Pro:
- lots of content
- nice art style and charismatic character designs
- funny dialogue and cute interactions
- unique combination of close and ranged combat
- inventive curse and blessing system

Contra:
- lack of an in-depth ingame tutorial
- close combat is sometimes tough to navigate
- jump mechanics are sluggish and sometimes unresponsive
- no information about the map creation algorythms and secrets ingame
- central gaming loop never really evolves
- too hard in the beginning, too easy towards the end
- badly designed final boss (that punishes you for playing the game in a particular way)

Magic Moment: Finding out that just getting to end of the dungeon is not the actual end of the game - which can be a negative and a positive, depending on your style of play.

Verdict: In the era of frequent, high quality Roguelikes, Undermine is a good but not great addition to the genre. The central gameplay loop is not particularly satisfactory and the difficulty scale is sadly off, put the curse system is inventive and there is lots of content to be discovered. You should perhaps take a look at it, but one playthrough is certainly enough.

Reviewed on Nov 08, 2021


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