Every gamer has a system that just takes you back to being a kid. For me, it’s the glorious Gameboy Advance. I could have 32 bit adventures in the palm of my hand, and life just didn’t get much better than picking up a new game. Since then, I’ve obviously gotten older and life and the games I play in it have undoubtedly gotten more serious. Realism has dominated and for many things I play now, the magic has just run out. However, that is far from the case for this action adventure game. UnderMine recaptures some of that wonder we’ve lost and sent me on an adventure that was tough to quit playing.
With graphics that remind you of your favorite arcade game, UnderMine sets the tone of a whimsical adventure from the start. You play as a peasant miner traveling deep into goldmines to collect gold, rescue other characters, and destroy any enemy who crosses your path. For a game with such great characters and environments, the dialogue manages to outshine it all. Every character has some personality and awareness that goes beyond simply giving directions for what mission to carry out next. There isn’t any character customization outside of equipment upgrades (we’ll get to those soon) but there is a variety of characters to play with and you come back as a different one each time you die in the goldmine. The best thing I came across in the mine were the characters who sold items. One took gold and the other took a purple fire currency found throughout the mines, but both were excellent designs and offered some really useful items for the game.
UnderMine starts with a simple adventure concept combines the elements of traditional adventure games with great combat and a robust RPG-like system to progress your characters. The fighting offers a few different mechanics for combat including melee, throwing your weapon, and using equipment like bombs. Throwing weapons and being able to improve throw damage throughout the games really gave me an advantage as I went deeper into the mines. Unfortunately, throwing has no damage on boss levels, which was tough to get used to, but I eventually upgraded my weapons enough that melee damage got the job done.
Character progression worked by collecting gold and find different relics to improve the attributes of your character and weapons each time you descended into the mine. Since the mine changes each time you go down, I was never sure what I would find which heavily incentivized breaking any boxes I came across. Whenever you die, you forfeit a portion of your gold along with the relics you find, but your character can be upgraded to reduce these losses. With gold and relics, you can upgrade every aspect of your character from damage to health and the upgrades you buy for one character carry over to the others.
My favorite aspect of UnderMine is that the dungeon changes every time you go down. This kept the game interesting and prevented me from being able to try levels over and over again with the knowledge of where the enemies are going to show up. For such an unexpected and unique feature, this made a huge impact on how much I played the game. In my playthrough, I could not find a way to come back to the surface from the mines which led me to lose quite a bit of gold every time I died. Also, the items that helped you gain health back fell far short of being useful and it often wasn’t worth defeating enemies to collect them.
Overall, I had a great time playing UnderMine and the Thorium Entertainment team really did a fantastic job with this game. I found myself wanting to pick the controller back up and see what the mine had in store for me every time I turned on my Xbox. Plus, the story and overall environment of the game kept me invested in the game itself and the characters. Do yourself a favor and pass some time at home with UnderMine.
9.2/10
Check Out the UnderMine Launch Trailer:
For more information, please visit: https://undermine.game/
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Xbox One Review
My first console was the original Playstation and I would play Twisted Metal every now and then but games didn't hook me until I played the original Halo at my friend's house. As soon as I picked up that controller, I knew I needed an Xbox and I had to have that game. Since those early Halo days, I've branched out and played any game I could find with a great story and memorable characters but Master Chief is still my favorite. @thenotoriousTGT on Twitter
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