Game file / ROGUE BY ROGUEUndermine
An action-adventure roguelike with a bit of RPG tossed in. Adventure deep into the UnderMine and discover powerful relics, deadly enemies, hidden secrets, and a few friends to help along the way.
Why this score?
Original text · Simplified Chinese
遗物协同和秘密探索使后期构筑有吸引力，但前期升级压力与重复遭遇减弱了每局的独立完成感。
Core gameplay
Weight 25%7.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
采掘、投掷和近战组成易理解的循环，节奏允许谨慎探索；初期弱角色和偏基础的战斗使前段较慢。
Builds & strategy
Weight 25%8.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
遗物、药剂、祝福与诅咒可叠加协同，资源和风险交换能塑造强力组合；部分物品只加数值，近战与远程收益不均。
Replayability
Weight 20%7.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
隐藏房间和不同模式给探索目标带来变化，但固定首领和反复刷早期升级使部分重开缺少新应对。
Randomness & fairness
Weight 20%6.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
可以控制探索速度并学习首领，但永久升级前的弱势、入口陷阱与恢复稀少让早期失败受资源状态影响较大。
Polish & usability
Weight 10%7.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
快照肯定手柄与键鼠的可用性；部分动作延迟、物品说明不清以及极端组合时的崩溃报告限制完成度评价。
- Reviewer
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Rogue by Rogue · AI 资料评测- Version reviewed
Original text · Simplified Chinese
具体构建未知；以所引资料描述的版本为准
Scope and limitations
Original text · Simplified Chinese
未进行试玩；分数是依据已收录评述与社区具体反馈作出的主观资料评测。旧反馈跨版本、部分原始材料为不可重开的本地快照；本次 Steam 核查仅确认玩法与功能，未复测平衡、性能或报告的故障是否仍存在。
Review sources 02
- 01Archived materialView archived external material ↓
Original text · Simplified Chinese
收录评论与社区资料（2026-10-01 快照）
使用 作者观点摘要 的 Tier list Part 1 (2023) 的具体优缺点，以及 玩家好评、玩家批评 与 资料核查说明；不使用旧等级、外部分数或销量反推。
- 02Web sourceView original ↗
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Undermine · Steam 官方商店
2026-10-08 访问。Steam 商店核对采矿与永久升级、遗物药剂祝福诅咒叠加、NPC 救援和隐藏房间。未据商店介绍推定性能或故障已修复。
Video reviews
Reviews and deep dives from YouTube and Bilibili, in every language. Open the original video to watch.
Other voices, for reference.
Archived third-party reviews and community material may refer to different versions. External opinions and ratings are presented separately; consult the original videos for their full context.
Community discussion
A top-down, pixel-art action-adventure roguelite by two-person studio Thorium in which a peasant delves an ever-changing mine, blending Zelda-style combat and exploration with RPG-like gold, relic and permanent-upgrade progression.
UnderMine is well received: Steam shows about 90% positive across roughly 9,900 reviews (Very Positive), and critics on Metacritic rate the PC version 79 and the Switch version 83, praising its polish, presentation and upgrade systems while noting it does little unexpected. Player opinion splits on its heavy meta-progression: fans call it a satisfying one-more-run loop with lots of secrets, while detractors find the early game weak, grindy and RNG/curse-driven. It left early access (Aug 2019) for a full 1.0 launch on Aug 6, 2020 with Xbox Game Pass inclusion, then came to Switch (Feb 2021) and PS4 (Mar 2021). The studio has since moved to UnderMine 2, which some recent reviewers read as a sign the original is mostly finished; the Steam store page shows a soft recent-review dip (small sample).
