Undungeon Review: A Stellar Premise With Lackluster Execution

Lately, it feels like tinyBuild has been on a publishing tear. They’ve been pushing out a lot of really compelling and fascinating games, from the zany mayhem of Justice Sucks to the stunning fantasy world of Asterigos. But the one I had patiently been waiting to come to the Nintendo Switch was Undungeon. Developed by Laughing Machines, it instantly grabbed me with its lush art style and truly intricate storytelling. I hoped that both were merely a sign of better things to come and that I’d love every minute spent with the game. Sadly, as this Undungeon review will quickly establish, it was instead one of the most disappointing games I’ve played in 2022.

Save The Multiverse

First, let’s touch on what Undungeon gets right – the story. It’s set in a multiverse suddenly in collapse, where several Earths have been smashed together in a phenomenon known as The Great Shift. The fabric of spacetime has been damaged in the process, and so entities called Heralds have been sent out by their respective deities to fix the problem. You play one of those and can unlock more, and they’re basically newly born creations empowered with massive strength and intelligence. Unfortunately for me, this is about where the entire game started to fall apart. Mostly because it became painfully clear that Undungeon was not ported well to the Switch console.

Where The A in ARPG Stands For Awful

It’s not often that I have trouble getting past a tutorial in a game, but that is indeed what happened with this title. The reason being, Undungeon is skewed against the player. Even on the lowest difficulty, getting hit by any foe empowers them, either shielding them from additional attacks or making them stronger. On Normal, this meant that one enemy which kept sniping me in the tutorial had several shields I had to cut through just to damage him. I almost gave up, but managed to barely scrape by.

To my chagrin, this wasn’t the end of my issues with the game. There are also tons and tons of help windows that pop up when you first are introduced to a gameplay mechanic. Normally I like this sort of thing. The issue here is they don’t do a great job of explaining all the nuances, and so I often felt the need to take screenshots just to remind myself what I was supposed to do. And while it’s true, there are little factoids that appear during overly long load screens, those also didn’t do enough to alleviate my difficulties.

I could ignore the overly complex yet woefully uninstructive tutorial and help windows if Undungeon was fun to play. Sadly, it’s really not. And much like I previously intimated, everything about the game is too complex for its own good. When fighting, your Herald is presented in a top-down view and attacks in real-time. For whatever reason, the hitbox for your Herald is unwieldy, so that actually connecting with physical attacks seems to push you backwards. Which makes it hard to chain together attacks.

I had to start over on a lower difficulty just to save these two…

Worse, when you encounter any group of enemies, more will typically get summoned forth in successive, aggravated waves. There’s no wave counter or other indication of when the hordes of foes will stop streaming in. But rest assured, they will do their level best to murder you. And since every attack they connect with only makes them stronger, even the weakest of foes can become a dangerous menace. With all this in mind, consider that one of the very first missions in the game is an escort mission in a desert. You have two soldiers you have to escort home. The first time I tried, both got murdered off-screen by hordes of desert insects while I was surrounded myself.

Organs and Items

There’s also a customizable component in Undungeon where you can swap out organs and cores to improve your Herald. I love all that in theory, but in execution, it was a mess. Organs will stop working and need to be replaced. As for cores, while it’s easy enough to swap one out for another, I had a hard time understanding what I needed to do to infuse them with traits and improve them.

Oh, and did I mention you can’t buy items, but have to barter for them instead?

If you thought that perhaps using items would be easy enough, you’d be sadly mistaken. You have to press one button to send inventory items floating forth, and then need to attack them to activate them. This goes for healing items and others. And did I mention that the game awkwardly pauses when your own weapons break down, prompting you to replace them by not doing a good job of explaining how?

Embrace the Void

Visually, Undungeon is the strongest. There’s really edgy and detailed artwork that help make clear this is a dangerous and dark multiverse. I loved the style of the Heralds as well, not to mention the massive boss battles. The music in the game isn’t bad, but it is much more muted and bland by comparison.

Broken Universe

Though I can appreciate the open-world mechanics in the game, and how Karma can affect how the story progresses, none of that was enough to compensate for all the other poorly stitched-together features. Ultimately I just want to play a game because it’s fun. Undungeon really felt like it was more built for PC play, and not at all optimized for this particular console.

This Isn’t the Multiverse You’re Looking For…

I was hoping for something special with Undungeon, but sadly was utterly disappointed. This is an example of a game where less could have been so much more. It overburdens players with overly complex systems that weren’t intuitive or fun. Granted, it has stellar artwork and a cool premise, but that’s not nearly enough to fix what’s already broken. Despite tinyBuild’s recent track record of publishing high quality games, this is one I absolutely cannot recommend.

Final Verdict: 2/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4, PC; Publisher: tinyBuild; Developer: Laughing Machines; Players: 1; Released: September 29, 2022; ESRB: T for Teen – Blood, Violence, Use of Tobacco, Language; MSRP: $19.99

Editor’s note: The publisher provided a review copy to Hey Poor Player.