The Land Beneath Us Review – Roguelike Fun With a Welsh Twist

The Land Beneath Us Review – A Welsh Roguelike Adventure

Fairplay Studios brings a new entry to the roguelike genre with a theme of Welsh mythology in “The Land Beneath Us.”

Fairplay’s newest title has you playing as a robot named USH 001, or as he likes to be called, Sven, who finds himself in a strange world with his Creator, having been kidnapped to an underground world known as Annwn.

Wanting to find the Creator and regain his memories, Sven, accompanied by a comedic PC who uses emojis in most of their dialogue, sets out into the four continents of Annwn to recollect the soul pieces of his harvested Creator, find out more about his past, and hunt down seven lords who rule Annwn with an iron grip.

Going through Annwn Is Like a Game of Chess

Annwn is set on four continents, with various parts to explore. Your goal in each part of these continents is to traverse thirty floors, with a mini-boss on every tenth floor.

I was surprised by the twist Fairplay has given to The Land Beneath Us’ roguelike style of gameplay, instead of running towards your enemies and slashing through them until you eventually die. You rather traverse each floor one step at a time as if you were a chess piece on a chess board.

I found this quite a creative way to play the game, and I don’t remember thinking about chess when playing a game like this. It took me numerous minutes to plan out my next move, hoping that my next one would not result in Sven’s death.

When fighting enemies themselves, you will be given a warning as to when their attack will hit you when a tile in front of you turns yellow. Oftentimes, there will be multiple tiles that turn yellow around an enemy or a group of them that are close to you, which gives you a limited amount of space to dodge their attacks.

At first, I had to grin and bear some damage so that my next attack could hit an enemy, but as I unlocked more abilities during my playthrough of the game, I didn’t find myself doing this too often, much to my relief over the fear of my run suddenly ending.

Players can also skip their turn if they don’t think they can do anything or analyze a tile or enemy.

When I know my attack will hit an enemy, the tile will turn red, and it gives me more time to think for a moment to plan out my attack whilst dodging what the enemies have in store for me. Whether it’ll be small skeleton minions who only attack at whatever’s in front of them or plants that, instead of attacking at a yellow tile, will instead turn tiles purple, temporarily firing poison at Sven, which lasts multiple turns.

Poisoned tiles aren’t the only thing players will have to worry about, as some tiles tend to have traps that will also damage Sven in multiple turns, such as lava tiles that will burn him.

How Travelling and Combat Works in the Land Beneath Us

Sven can take down Annwn’s monsters in a multitude of ways, from the weapons and relics he can find on some of the floors.

Each floor has a certain theme, stemming from the gates players go into once they clear a floor of enemies. For example, there are gold gates that Sven could collect to buy new weapons from the Weapons Merchant, open weapons or relic chests found among floors, or upgrade them from the charismatic and strong Black Smith.

Soul gates work similarly to gold gates, but Sven collects souls instead, The Land Beneath Us’ other type of currency.

They’re also weapon and relic gates, where the relic gates allow the player’s perks to be used to make Sven stronger during a run, whether it’s to bring Sven back to life when he dies, giving him more damage to enemies, allowing him to apply a shield or even jump behind enemies to damage them.

The relics were lifesavers for me when traversing through Annwn, and I would have died sooner in my playthroughs without using them a lot. Each relic also has a color depending on how rare the relic you can find is, with purple being a rare relic and black being more normal but still a useful relic in general.

Weapon gates allow Sven to find weapons after clearing the floor, which gives him certain abilities, like hitting an enemy on an object a few tiles away using a pistol or the Longius Trident. Out of all the ones that I used, the weapons gate was my favorite gate to go through.

Other abilities include giving Sven overkill damage on an enemy, which heals himself when damaging an enemy or when he clears a floor, as well as knocking an enemy back.

Picking up a weapon gives Sven the opportunity to equip it in either four directions, and finding the same weapon to use in the same direction will upgrade Sven’s weapon instead of replacing it. His weapon abilities become stronger with each upgrade, and he unlocks new abilities when Sven reaches the maximum level for the weapon, such as more health or more damage to an enemy.

There are also boss gates that players will travel in at various points in their run. A mini-boss gate appears on every ninth floor to lead players into a mini-boss fight on the tenth. The same is true for a gate leading into the final boss on floor thirty.

