3/5 ★ – jonesey46's review of Going Under.

Going Under is a rogue-lite dungeon crawler set in corporate America where profits are always more important than people. You play as Jackie, a newly hired marketing intern at a trendy soft drink start up called Fizzle. Fizzle has just been bought and swallowed by conglomerate Cubicle and what do they do with the start-ups they buy? They take their ideas and banish them to their basement. So, instead of marketing, Jackie is tasked with clearing out the basement of all those pesky workers to make room for more! Going Under is a very creative game, it's setting of exploring shuttered start-up companies in the from of dungeons is a great idea. Unfortunately, the gameplay is a little thin and gets old real fast. Thankfully, this isn't a long game, and has some handy assist features to negate a lot of the challenge. It's DLC 'Working from Home' is much tougher than the main game but we'll get to that later. As Jackie, you're required to clear out 3 dungeons that are filled with these start-ups and all their staff. The first dungeon 'Joblin', is a LinkedIn style career platform run by Goblins. The second is a dating app known as 'WinkyDink' and that's filled with Devils, Emojis and Aubergines(eggplants). And finally there's 'Styxcoin', a crypto mining company filled with idiots. And that's all there is! Each dungeon has 3 floors of combat and a final floor with a boss. Each combat floor is randomly generated although there really isn't that much variation. As you make your way through the floors, you can find extra rooms like shops and skill rooms to increase your chances of survival. Like any rogue-lite, if you die during the run, you lose that run and have to start again. Once you beat each dungeon once, your company, Fizzle, gets banished down under too and you're required to fight through each dungeon again, only this time its harder. Once you beat them again, you have one last dungeon to complete with a final boss and the credits roll. It doesn't over stay its welcome until you start working on the last few trophies and its DLC. Like I said, the gameplay is pretty thin and there really isn't a lot of variation in the dungeons and enemies. The boss fights are always the same too. There are some attempts at variation though, that go a little ways to making the game a bit more interesting. You never start a run with a weapon and have to use whatever you can find in the dungeons. These weapons break and so you need to make sure you're always picking up new weapons and using the ones that work best for you. When you acquire a skill in a dungeon, and have used it a few times, it becomes endorsed. When a skill is endorsed, you can equip it so you always start a run with it, you can only endorse one skill at a time though. Throughout the dungeon, you find apps for your phone. These are one-time use abilities that can help you in your run. An app can repair your weapon and give it a buff, or it can turn you into an invincible car, y'know, stuff like that. There's also the mentors; Jackie works with a rag-tag group of characters that are just trying to make it in corporate America. Each of these coworkers can become your mentor and if you complete tasks for them, you can level them up. Each level of a mentor gives you another benefit that comes in handy in the dungeon. There are 5 total but I only ever used Swomp, who at level 1 allows you to steal a random item from every shop. This was invaluable to me so I never changed it. But as far as I know, the others can give benefits like finding more money, or using apps more than once etc. As I mentioned earlier, Going Under comes with a whole suite of assist options to make your time with the game easier and what you're going to want to do is pop those som'bitches on as soon as you can because this game does not respect you at all, much like the latter half of Elden Ring (I just had to do it didn't I?). Most of the damage I received in this game I barely understood and had no hope of actually avoiding it. There is a dodge button and you will use it a lot, and it'll even help avoid some damage but I often found there was no rhyme or reason to it, just mashing the button and hoping for the best. It's no Souls game put it that way. In something like Enter the Gungeon, a very good rogue-lite and one of my favourite games of all time, every time you take damage, it's your fault and not only that, it makes you a better player because you understand it and are able to then practice and better avoid the damage in the future. This game felt like a crap shoot. Some runs I would take constant damage and fail after a few rooms, some runs I was doing entire levels hitless. And I didn't really find myself getting better at the game. Bosses are a little different because instead of a group of enemies coming at you, it's just one big one that usually has large telegraphs for their attacks. So, I was at least able to learn the bosses and avoid damage there for the most part. So, the assist mode gives you a bunch of extra health, makes enemies do less damage and makes you do more damage. Beating Dark Souls 1 at SL1 is impressive and I'd give you massive props, beating this game without assist mode on deserves no merit - I'd look at you funny and immediately ask you "WHY!?". When tackling the trophies for Going Under you'll find an easy but repetitive platinum, provided you put the assist modes on. Rolling credits is as simple as beating 3 dungeons twice and a final boss, but getting all the other trophies will require hitting the dungeons again, repeatedly. Thankfully, nothing is missable and both versions of each dungeon, the easier and harder version, are accessible post credits. A large chunk of the trophies are dedicated to levelling up each mentor, and this just has you completing miscellaneous tasks in the dungeons. Thankfully, once you complete a task, you don't have to finish a run, you can RTB immediately and it still counts. The majority of your trophy hunting time will be dedicated to acquiring all skills and completing the rolodex. Acquiring skills is easy to do, you use the currency you gain from finishing dungeons to buy them at your home base, and that skill then becomes available to pick up in the dungeons. The only issue is, is that the currency you need doesn't exactly roll in and so quite a few runs are needed to build up the necessary cash to get them all. Thankfully, the free DLC will keep you busy and probably net you what you need by the time your done with it. The rolodex is an interesting mechanic but I'm not really sure why it exists, if I'm honest. Throughout dungeon runs you can acquire blank business cards that do 50 damage, if you chuck this at an enemy and it kills them, you will acquire their business card and add it to your rolodex. Other than a "roflmao" blurb about the enemy, it doesn't do anything. Acquiring them is a pain in the arse and not worth the effort, unless you want the trophy that is. This is a DLC trophy and not required for the platinum. Last but not least, lets talk about Overtime mode. Overtime was added with the free DLC and it has Jackie run a gauntlet of all three dungeons in one go, including their respective bosses and finally a brand new boss known as the Imposter. Each time you complete a run of Overtime, the next level will unlock which applies a debuff (i.e. you take damage every time you learn a new skill, stuff like that). This runs all the way to Overtime +7 and every previous debuff is applied. This is pretty tough and by the end, almost entirely reliant on RNG, but, beating Overtime +7 will net you this games hardest trophy. Look, I'm not gonna lie, I was leaning heavily on the side of not liking this game but now I've finished it, I think my views are positive, but only just, and with huge caveats. First of all it's humour; It's going for a "lol, random, kthxbai" style of humour that is hyper critical of corporate America and modern capitalism. Look, I'm as left as they come, but this shit was just nauseating. It's so over the top and I strongly believe that when it comes to satire; less is more. When you have everything to say, you have nothing to say. Second, it's gameplay is super thin, and despite being a short game, it still ends up being repetitive and boring. Damage being mostly unavoidable and from what I can tell, entirely reliant on RNG, is basically unacceptable but the games generous assist mode makes up for it somewhat. Overall, I think I like this game, it's a neat idea, has some nice but simple visuals, some nice music, and some clever gags here and there. But it's negatives are huge and almost eclipse the whole thing for me. I'm glad I played it but if I'm being honest, I don't think I'd recommend it. Having said that, I am interested in their newest title, Another Crabs Treasure, the crab souls-like that came out this year. Yeah, it's THOSE guys that made this. Thanks for reading