomes unavoidable.
You can pick a skill to start your run with but there's no reason not to choose the one that gives you five whole seconds of invulnerability. There are so many skills that completely dilute the item pool and unlike something like The Binding of Isaac, you don't have multiple pools to separate the skills from. Unfortunately, the skills you unlock earlier on tend to be much more helpful than the ones in the middle of the game, so you're just making it harder on yourself when you buy them.
When you hit the second part of the game, everything gets much harder without warning. All of the dungeons you were running before get enemies that are tankier and have attacks that are much harder to dodge. Thankfully you can hit a lever now to go back to the old dungeons but they don't properly prepare you for the end game.
I think this game is worth a shot on sale, but you shouldn't go in expecting something like Enter the Gungeon or Hades. It's a quick ten or so hour jaunt that's simple but fun.
This review contains spoilers
What an excellent idea for a roguelite, this game unlike others in the genre has you bein able to pick and choose one of three different dungeons to journey into to try and get a key plot relevant asset to advance the story and give Fizzle more power
And on top of that youre goin through a beat-em-up style take on the formula where every equippable item that aint your fists is a disposable breakable item!! and this can range through a LOOOOOOOOT of different shit
it can be staplers or stacks of paper to fucking buster sword boxcutters, spears or drills it rules
I think the mentor system is also pretty great too, i personally gravitated more to Kara and Swomp's perk abilities bc stealing 1 item from the shop or holding two apps at one time is so fire
LIKE tabbi's money perk is cool.. but why would i give a fuck about an exclusive prime shop when it takes so much time to even see the shop
AND U DONT EVEN KNOW IF ITS GONNA HAVE ANYTHING YOULL ACTUALLY WANT TO USE LMAO
And Ray and Fern i admittedly never used much, i wasnt rocking with either of their perks or even tried them more than once, it wasnt even some shit tht felt like it impacted my runs for the better.
and SPEAKING of runs, I think the bosses are fun and even the imposter MODE difficulty is pretty fire. THOUGH I DO GOT MY GRIPES AND CRITICISMS OF IT. . . LIKE. the journey getting to actually fight imposter is funny because shes not a hard fight at all. infact shes like depressingly easy to me
but i guess thats what happens when you get sent through all three dungeons in one swoop over and over
what i Dont get is like.. when you beat all of that shit! there's no grand plot revelation with Jackie, there's no huge thing its just
"yea u keep beating me.. keep coming back! keep going if you can muahaha" and thts it.. just endless internal str-... hm. maybe its just suppose to play on that though. This game has a LOOOOT of outward obvious joking and comedy about capitalism, workplaces. coworkers, etc the works! i mean for fucks sake even the art style is intentionally riffing on corporate training video design but in a roundabout way its all really charming to me
I think there's nothing wrong with making a game thats topical because the core of the writing isn't even just being quirky but mocking things like amazon warehouses and how inherently insatiable progressing technology is and toxic work culture and bag chasing
to the point where the whole damn city's on fire but atleast everybodys not chained to working somewhere shitty for now........sometimes THE POINT rings harder
in a way the game has a good ending tht also has bad/sad undertones to it because in a bittersweet way, fizzle and cubicle were pretty much just two of several companies like this.
ALL IN ALL THO, I LOVE THIS GAME, was surprised with how queer positive it all is too its awesome
I think this is also not a very long game in the grand scheme of things so you could say itd be a great first roguelite to put someone onto the genre and understand how it works too :)
lilli and jackie shouldve had a date at the end so the lack of this cements a whole star being docked... /lh
And on top of that youre goin through a beat-em-up style take on the formula where every equippable item that aint your fists is a disposable breakable item!! and this can range through a LOOOOOOOOT of different shit
it can be staplers or stacks of paper to fucking buster sword boxcutters, spears or drills it rules
I think the mentor system is also pretty great too, i personally gravitated more to Kara and Swomp's perk abilities bc stealing 1 item from the shop or holding two apps at one time is so fire
LIKE tabbi's money perk is cool.. but why would i give a fuck about an exclusive prime shop when it takes so much time to even see the shop
AND U DONT EVEN KNOW IF ITS GONNA HAVE ANYTHING YOULL ACTUALLY WANT TO USE LMAO
And Ray and Fern i admittedly never used much, i wasnt rocking with either of their perks or even tried them more than once, it wasnt even some shit tht felt like it impacted my runs for the better.
and SPEAKING of runs, I think the bosses are fun and even the imposter MODE difficulty is pretty fire. THOUGH I DO GOT MY GRIPES AND CRITICISMS OF IT. . . LIKE. the journey getting to actually fight imposter is funny because shes not a hard fight at all. infact shes like depressingly easy to me
but i guess thats what happens when you get sent through all three dungeons in one swoop over and over
what i Dont get is like.. when you beat all of that shit! there's no grand plot revelation with Jackie, there's no huge thing its just
"yea u keep beating me.. keep coming back! keep going if you can muahaha" and thts it.. just endless internal str-... hm. maybe its just suppose to play on that though. This game has a LOOOOT of outward obvious joking and comedy about capitalism, workplaces. coworkers, etc the works! i mean for fucks sake even the art style is intentionally riffing on corporate training video design but in a roundabout way its all really charming to me
I think there's nothing wrong with making a game thats topical because the core of the writing isn't even just being quirky but mocking things like amazon warehouses and how inherently insatiable progressing technology is and toxic work culture and bag chasing
to the point where the whole damn city's on fire but atleast everybodys not chained to working somewhere shitty for now........sometimes THE POINT rings harder
in a way the game has a good ending tht also has bad/sad undertones to it because in a bittersweet way, fizzle and cubicle were pretty much just two of several companies like this.