What players praise
- Polished, charming pixel-art presentation and fitting music, often highlighted even by players who dislike the gameplay loop
- Strong sense of progression: failed runs still unlock upgrades, items, NPCs and permanent improvements, fueling a 'just one more run' feel
- Huge amount of secrets, events, hidden rooms, recipes and achievements to discover, including after beating the main story
- Rescuable helpers/NPCs with their own skills and permanent perks add RPG-style depth
- Combat and relic/potion synergies can produce fun, sometimes absurd builds late in a run
- Flexible pacing: you are not forced to rush or beat every boss each run, and post-game challenges and difficulty adjustments add replay value
- Plays well on both gamepad and mouse-and-keyboard; easy to pick back up casually
- Critics call it well-constructed, with clear mastery of controls, upgrade systems and overall design (Nintendo Life 90, Hey Poor Player 90)
What players criticize
- Grind is the top complaint: incremental meta upgrades make early runs feel intentionally weak and unfair
- Many items and relics are seen as minor stat boosts that do not change how you play, so builds feel samey
- Item pool and content variety are limited: the same items keep reappearing and only a few bosses repeat every run
- Annoying or artificial difficulty: traps at room entrances, bomb-filled trapped chests, sliding off ledges, enemies swarming with little room to dodge
- Curses and scarce healing can ruin an otherwise good run, which reviewers describe as anti-fun
- Gold does not carry over between deaths, making it hard to save up for big purchases
- Melee versus the ranged/boomerang option is seen as unbalanced, with the first boss hard to hit in melee
- Some players report slightly delayed controls after actions, unclear item descriptions, and room mechanics with no explanation
Distinctive features
- Gold-and-greed loop: you mine gold, spend it on upgrades and lose part of it on death, with a peasant-fodder dark-humor story
- RPG-flavored stats, potions and shopping layered over Zelda/Isaac-style action, which some reviewers say suits RPG fans more than hardcore roguelike fans
- Persistent NPC/helper rescue system and a huge web of hidden recipes and secret rooms
- 'Othermine' mode, praised as a purer start-from-zero roguelike experience once found
- Mine that changes every run, with the freedom to descend at your own pace rather than speedrun
Divided opinions
- Meta-progression: some see satisfying RPG power growth, others see a grind that replaces good balance
- Difficulty and RNG: curses, traps and heal scarcity read as fair challenge to some and as cheap to others
- Originality: critics call it polished but unsurprising, and users compare it to Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Moonlighter, Hammerwatch and early Zelda, sometimes favorably and sometimes as less complex or charming
- Roguelite versus roguelike expectations: RPG fans like the progression, traditional roguelike fans are more likely to bounce
Repetition and friction
- Grinding meta currency to get modest damage or stat boosts, which some call padding that stretches limited content
- Repetitive loop of samey rooms and enemies after the first dozen hours
- Having to survive many runs just to reach later bosses, especially for new players who die early
- Low-impact relic drops and RNG-locked synergies that make good runs rare
- Keys, bombs and healing feeling too scarce to open most of a floor
Hoped-for improvements
- More varied weapons or starting loadouts, since the base attack set never really changes
- More impactful, build-defining relics rather than small numeric boosts
- Greater variety in bosses and items, and post-game challenges that add new content instead of only self-imposed handicaps
- Smoother early-game balance: faster gold, less RNG around healing and curses, less reliance on meta grind
- Clearer in-game explanations of item effects and room interactions
- Clearer in-game explanations of item effects and room interactions (already listed) and more polish on control responsiveness
- Tighter control responsiveness; some reviewers note delayed actions when timing matters
Early access began Aug 20, 2019; 1.0 released Aug 6, 2020 on Windows and Xbox One (Game Pass), Switch Feb 11, 2021, PS4 Mar 30, 2021; Wikipedia says about 600,000 downloads across Steam and Game Pass by Jan 2021, and SteamSpy-style estimates put Steam owners at 500k-1M. Third-party estimate (steam-revenue-calculator.com, Boxleiter method, treat as order-of-magnitude) is about $6.1M gross and $1.8M net on Steam. Critics were warm at launch; user reviews are split more sharply than critics, and Metacritic user score (7.0, 29 ratings) is mixed and listed on the Switch page. UnderMine 2 was announced Apr 2024 and is out, leading some reviewers to say the original is effectively finished. A live web search was not possible because the search budget was exhausted; Reddit and OpenCritic pages could not be fetched, so OpenCritic score is null. Steam store page also showed a recent-review dip (Mixed, small sample) that I could not verify further.
Community sources
- Top helpful positive and negative English Steam reviews (local file); main source for player praise and complaints ↗
- Local Steam metadata: appid 656350, 90.2% positive of 9,863, Metacritic 79, revenue and owner estimates ↗
- Steam store page: description, tags, review summary ↗
- Metacritic Switch page: Metascore 83, user 7.0, Nintendo Life / Hey Poor Player / TouchArcade summaries ↗
- Metacritic PC page: 79 from 4 critic reviews; user complaints about grind, RNG, variety, no local co-op ↗
- Release timeline, platforms, PS4 Metacritic 78, OpenCritic 84% recommend, 600k downloads, UnderMine 2 announcement ↗
- Estimated revenue (Boxleiter method): about $6.1M gross, $1.8M net ↗
Archived creator commentary 1
Third-party summaries based on automatic captions may contain transcription or interpretation errors.
Tier list Part 1 (2023)
Undermine is a top-down dungeon-crawling roguelike where you play a humble miner collecting gold and upgrades. It looks basic and has nothing structurally unique, and the early game deliberately feels underpowered. Once you get past the start, items synergize so well that you become absurdly overpowered and can break the game. He finds it packed with content and modes, and has returned to it many times. He calls it a really good game and places it in A tier.
What the creator praises
- Huge number of items that synergize insanely well
- Extremely easy and satisfying to break the game and feel overpowered
- Packed with content: blessings, pets, customization, multiple game modes
- Classic Roguelike mode is amazing and worth playing by itself
- Looks basic but executes its fundamentals very well
- Strong replayability; he has come back many times
Issues raised by the creator
- Combat is pretty basic
- Feels underpowered at the start, which is not a good feeling in roguelikes
- Must grind the early game before unlocking the best content like the Classic Rogue mode
- Game can crash or have duplication glitches when broken
Design observations
- Deliberately starts you weak (lore of a random miner saving the world) then flips into power fantasy
- Overpowered broken builds are intended, even showcased in the trailer via infinite duplication
- Post-completion game mode gives a reason to keep playing after you have become overpowered
