UnderMine

Movement feels sluggish. Combat is pretty simplistic. You have two attacks: swinging your pickax, or tossing it to have it return like a boomerang. The former animation locks you until you finish the swing - which hampers combat flow imo. Enemies get really annoying late game - doesn't help that healing is somewhat sparse.

Most relics - items that give you abilities during each run - are pretty anemic. The ones I encountered hardly altered my current run, although I did run into a flat "Increase Damage" relic a few times. But yet, the game requires you to use keys to unlock relic rooms after a certain floor. Ugh.

Oh, but I forgot the STUPIDEST thing about UnderMine: the pilfers.

In UnderMine, gold is a very important resource. It's used for purchasing items from shops during a run, AND is used to permanently upgrade your character's stats (max health, ranged/melee damage, etc.) from the game's hubworld. When you die, a portion of your current gold is kept - and you use this to buy upgrades to your health, swing damage, throw range, etc.

EVERY TIME gold is dropped in a room, a bunch of NPCs called pilfers spawn and try to snag it. If they grab a gold piece and get to the edge of the room's screen, they get away with your hard-earned gold. You have to hit them with your clunky swing attack, or aim just right and throw your pickax. Either way, you can end up missing a few pilfers because of the clunky attack animations, and be short of whatever gold dropped in a room.

Now, making a resource/"XP" for a character a time-limited pick-up is not a new mechanic at all; Nuclear Throne's rads (XP) disappear in a few seconds, and Voidigo's shards (currency) de-value over time the moment they drop.

But UnderMine's pilfers are non-damaging enemies that sometimes move faster than your character, and can swarm over gold easily if a room contains active hazards like sawblades or fire-orb firing turrets. One time I walked over a pit to reach a treasure chest, on a spindly-pair of minecart tracks that had a sawblade running on them. I got to a chest that spewed a bunch of gold on the tracks. At least half of the gold was either snagged by pilfers or knocked off into the pit by the moving sawblade - lost forever. Real fun.

I believe you can purchase a pass to prevent pilfers from spawning during a run, but it costs a ludicrous amount of gold. Wow!

Did I mention sometimes, a pilfer that drops an active bomb upon death spawns when gold drops? Who even thought this was a good mechanic?

Roguelites come a dime a dozen lately so it can be hard to find the right one just for you. It really depends on the systems and if they are to keep me involved in the game, and Undermine is one of those games that did. The developers did mention that they were highly influenced by Rogue Legacy, and well that's great cause it's quite possibly my favorite one.

Undermine has a top down view like Binding of Isaac with the OG Zelda-like screens, your character fights with a pickaxe than you can use as melee or to throw like a boomerang. The combat is nothing revolutionary but it works fine, dodge and jump to avoid things and hit without being killed in the process. Obviously you will die, but the game features permanent passive progression that will make your next runs easier. Various types of relics and potions are unlocked as you adventure in the mines, and they will randomly appear in your next runs like pretty much all roguelites work. The game is split into 5 areas that have 4 floor each, which all have their own boss that are pretty challenging but get a little easier with a few more upgrades.

While I realize that the game doesn't really that much innovation, it does manage to combine all these well know elements together into a great experience. It does have that addicting feeling of just one more run, once I get into I just want to play and play and that's not something I feel with every roguelite. I am a big fan of permanent upgrades cause it gives you a reason to play and play, rather than just being a mastery of dexterity skills and memory. Anyway, loved the game and would recommend to fans of Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells type systems.