ALL IN ALL THO, I LOVE THIS GAME, was surprised with how queer positive it all is too its awesome
I think this is also not a very long game in the grand scheme of things so you could say itd be a great first roguelite to put someone onto the genre and understand how it works too :)
lilli and jackie shouldve had a date at the end so the lack of this cements a whole star being docked... /lh
Gay socialist game
This was great, but with a huge caveat.
Assist turned on was essential for me to enjoy actually finishing the game. Roguelikes are tricky because they demand continued replays to attain mastery of their systems, but for this one I just didn't feel a desire to do so.
Maybe I'm just growing old and impatient, but unlike with Hades and Downwell, I kept coming back to a feeling of "wow that was some bullshit" instead of "whoops, made a mistake there, I'll learn for next time." I recommend reading MagneticBurn's review about how the combat of this game sucks for a better explanation of the specifics, because I don't have much to add in that department.
Thankfully Assist exists, so you can make adjustments to your liking. Turning Assist on for everything except for hearts was a perfect difficulty for me, even if doing so defeated the point a little bit by making weapons more durable. If I went back and tried it again, I'd probably recommend only ticking the "make enemies weaker" box.
That said, it's impossible for me to hate this. Everything from the combat to the characters to the aesthetic presentation is so meticulously crafted to create a clear demonstration of how utter bullshit consumerism is for everyone involved, and I'll always back that sentiment.
Assist turned on was essential for me to enjoy actually finishing the game. Roguelikes are tricky because they demand continued replays to attain mastery of their systems, but for this one I just didn't feel a desire to do so.
Maybe I'm just growing old and impatient, but unlike with Hades and Downwell, I kept coming back to a feeling of "wow that was some bullshit" instead of "whoops, made a mistake there, I'll learn for next time." I recommend reading MagneticBurn's review about how the combat of this game sucks for a better explanation of the specifics, because I don't have much to add in that department.
Thankfully Assist exists, so you can make adjustments to your liking. Turning Assist on for everything except for hearts was a perfect difficulty for me, even if doing so defeated the point a little bit by making weapons more durable. If I went back and tried it again, I'd probably recommend only ticking the "make enemies weaker" box.
That said, it's impossible for me to hate this. Everything from the combat to the characters to the aesthetic presentation is so meticulously crafted to create a clear demonstration of how utter bullshit consumerism is for everyone involved, and I'll always back that sentiment.
Every moment of this game feels so good, it's funny, well-designed, and satisfying, but most importantly, Swomp is my little baby man 🥰
It's a game about coming together with the workers of several failed startups and burning Amazon to the fucking ground while also smashing Alexa under your feet, and unionizing. It has so much contempt for the utterly contemptable and so much love for the absolutely lovable. This is so obviously my shit that it's almost funny.
I could do some boring minor criticism of it from a mechanical perspective, but it feels so beside the point. It's a good time and does its job of supporting the revolutionary spirit this is all about. Solidarity forever.
Played on Linux through Proton.
I could do some boring minor criticism of it from a mechanical perspective, but it feels so beside the point. It's a good time and does its job of supporting the revolutionary spirit this is all about. Solidarity forever.
Played on Linux through Proton.
Love this one. Gay socialist Twitter writing that will absolutely become dated in a decade or less, but manages to be a perfect satire of modern society. Not to mention, despite the simplicity, I fell in love with all of the characters. Excited to check out Aggrocrab's other stuff (As long as it's not ported by Team17 oh god)
Fun dialogue and a cute, unique art style are not enough to make this game's repetitive design and clunky combat fun to play. I hit the point where I had to redo every dungeon again to get stocks and realized I was not having fun anymore.
this game killed my fucking cat
Man, what a game to finish at the height of the gaming industry cutting jobs and dissolving studios. My heart goes out to those affected, hope you can find work soon.
Going Under is a fairly short and challenging rougelike beat em up that satirizes corporate and company heads and how they affect all kinds of businesses and people. Its shite we gotta deal with in the real world, and in lieu of that, the writing and characters are pretty relatable as well.
The music is chill and the visuals are so appealing-I love how the character designs and overall style of the game replicates material you'd see in Job PSAs, Safety, and Pamphlet ads. its very distinct.
Now with it being a rougelike, it is one of those games that won't click with everyone. You die, you start from square one, but you can have mentors and skills to help you out as you unlock them. Layouts are varied per dungeon, you may notice similar layouts be used per run, but Going Under combats this with differing enemy types per run per room.
I can see how the game's combat may come off as mindless button mashing to some but honestly? Didn't feel that way to me. I really enjoyed thinking of the most optimal skills and mentors to stick with and maximizing the amount of damage i can deal per room with what's available. Deaths are frustrating for sure, but its so satisfying to nail victories.
Overall, I enjoyed Going Under! It was a fun time!
Going Under is a fairly short and challenging rougelike beat em up that satirizes corporate and company heads and how they affect all kinds of businesses and people. Its shite we gotta deal with in the real world, and in lieu of that, the writing and characters are pretty relatable as well.
The music is chill and the visuals are so appealing-I love how the character designs and overall style of the game replicates material you'd see in Job PSAs, Safety, and Pamphlet ads. its very distinct.
Now with it being a rougelike, it is one of those games that won't click with everyone. You die, you start from square one, but you can have mentors and skills to help you out as you unlock them. Layouts are varied per dungeon, you may notice similar layouts be used per run, but Going Under combats this with differing enemy types per run per room.
I can see how the game's combat may come off as mindless button mashing to some but honestly? Didn't feel that way to me. I really enjoyed thinking of the most optimal skills and mentors to stick with and maximizing the amount of damage i can deal per room with what's available. Deaths are frustrating for sure, but its so satisfying to nail victories.
