The Land Beneath Us is a turn-based roguelike dungeon crawler based on mythology from Wales. The simple set up sees you playing a Sven, who looks remarkably like Batman, though the heavily pixilated picture plays a large part in this. The pixilation is such that this probably looks better on a handheld or a small monitor.

Traverse the depths of the Annwn underworld

So, Sven is tasked to traverse into the depths of the Annwn underworld to reclaim parts of his creator. And, like most of this genre, the set up is superfluous to the aim of doing better and better runs to face off and destroy the seven lords which rule the underworld.

The runs are across the four continents, consisting of thirty floors. Within the run every tenth floor has a boss to fight. Prior to the boss there is a power stone to revamp your character and a point to save.

Each of the floors is set out a little like a chess board, within which your character can move and are populated by various poisonous plants and enemies. Sven can both fire and move omnidirectionally.

There are a lot of abilities and weapons that you can find and upgrade

The floor of the dungeon also provides clues as to what is happening. A yellow tile next to the character indicated that an enemy is within range of an attack a red tile indicates an actual attack. If Sven cannot make a valid or useful move/attack then he has the option to skip a move. Tiles can also contain poison, fire or general traps.

As is usual with this genre, you start off relatively weak and are likely to die quite a lot. There are a lot of abilities and weapons that you can find and upgrade, as well as chests to loot. There are also different types of rooms you can choose to visit, including weapon rooms and relic rooms, quite possibly the most important room in the game, in terms of your character becoming more deadly and resilient. There are also in-game venders.

The Land Beneath Us is a fine example of a roguelike game

The overly pixilated presentation aside, the game's real strength comes from the sheer number of ways that you can interact with the environment and the staggering amount of options you have for upgrading.

For die hard fans of this genre there are also menu options to make the game insanely difficult.

Overall, given the amount of stuff you have to play with and explore, The Land Beneath Us is a fine example of a roguelike game.

8

Charles Packer