However, every twenty-eighth floor will also have a healing stone floor that regenerates the players’ health before they go in to take down one of Annwn’s evil lords.

Clearing an area in Annwn will also allow players to go back and do a new run, with world customization added so players can try for a harder run than before.

The Residents of Annwn and Their Unique Abilities

At various points, players will also encounter an event gate in which Sven will meet several NPCs, such as the aforementioned Black Smith. Each has a unique personality and chats with Sven whenever he comes by. For example, the Weapons and Relics Merchant can give Sven new relics or weapons, as can their darker counterpart, the Black Merchant.

The Black Merchant will give Sven stronger weapons or relics in exchange for Sven giving him a certain amount of his health. The higher the price of life, the better the weapon or relic Sven will get.

There’s also the Enhancer, who upgrades your relics similar to the Black Smith upgrading your weapons. However, she does it for free, while the Black Smith requires a certain amount of gold to upgrade your weapons.

With her unique design and helpful enhancements to my relics, she was my favorite NPC to visit during my runs, more so than Sven’s companion, the Main PC, made by the Creator, who keeps watch over Sven during his travels.

Although funny with the chat speak that the PC displays, I can tell that certain players will get annoyed by the way they speak and the emojis they display. Compared to the helpfulness of the NPCs in Annwn, the Enhancer was a major lifesaver for me, especially during my first few tries in the dungeon.

Without her abilities, I would have struggled throughout some of the floors and definitely died.

Teleporting & Chips in the Land Beneath Us

Sven’s abilities don’t just stop with relics or weapons. Players will also have the ability to teleport or use the CHIP’s system after completing the first area. The ability allows Sven to teleport cooldown timers activating shortly after, which I found pretty useful when I was pushed into a corner by a horde of enemies or by one of the bosses, which gave me a perfect opportunity to escape their damaging grasps.

The CHIP’s system allows Sven to make an additional move. Examples include self-healing, using knockback on the enemies around Sven, or firing a ranged fireball attack at an enemy in front of Sven.

Players can activate these abilities after performing a set of combinations. Still, they don’t have to worry about activating them, as they may often do so accidentally during a fight, as I did a couple of times on each floor. I wasn’t annoyed by this; in fact, I was glad when a CHIP was activated for me.

But the CHIPs that I mentioned don’t just end there. Throughout their travels in Annwn, players will be able to find more CHIPs during their adventure, and with enough souls, they’re able to upgrade them, as well as Sven himself, through the hub world’s soul-tech station. Such upgrades give him the ability to carry more relics, increase the range of his teleport ability, or give him a starting weapon in each run.

The PC and the Deerman: Who’s Side Will You Choose?

Players can also spend souls at Annwn’s office. Annwn is a mysterious man wearing a deer mask who appears to be friendly to Sven but may have a sinister motive in his quest to get back the Creator’s Soul.

Annwn can also give Sven benefits, such as allowing NPCs in the underground to give Sven more advantages in his quest, reducing the Black merchant’s health costs, adding more weapons to the other merchants’ stores, and reducing the cost of the Blacksmith’s upgrades.

When you vanquish a lord, you will get a permanent upgrade, which you can give to either Annwn or the Main PC, who quickly becomes distrustful of Annwn and wants Sven to do the same.

Meanwhile, Annwn reacts the same way to the PC, with players having to choose which upgrades they want Sven to get from either of them and side with them to get one of the game’s multiple endings. I’m going to be honest. I really like Annwn out of the two more.

Final Thoughts & Impressions

I had a tough but fun time playing Land Beneath Us. The game does well in showing off its Welsh roots, thanks to the excellent pixel art landscapes on each floor.

Each enemy tends to have a pattern of attacks that I follow sharply, yet I still get hurt from time to time since I don’t watch where I am going, thanks to the enemy pulling one under me. Yet, like other roguelikes, I got back up when I died and tried again, excited for another run into Annwn.

Although I seldom encountered glitches throughout my time with the Land Beneath Us, one such glitch I encountered was that, at times, the overkill abilities didn’t tend to activate for me, landing me in a hot spot in the process that almost cost me my current run in Annwn.

Regardless, my deadly adventures in the Underground world to search for the Creator’s soul were still fun ones, as I spent most of it being as careful as I could be when clearing the chess-like floors.