Overall, I enjoyed Going Under! It was a fun time!
The fact that they turned corporate blob style people into a really appealing 3D art style is dang impressive. Gameplay is fun and snappy enough.
An Indie Rogue-Lite with combat very reminiscent of Breath of the Wild. One of the funniest and most-well written, clever games I’ve ever played. Combat is good although does get extremely repetitive after a while. Honestly the whole game is really fun and we’ll polished but with the “just pick up weapons as you go” system runs get extremely repetitive extremely fast
Couldn’t be more transparently Hades if it tried - which isn’t really a problem! Like Sable, it’s good to see developers look up to a bigger creator and climb on their shoulders by Outsourcing and Delegating lengthy Requirements-Gathering Sessions to an organisation with more Man-Months and Human Resources in their Capacity Metrics. If something isn’t a Blocked Sev-1, don’t waste your studio’s Squad-Tribe Story Points on Agile Epic-Sprints that Create Redundant Value for The Stakeholders - right, @Everyone? (3 👍 Reacts!)
There isn’t too much to say about the gameplay here otherwise - it is essentially just a kinda slower, chunkier Hades combat/rogue-upgrade system, with the same conversation/mentoring mechanic thrown in there for good measure; pick the character you think is funniest/cutest, do some microquests for them, unlock more dialogue about apps and watch your character numbers go up on the (very well-realised) Fake Microsoft Teams UI. Simple! Throw in a bite-sized take on Breath of the Wild’s weapon comparison/durability system, and you more or less have the depth and breadth of the entire product. It feels bad to reduce games down to the composite parts of other games they were inspired by, but I guess that’s what happens when you use two of the biggest games in recent years as a template and don't much care to hide it. The gameplay is a fittingly disposable vehicle here that's mostly used to drive a sprawling high-level metaphor that the developers wanted to explore. That's cool by me!
In a lot of ways, Going Under is a perfect fit for Xbox Game Pass. I can’t imagine it on the more abstract, leisure-focused interfaces of the Switch and PS4/5. A flat-design dungeon-crawler where you explore failed startups with the help of powerups named after agile workflow concepts is so, so at home on a Microsoft desktop or games console OS that uses a thinly-veiled Windows 10. Even pressing the Home button here won’t let you escape from the pervasive sense that your sortof-9 to sortof-5 job has crept out of its WFH enclosure and forced its way to your living room. Notifications off please!! Primary-coloured tiles, kindergarten loading animations and blank-smiling stickpeople as far as the eye can see; this truly is how it feels to be on the "bad" type of computer.
… Which is ultimately what lead to me putting this down after a few days. I play video games to relax and think about things other than work, and Going Under is a really good recreation of modern desk-work, to Aggro Crab’s credit. I gotta "take it offline", to use the parlance of Slack and Outlook. I’m a software engineer who’s mostly most specced for the Corpo questline rather than the Start-Up one, but one thing this game wisely understands is that there is really only one white-collar monoculture nowadays - with big banks and telcos and B2B specialists permitting Pizza Fridays, Socks With Sandals Sundays and Meditation App Download Code Mondays, they’re really no different than the startups who serve as speculative fishtanks and talent pipelines for corporations to inevitably subsume. I’ve seen it so many times in reality, and I presume this game’s developers have too - such is the light-hearted depth of their observations on the culture.
The characters and dungeons are well-realised, and I'm glad that Aggro Crab mercifully open up almost all of the content right away - it's almost as if they knew that a lot of players wouldn't survive the crushing dread that the game's atmosphere creates early on; those of us who get a migraine from just typing "Linkedin.com" into our browser window just wanna play a few hours to see the jokes and blunt metaphors and it's cool that the game lets you beat up crypto miners and horny ""sex-positive"" Tinder bros almost right from the start. The cryptocurrency dungeon is particularly well-realised, and the gimmick of that world's shopkeeper being a dude with two identities who tries to build a pyramid scheme via the fiat and virtual currency markets simultaneously is nothing short of a genius bit of Video Game Thematics. Unlike Hades, all the main characters are available to chat up right from the start, and they're all genuinely compelling - as a developer who doesn’t truly trust any machine more complex than a typewriter, Kara is easily my favourite person in this, and maybe one of my fave characters of the year - I never imagined Disco Elysium’s Soona would have a rival for the title of “best cynical lead programmer in a video game” this soon, but hey! Here we are! Lotta cynical programmers out there! Maybe I'll come back to this game one day just to see where the Kara character-line goes.
Can you believe Microsoft are promoting this on their subscription service, though? That's crazy! It feels like quite a pointed attack on modern office culture that they helped create. I guess the implication here is that M$ know that we all hate seeing cute little flat "oopsie!!" stickmen when their SaaS platform goes down right before an important meeting, and ultimately don't care because none of us can do anything about it beyond buiding entire video games to gripe about it. Or maybe Microsoft are already planning their next move beyond all this, and wanna start scorching their digital earth? What will the corpos move to once our workplace culture reaches a critical mass of thinkpieces about mono-colour flat visuals and Yasss Qween interface design and they're forced to Shift The Paradigm again? I dread to think what Going Under 2: Initial Public Offering will look like...
(Additional special shoutouts to an OST that deftly toes the line between "non-descript happy-pop for your company's cutesy-cartoon tutorial on the pitfalls of sexual harassment and bribery" and "lo-fi citypop beats for doing spreadsheets". Check out "first date" by feasley! Very cute that you can just sit at a desk and listen to it on a wee Spotify-like interface. Talk about gamefeel!)
