Behind every campaign Kickstarter there is a love story for the videogame medium made of passion, hard work and sacrifices. The dream of a development team that, brick by brick, manages to give light to its idea of a video game. This is precisely the case with UnDungeon which as we will read in this review is exactly that Laughing Machines he wanted to create, that is, a title that mixes action, rpg and roguelike, with a splash of pixel art, all genres that Ukrainian kids have always been fans of. A large cauldron succeeded in part thanks to a strong one narrative component.
UnDungeon is available on November 18th on platforms Xbox And Pc and on day one on Xbox Game Pass. One more chance to try this interesting indie for free.
The Shift
In the beginning there were billions of parallel universes, destined never to meet. All the inhabitants of these worlds questioned themselves about their existence through hypotheses, suppositions, but continuing to live their daily lives, because so much, it could never happen that these universes collapsed into one … Until an inexplicable event, the Shift, What did he do collide among them 7 universes. A multiverse where the most disparate populations will have to learn to live together, despite completely different habits and lifestyles. With the Shift, it is born the Herald, the one who will have the task of restoring order after this inexplicable paranormal phenomenon.
There narrative component from UnDungeon is the main one strength of production. In fact, although we are talking about a theme, that of the multiverse, already known and explored in various entertainment and non-entertainment products, the developers have still managed to give it their own nuance, a personal interpretation, and have thus created a fascinating and full of secrets to discover.
UnDungeon exudes lore from each pixel, which we will discover as we continue on our journey. The narrative develops through dense exchanges of jokes with each npc, we can more or less elaborate on according to our curiosity to “explore” all the lines of dialogue that will reveal themselves by interfacing with them. A writing work with attention to every detail and which will involve the player from start to finish, provided that he knows English or … Russian well. The game it is not localized in Italian and since this is a topic that is not easy to understand, the risk is to miss important details necessary to reveal the plot in its entirety.
Explore and kill
The structure of UnDungeon it’s very simple. We can decide to follow the main mission or complete the tasks that we will sometimes activate by talking to an NPC. For any activity we decide to carry on, we will simply have to open the map and select the area to reach, the movement will take place automatically and the only thing we will see will be our Herald moving along a dotted path from A to B. Once we arrive at destination, we will enter a very small area but extremely accurate from a graphic point of view, which we will be able to explore freely while dealing with the enemies of the area.
So here we come to the heart of the gameplay from UnDungeon, that is the combat system. Extremely simplistic, we can decide to offend mobs with fast attacks, a powerful charged area attack, or by throwing objects from a distance. Conversely, to defend ourselves we can rely on a power that will make us invulnerable to a single opponent’s hit or use the most classic of dodges. All this, in the sacred respect for stamina, on pain of a quick and painful death.
In UnDungeon in fact, i enemies that we will face will be leathery, aggressive, resistant and will inflict a large amount of damage. Often you will find yourself in situations of clear inferiority numerical in which it will not be easy at all to stem the punitive hordes that the game will send against us. In addition, you have to deal with the opponent’s attacks. Whether at range or in melee, they will not always be identifiable in combat.
Whether for the number of mobs on the screen that attack the protagonist, or for a view from above that is not always clear, you risk not understanding either from which point an arrow comes or if the neighboring mob is attacking. In this way we will end up with a lot less life than expected. For recover it, we will use seeds that we will find both in game and that can be purchased from merchants. It will take some time to get used to this combat system, so much so that the choices of the right equipment (bombs, daggers, healing items) and the most suitable strategy, will prove to be the winning weapons to overcome every challenge.
When we run into an unfortunate one death, we will restart the game from the last one checkpoint which, however, we will have to activate at each completed activity (recommended). The penalty will be to start almost from scratch depending on the last saved progress. The great satisfaction in clearing up the area will be to obtain loot to be exchanged with the merchants to upgrade the protagonist.
A sophisticated RPG component
There growth of our Herald is one of the most important aspects interesting from UnDungeon. In fact, we will be able to enhance our character through two roads which will always involve the recovered loot and the merchants. There first street, is the simplest one, namely level for the ability to equip gods knots, purchasable by traders, which will increase our stats, such as health, stamina and so on. There second instead it involves the organs such as brain, heart, lungs, which will also increase our characteristics, but the creation of which will take the player some time. In fact, part of the loot that we will get will be exchanged with the merchants to obtain the necessary components to create, for example, a more powerful liver that will make the herald even stronger.
However, these organs will not be indestructible, and at each death they will have to be regenerated from scratch, thus restarting the whole process of creation just mentioned. UnDungeon develops a very well articulated and interesting character growth system, punitive too as the rest of the production.
Therefore, at the end of the review, UnDungeon it is configured as a complex product that makes fiction its main strength. If we also consider that the title is playable by all Game Pass subscribers, the invitation is to try this interesting indie and market debut of Laughing Machines.
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