There isn’t too much to say about the gameplay here otherwise - it is essentially just a kinda slower, chunkier Hades combat/rogue-upgrade system, with the same conversation/mentoring mechanic thrown in there for good measure; pick the character you think is funniest/cutest, do some microquests for them, unlock more dialogue about apps and watch your character numbers go up on the (very well-realised) Fake Microsoft Teams UI. Simple! Throw in a bite-sized take on Breath of the Wild’s weapon comparison/durability system, and you more or less have the depth and breadth of the entire product. It feels bad to reduce games down to the composite parts of other games they were inspired by, but I guess that’s what happens when you use two of the biggest games in recent years as a template and don't much care to hide it. The gameplay is a fittingly disposable vehicle here that's mostly used to drive a sprawling high-level metaphor that the developers wanted to explore. That's cool by me!
In a lot of ways, Going Under is a perfect fit for Xbox Game Pass. I can’t imagine it on the more abstract, leisure-focused interfaces of the Switch and PS4/5. A flat-design dungeon-crawler where you explore failed startups with the help of powerups named after agile workflow concepts is so, so at home on a Microsoft desktop or games console OS that uses a thinly-veiled Windows 10. Even pressing the Home button here won’t let you escape from the pervasive sense that your sortof-9 to sortof-5 job has crept out of its WFH enclosure and forced its way to your living room. Notifications off please!! Primary-coloured tiles, kindergarten loading animations and blank-smiling stickpeople as far as the eye can see; this truly is how it feels to be on the "bad" type of computer.
… Which is ultimately what lead to me putting this down after a few days. I play video games to relax and think about things other than work, and Going Under is a really good recreation of modern desk-work, to Aggro Crab’s credit. I gotta "take it offline", to use the parlance of Slack and Outlook. I’m a software engineer who’s mostly most specced for the Corpo questline rather than the Start-Up one, but one thing this game wisely understands is that there is really only one white-collar monoculture nowadays - with big banks and telcos and B2B specialists permitting Pizza Fridays, Socks With Sandals Sundays and Meditation App Download Code Mondays, they’re really no different than the startups who serve as speculative fishtanks and talent pipelines for corporations to inevitably subsume. I’ve seen it so many times in reality, and I presume this game’s developers have too - such is the light-hearted depth of their observations on the culture.
The characters and dungeons are well-realised, and I'm glad that Aggro Crab mercifully open up almost all of the content right away - it's almost as if they knew that a lot of players wouldn't survive the crushing dread that the game's atmosphere creates early on; those of us who get a migraine from just typing "Linkedin.com" into our browser window just wanna play a few hours to see the jokes and blunt metaphors and it's cool that the game lets you beat up crypto miners and horny ""sex-positive"" Tinder bros almost right from the start. The cryptocurrency dungeon is particularly well-realised, and the gimmick of that world's shopkeeper being a dude with two identities who tries to build a pyramid scheme via the fiat and virtual currency markets simultaneously is nothing short of a genius bit of Video Game Thematics. Unlike Hades, all the main characters are available to chat up right from the start, and they're all genuinely compelling - as a developer who doesn’t truly trust any machine more complex than a typewriter, Kara is easily my favourite person in this, and maybe one of my fave characters of the year - I never imagined Disco Elysium’s Soona would have a rival for the title of “best cynical lead programmer in a video game” this soon, but hey! Here we are! Lotta cynical programmers out there! Maybe I'll come back to this game one day just to see where the Kara character-line goes.
Can you believe Microsoft are promoting this on their subscription service, though? That's crazy! It feels like quite a pointed attack on modern office culture that they helped create. I guess the implication here is that M$ know that we all hate seeing cute little flat "oopsie!!" stickmen when their SaaS platform goes down right before an important meeting, and ultimately don't care because none of us can do anything about it beyond buiding entire video games to gripe about it. Or maybe Microsoft are already planning their next move beyond all this, and wanna start scorching their digital earth? What will the corpos move to once our workplace culture reaches a critical mass of thinkpieces about mono-colour flat visuals and Yasss Qween interface design and they're forced to Shift The Paradigm again? I dread to think what Going Under 2: Initial Public Offering will look like...
(Additional special shoutouts to an OST that deftly toes the line between "non-descript happy-pop for your company's cutesy-cartoon tutorial on the pitfalls of sexual harassment and bribery" and "lo-fi citypop beats for doing spreadsheets". Check out "first date" by feasley! Very cute that you can just sit at a desk and listen to it on a wee Spotify-like interface. Talk about gamefeel!)
How about 'Going Under' some hoes my man?
I might pick this back up again sometime, but it's taken a backseat to some other games I'm more excited to play. It's very cute, and the parody of modern silicon forest startup culture is so accurate that it physically hurts me. The humor is great. There just hasn't been a ton of mechanical depth, from what I've seen. I'm a good bit through the second dungeon area, I've done some sidequests for mentors, I've unlocked a handful of items for the dungeons. It doesn't need massive amounts of depth necessarily, it's solidly fun as is, but it can only hold my interest for so long before I feel like I'm just going through the motions, not making too many moment to moment decisions or going for a particular build or anything.
Still, I can't bring myself to give it anything less than a 3 - I love the aesthetic and music, the writing, the sound effects. It's a very cool world to be in. I'm rooting for this game and this team, it's just not quite what I'm looking for.
Still, I can't bring myself to give it anything less than a 3 - I love the aesthetic and music, the writing, the sound effects. It's a very cool world to be in. I'm rooting for this game and this team, it's just not quite what I'm looking for.
Well this is a charming little project :)
With Aggro Crab's upcoming crustacean-themed souls-like "Another Crab's Treasure," releasing this coming week, I figured I'd familiarise myself with their debut game, Going Under: Internships Are Heck, to give it its full title. Suffice it to say, I was incredibly charmed by the cut of this game's jib.
Going Under is a procedural roguelike dungeon crawler where you play as newly-employed intern Jacqueline Fiasco as she tries desperately to climb up the corporate ladder of her employer, Fizzle, a lowly subsidiary of megacorporation Cubicle. Though she was hired based on her marketing skills, Jackie finds herself instead trawling through dungeons and fighting goblins, demons, and skeletons in the vague hopes of getting a promotion.
It's a cute and humorous premise, and honestly, it gets a lot of mileage out of it, employing (pun intended) a sharp wit (with some genuinely funny dialogue) and a charming cast of co-workers to pull you into its world and keep you there with a simple yet engaging combat loop that never really gets tired, thanks to a rotating roster of skills, modifiers, and weapons that help continuously switch things up.
Needless to say, the art style is, of course, also a huge draw, seemingly drawing from corporate motivational posters as inspiration and spinning that off into its own kitschy, genuinely adoring look and feel for all of its characters and props.
Really, I'd say the only part that could bring the whole thing down a bit for many people is the difficulty spike in the second half of the game. To provide a bit of context, as spoiler-free as I can make it, the game has its own "rotating of the castle" moment at the midway point and encourages you to go through it all over again except with an extra challenge this time in order to get the true ending.
Now, usually, prospects like this (especially if they are mandatory to seek out the "true" ending) generally turn me off, but to its credit, Going Under isn't a particularly lengthy game; it has a really enjoyable gameplay loop, and there are some handy 'assist mode' settings for accessibility purposes that you can tweak on top of that, so it's really not as taxing as that might sound.
So yes, there is a difficulty spike in the second half, but it's much more manageable than it might seem.
Really, my only complaints are down to issues with RNG, but really that's more of an issue with roguelikes as a genre than this game specifically, as its kind of built-in to the whole experience of them. Besides that, the combat can perhaps get a bit repetitive, especially if you're attempting the same dungeons multiple times in a row during that tricky second half, but again, it does the job well enough.
For a first outing, though, Going Under is incredibly charming and supremely impressive in how well it is put together and presented in all facets of the game. There are some setbacks but not enough to warrant caution in recommending it to anyone at all.
In fact, if you're tired of scrolling through Indeed or LinkedIn all day, playing this will no doubt prove to be an incredibly cathartic experience.
8.5/10
With Aggro Crab's upcoming crustacean-themed souls-like "Another Crab's Treasure," releasing this coming week, I figured I'd familiarise myself with their debut game, Going Under: Internships Are Heck, to give it its full title. Suffice it to say, I was incredibly charmed by the cut of this game's jib.
Going Under is a procedural roguelike dungeon crawler where you play as newly-employed intern Jacqueline Fiasco as she tries desperately to climb up the corporate ladder of her employer, Fizzle, a lowly subsidiary of megacorporation Cubicle. Though she was hired based on her marketing skills, Jackie finds herself instead trawling through dungeons and fighting goblins, demons, and skeletons in the vague hopes of getting a promotion.
It's a cute and humorous premise, and honestly, it gets a lot of mileage out of it, employing (pun intended) a sharp wit (with some genuinely funny dialogue) and a charming cast of co-workers to pull you into its world and keep you there with a simple yet engaging combat loop that never really gets tired, thanks to a rotating roster of skills, modifiers, and weapons that help continuously switch things up.
Needless to say, the art style is, of course, also a huge draw, seemingly drawing from corporate motivational posters as inspiration and spinning that off into its own kitschy, genuinely adoring look and feel for all of its characters and props.
Really, I'd say the only part that could bring the whole thing down a bit for many people is the difficulty spike in the second half of the game. To provide a bit of context, as spoiler-free as I can make it, the game has its own "rotating of the castle" moment at the midway point and encourages you to go through it all over again except with an extra challenge this time in order to get the true ending.
Now, usually, prospects like this (especially if they are mandatory to seek out the "true" ending) generally turn me off, but to its credit, Going Under isn't a particularly lengthy game; it has a really enjoyable gameplay loop, and there are some handy 'assist mode' settings for accessibility purposes that you can tweak on top of that, so it's really not as taxing as that might sound.
So yes, there is a difficulty spike in the second half, but it's much more manageable than it might seem.
Really, my only complaints are down to issues with RNG, but really that's more of an issue with roguelikes as a genre than this game specifically, as its kind of built-in to the whole experience of them. Besides that, the combat can perhaps get a bit repetitive, especially if you're attempting the same dungeons multiple times in a row during that tricky second half, but again, it does the job well enough.
For a first outing, though, Going Under is incredibly charming and supremely impressive in how well it is put together and presented in all facets of the game. There are some setbacks but not enough to warrant caution in recommending it to anyone at all.
In fact, if you're tired of scrolling through Indeed or LinkedIn all day, playing this will no doubt prove to be an incredibly cathartic experience.
8.5/10
A kinda-sorta roguelike ish game about the indescribable horrors of startup culture. You're an unpaid marketing intern who is instead made to delve into the dungeons created by other startups that have been dissolved by the Amazon/Google parody corp and fight with whatever crap you can find lying around. Lots of weapon durability mechanics and so on if you don't like that kind of thing.
The play is fine but nothing I found particularly engaging. Enemies are just a bit beefier than I'd like and there's a lot of clutter that makes avoiding damage very difficult. The writing and aesthetic sense is what shines here, and if you are also bitter about capitalism then you will perhaps also enjoy it! The flavor text for avacado toast, a healing item, is "the delicious alternative to home ownership." The company boss calls everyone rockstars constantly.
The dungeons are really well realized and distinct down to even having a whole cryptocurrency-themed startup where you manage it as an additional currency alongside real money. There aren't very many of them, though, and you will have to repeat each numerous times to complete little missions etc for upgrades. I got bored before I was done and turned on assist mode to just get the end of the story.
Speaking of which, it does end up oddly focused on algorithms as the ultimate evil and is somehow less harsh on Amazon than you'd expect because of this. That said, the game is just like the devs screaming at you to unionize so I'm being very unfair with that complaint.
My favorite character is the software engineer who hates computers because that's me. I'm also that.
The play is fine but nothing I found particularly engaging. Enemies are just a bit beefier than I'd like and there's a lot of clutter that makes avoiding damage very difficult. The writing and aesthetic sense is what shines here, and if you are also bitter about capitalism then you will perhaps also enjoy it! The flavor text for avacado toast, a healing item, is "the delicious alternative to home ownership." The company boss calls everyone rockstars constantly.
The dungeons are really well realized and distinct down to even having a whole cryptocurrency-themed startup where you manage it as an additional currency alongside real money. There aren't very many of them, though, and you will have to repeat each numerous times to complete little missions etc for upgrades. I got bored before I was done and turned on assist mode to just get the end of the story.
Speaking of which, it does end up oddly focused on algorithms as the ultimate evil and is somehow less harsh on Amazon than you'd expect because of this. That said, the game is just like the devs screaming at you to unionize so I'm being very unfair with that complaint.
My favorite character is the software engineer who hates computers because that's me. I'm also that.
A lighthearted rogue-lite set in a colorful workplace environment with goofy characters and solid gameplay.
I don't play a ton of rogue-likes or rogue-lites, so I may not be the best judge of quality but I truly think Going Under is worth checking out. It's charming as heck and really fun. It's got a bit of challenge as you get deeper into the game, but it never felt unfair. And if you do ever find it to be too difficult, they have great customizable difficulty options built into the game to make it easier!
I've worked at a couple different startups now and, honestly, they completely nail the often absurd startup world. Every character is fun and I enjoyed doing their little quests to gain perks I can take back into the dungeons with me.
Speaking of persistence, that's one thing I wish this game did more of. There are only two types of cross-run persistence in the game - relationships and items. You can work on relationships and then choose one set of perks for a run. And then you can buy items that get added to a large pool of items you might see during a run. So, to a degree, it's almost disadvantageous to buy more items because you're diluting the perk pool and lowering the chance that you might see some of your favorite upgrades. Wish there was a system in place to tailor the item pool a bit better.
Other than that, I had a great time with the game and definitely recommend folks check it out!
+ Great all-around style (visuals, music, atmosphere, etc.)
+ Fun characters and goofy story
+ Good gameplay with decent progression
+ Fantastic custom difficulty options to make the game easier if you want to get through it
- Wish there was a bit more persistence other than relationship perks and random items.
I don't play a ton of rogue-likes or rogue-lites, so I may not be the best judge of quality but I truly think Going Under is worth checking out. It's charming as heck and really fun. It's got a bit of challenge as you get deeper into the game, but it never felt unfair. And if you do ever find it to be too difficult, they have great customizable difficulty options built into the game to make it easier!
I've worked at a couple different startups now and, honestly, they completely nail the often absurd startup world. Every character is fun and I enjoyed doing their little quests to gain perks I can take back into the dungeons with me.
Speaking of persistence, that's one thing I wish this game did more of. There are only two types of cross-run persistence in the game - relationships and items. You can work on relationships and then choose one set of perks for a run. And then you can buy items that get added to a large pool of items you might see during a run. So, to a degree, it's almost disadvantageous to buy more items because you're diluting the perk pool and lowering the chance that you might see some of your favorite upgrades. Wish there was a system in place to tailor the item pool a bit better.
Other than that, I had a great time with the game and definitely recommend folks check it out!
+ Great all-around style (visuals, music, atmosphere, etc.)
+ Fun characters and goofy story
+ Good gameplay with decent progression
+ Fantastic custom difficulty options to make the game easier if you want to get through it
- Wish there was a bit more persistence other than relationship perks and random items.
It's incredibly charming: from the very believable cast of characters, to the art style, to the interface itself, everything has that sleek, modern corporate feel. It's incredibly well-done parody and I just wish the gameplay was as good as everything else.
The abilities are interesting! The weapon variety is surprisingly large! The dungeon environments are just as fun as the hub area. It's mechanically interesting (although not very deep) and the wit and jokes from the hub area extend below too. It just really, really sucks the wind out my sails when trying to hit anything with most weapons becomes one of the Labors of Hercules. I suspect this is primarily due to the stiff way your character moves around. This control scheme is jank enough to turn the game as a whole into a chore, which is a shame given how perfectly executed everything else is. I want to know more about swomp! I want to see what happens to the Flavor guy whose passion for what he does gets ignored or exploited, depending on the day! I just don't have it in me to fight the game itself - although I guess it's kind of fitting to have the game show off a shiny, polished exterior while it wears down my will to go on.
The abilities are interesting! The weapon variety is surprisingly large! The dungeon environments are just as fun as the hub area. It's mechanically interesting (although not very deep) and the wit and jokes from the hub area extend below too. It just really, really sucks the wind out my sails when trying to hit anything with most weapons becomes one of the Labors of Hercules. I suspect this is primarily due to the stiff way your character moves around. This control scheme is jank enough to turn the game as a whole into a chore, which is a shame given how perfectly executed everything else is. I want to know more about swomp! I want to see what happens to the Flavor guy whose passion for what he does gets ignored or exploited, depending on the day! I just don't have it in me to fight the game itself - although I guess it's kind of fitting to have the game show off a shiny, polished exterior while it wears down my will to go on.
Somewhat padded out but there was enough variety of weapons to keep it fun.
i love roguelikes, like a lot, and going under may not be one of the best gameplay-wise but it's one of the best i've ever played
let's start by the bad things, the gameplay is simple, and neither the power ups nor the weapons create cool bizzare cenarios like tboi or hades
also the way the powerups are unlocked is too bland, i would prefer a shop where i could buy the ones that i find more interesting instead of them coming in order
the main hub feels too empty, differently from hades or dead cells it's a really big place with few things to do, it's not bad just a first disapointing impression
and that's it, now to start the good things, the ost is incredible, each music ties perfectly to it's respective place, and while simple the graphics are really cute and the art design is amazing, each character has a bunch of panels that adds a layer depth to each one
and the characters are really fun, they are simple yet complex, the way their relationship to jackie grows every time you talk, and with almost non-repeating phrases, i can't help but love them
there are only 3 dungeons but each one of them are cool to explore with distinct enemies and really cool boss battles
but everything doesn't matter when the best aspect of going under comes out, the funny, i laughed at every part of the game, each weird thing that happenned, each funny line, each reference to the real world, god this game is so funny yet real
the jokes about business are so funny yet so real, it makes you think between the laughters, the whole game is created around this aspect, and it actually nails it
for last the story, it's actually good, not amazing but very much enjoyable, the final boss fight is one of the best moments in the game with one of the best songs
i wouldn't recommend going under if you dislike the majority of roguelikes or think that games are "only entertainment and shouldn't touch real life aspects and problems", this game is really good and if you don't have any of the mentioned problems, i recommend it 100%
let's start by the bad things, the gameplay is simple, and neither the power ups nor the weapons create cool bizzare cenarios like tboi or hades
also the way the powerups are unlocked is too bland, i would prefer a shop where i could buy the ones that i find more interesting instead of them coming in order
the main hub feels too empty, differently from hades or dead cells it's a really big place with few things to do, it's not bad just a first disapointing impression
and that's it, now to start the good things, the ost is incredible, each music ties perfectly to it's respective place, and while simple the graphics are really cute and the art design is amazing, each character has a bunch of panels that adds a layer depth to each one
and the characters are really fun, they are simple yet complex, the way their relationship to jackie grows every time you talk, and with almost non-repeating phrases, i can't help but love them
there are only 3 dungeons but each one of them are cool to explore with distinct enemies and really cool boss battles
but everything doesn't matter when the best aspect of going under comes out, the funny, i laughed at every part of the game, each weird thing that happenned, each funny line, each reference to the real world, god this game is so funny yet real
the jokes about business are so funny yet so real, it makes you think between the laughters, the whole game is created around this aspect, and it actually nails it
for last the story, it's actually good, not amazing but very much enjoyable, the final boss fight is one of the best moments in the game with one of the best songs
i wouldn't recommend going under if you dislike the majority of roguelikes or think that games are "only entertainment and shouldn't touch real life aspects and problems", this game is really good and if you don't have any of the mentioned problems, i recommend it 100%
it really makes you feel like you're in seattle
Q: What do you call bisexual Norse monarchs on motorcycles?
A: Bikings.
Going Under is this dad joke given form as a video game - it's a many-splendored multi-layered pun that works on so many levels. You start the game as fresh-faced intern Jackie who reports for her first day at a start-up only to find herself tasked with handling a monster infestation in the office basements - where every basement is the remains of a failed startup that's come before. So you Go Under to the companies that have previously Gone Under. One of the dungeons you can enter is full of undead creatures with pickaxes and torches (because they're mining CRYPTocurrency har har). On a slightly more subtle note, you lose all your money at the end of a run but if you use skills enough you can unlock them for future runs, effectively meaning you are only 'paid in experience'. And on and on the puns go.
This is a really witty game all around, and it shines in its supporting cast - your various coworkers and mentors who give you various bonuses the more favors you do for them. They're utterly stereotypical - from the prickly and cynical IT expert to the dudebro CEO who tries too hard to be cool and ignores his employees' warnings as the company falls apart around him - but also very likeable. Special mention has to go to the slacker/stoner who somehow speaks without caps and punctuation and gives the most fun tasks (like 'run over a car with another car lmao') because he's likely high as a kite.
So there are definitely flaws in the gameplay; the action is satisfying but shallow, the dungeon layouts are too samey from run to run, and it can get quite difficult to parse what's going on onscreen thanks to visual clutter and a camera that's quite hyperactive even on the lowest sensitivity. But the game does come with a wealth of assist options (longer lifebar, more invincibility frames etc.) which do a lot to mitigate the frustration and prevented my game experience from overstaying its welcome. I'm normally a gameplay-over-story guy, but I have to respect the fact that this is just a really well-written game that both satirizes and apes toxic corporate culture yet has a ton of heart.
I might revise my opinion on this after I play more games in the procgen roguelike genre but this is one of the highlights of my recent game experiences!
A: Bikings.
Going Under is this dad joke given form as a video game - it's a many-splendored multi-layered pun that works on so many levels. You start the game as fresh-faced intern Jackie who reports for her first day at a start-up only to find herself tasked with handling a monster infestation in the office basements - where every basement is the remains of a failed startup that's come before. So you Go Under to the companies that have previously Gone Under. One of the dungeons you can enter is full of undead creatures with pickaxes and torches (because they're mining CRYPTocurrency har har). On a slightly more subtle note, you lose all your money at the end of a run but if you use skills enough you can unlock them for future runs, effectively meaning you are only 'paid in experience'. And on and on the puns go.
This is a really witty game all around, and it shines in its supporting cast - your various coworkers and mentors who give you various bonuses the more favors you do for them. They're utterly stereotypical - from the prickly and cynical IT expert to the dudebro CEO who tries too hard to be cool and ignores his employees' warnings as the company falls apart around him - but also very likeable. Special mention has to go to the slacker/stoner who somehow speaks without caps and punctuation and gives the most fun tasks (like 'run over a car with another car lmao') because he's likely high as a kite.
So there are definitely flaws in the gameplay; the action is satisfying but shallow, the dungeon layouts are too samey from run to run, and it can get quite difficult to parse what's going on onscreen thanks to visual clutter and a camera that's quite hyperactive even on the lowest sensitivity. But the game does come with a wealth of assist options (longer lifebar, more invincibility frames etc.) which do a lot to mitigate the frustration and prevented my game experience from overstaying its welcome. I'm normally a gameplay-over-story guy, but I have to respect the fact that this is just a really well-written game that both satirizes and apes toxic corporate culture yet has a ton of heart.
I might revise my opinion on this after I play more games in the procgen roguelike genre but this is one of the highlights of my recent game experiences!
It's like Hades if hell was the Soylent HQ
introducing my new startup:
"tappi please have sex with me"
goals: tappi having sex with me
target market: tappi (human)
management: me - ceo
"tappi please have sex with me"
goals: tappi having sex with me
target market: tappi (human)
management: me - ceo
Going Under pega toda a frustração millennial com o mercado de trabalho moderno e a usa como fonte para seu senso de humor. Incrivelmente, isso funciona muito bem. Muitas das piadas são trocadilhos visuais - por exemplo, a blockchain é literalmente um bloco pendurado numa corrente -, mas o humor não se resume a trocadilhos baratos. Toda a narrativa é uma grande sátira à cultura corporativa moderna, o mundo de startups e a sofrência de entrar no mercado de trabalho.
Grande parte desse humor se deve à Jackeline, a ótima protagonista. Ela tem consciência de classe o suficiente para saber que o sistema é fodido, mas é ao mesmo tempo resignada o bastante para apenas querer que a fodam com vaselina. Muitas vezes eu não sabia se estava rindo das reações dela por achar engraçadas ou de nervoso por simpatizar completamente com ela.
Não tão divertido é o processo de percorrer as dungeons. O game tem certos problemas de balanceamento. Inicialmente ele é um roguelike extremamente fácil. Na metade do game, entretanto, há um considerável aumento na dificuldade. Gosto de roguelikes difíceis, mas Going Under aumenta sua dificuldade da forma menos satisfatória possível: multiplicando o número de inimigos, abusando de stun locks e te deixando com poucos recursos para enfrentar as hordas em seu caminho - às vezes nem armas, já que elas quebram praticamente toda hora. Talvez tudo isso seja proposital, servindo como uma grande metáfora para a exploração diária dos trabalhadores modernos. Infelizmente não sou inteligente o suficiente para apreciá-la em toda sua plenitude.
O jogo vale só pelo humor e narrativa? Não, e você não deveria jogar só por eles, e não dá para separá-los. As próprias dungeons estão intrinsecamente ligados aos temas do jogo e você só vai encontrar muitas das piadinhas (principalmente as visuais) explorando-as. No mais, antes do aumento da dificuldade a experiência é bem livre de estresse. Felizmente o jogo tem uma boa solução para o caso de você achar difícil demais ou ficar de saco cheio na forma de várias opções de acessibilidade. Minha recomendação é jogar normalmente e, caso sinta que está esmurrando faca, fazer uso dessas opções sem dó. A vida de estagiário é um inferno, mas a sua não precisa ser uma também.
Grande parte desse humor se deve à Jackeline, a ótima protagonista. Ela tem consciência de classe o suficiente para saber que o sistema é fodido, mas é ao mesmo tempo resignada o bastante para apenas querer que a fodam com vaselina. Muitas vezes eu não sabia se estava rindo das reações dela por achar engraçadas ou de nervoso por simpatizar completamente com ela.
Não tão divertido é o processo de percorrer as dungeons. O game tem certos problemas de balanceamento. Inicialmente ele é um roguelike extremamente fácil. Na metade do game, entretanto, há um considerável aumento na dificuldade. Gosto de roguelikes difíceis, mas Going Under aumenta sua dificuldade da forma menos satisfatória possível: multiplicando o número de inimigos, abusando de stun locks e te deixando com poucos recursos para enfrentar as hordas em seu caminho - às vezes nem armas, já que elas quebram praticamente toda hora. Talvez tudo isso seja proposital, servindo como uma grande metáfora para a exploração diária dos trabalhadores modernos. Infelizmente não sou inteligente o suficiente para apreciá-la em toda sua plenitude.
O jogo vale só pelo humor e narrativa? Não, e você não deveria jogar só por eles, e não dá para separá-los. As próprias dungeons estão intrinsecamente ligados aos temas do jogo e você só vai encontrar muitas das piadinhas (principalmente as visuais) explorando-as. No mais, antes do aumento da dificuldade a experiência é bem livre de estresse. Felizmente o jogo tem uma boa solução para o caso de você achar difícil demais ou ficar de saco cheio na forma de várias opções de acessibilidade. Minha recomendação é jogar normalmente e, caso sinta que está esmurrando faca, fazer uso dessas opções sem dó. A vida de estagiário é um inferno, mas a sua não precisa ser uma também.
A wonderful time, just a really enjoyable roguelike with sharp, delightful writing. I dropped so much time into it whenever it let me. There's just Too Many Games right now though and I just haven't touched it in weeks.