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Kivi's Underworld

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Developer: Soldak Entertainment Publisher: Soldak Entertainment Genre: RPG > General Released: Nov 07, 2008 Players: 1 Website Download Purchase

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- December 2008 Indie game Round-Up - 2008 RPG of the Year - Kivi's Underworld Review

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Michael Scarpelli: 5

Kivi's Underworld is pretty underwhelming. Oh yeah. You see what I did there.

The website for Kivi's underworld touts it as a casual hack and slash game, and that's certainly what it is. It delivers on its promise, but I think its promise is a poorly thought out one. Games like Diablo, which are just glorified hack and slash, subsist on at least having a modicum of depth to them and this is what Kivi chooses to eschew. As you progress through the dungeons, pointing and hacking as you go, the gameplay never varies. You're always just pointing to attack and hitting buttons to fire off your magical attacks. From time to time you pick up stat boosts that are temporary for the specific level you're on and in between levels you boost overall stats for your characters � but there are only a couple of stats to boost. There aren't even any weapons or armor to equip and play around with.

So, while it's pretty clear that the goal was to make a hack and slash without those elements to clutter the experience, when you take those bells and whistles away it turns out that hack and slash is really boring. Gameplay like that is based on the notion of being a collector. I want to hack my way to the über armor and the über sword and the über spell, and when you take that away from me, all I have are endless legions of enemies to click on. There are a bunch characters to unlock, but all you get from using them is a single unique special attack. You don't even have to focus on any one character to level up their stats, as when you level up stats you are leveling up global stats.

Pany Haritatos: 8

Kivi is an impressive indie game. The quality of execution is top notch, with stand-out 3D graphics. The gameplay is pretty much Blizzard's Diablo with a few new twists. The character development and equipment hoarding has been simplified. Scoring lots of points on a level gives you the ability to upgrade your character between the different missions as a replacement for a traditional experience-based leveling up model. Instead of equipment, you come across power ups that all grant a temporary bonus with most of them lasting no more than 20 seconds. Because these are temporary bonuses, you find them frequently and looting forms a significant part of this game.

At the beginning I was really quite taken with the unique approach to character progression and equipment hoarding, but after three or four missions I started finding myself wishing I could modify my character, or find new equipment that was permanent that would make me feel more badass. The game seems to rely heavily on traps to trip up the player, which got old pretty quickly as most of them are fairly annoying to avoid. Frequently you will set them off by mistake in the heat of battle which can often turn the tides against you. Unlike a lot of other action RPGs, the lack of experience and equipment drops makes the click-fest feel a little less rewarding. I didn't really feel compelled to hunt down any chests or enemies after I had completed the mission objective as it was unlikely their drops would provide me a reward I could carry to the next mission.

It's pretty and well done, but it is not without its subtle flaws. That being said, Kivi is quite an accomplishment and is sure to provide action RPG fans with at least a few hours of good fun. The game also offers the ability to create your own levels and characters, which should give fans even more fun content to explore.

Coby Utter: 7

Kivi's Underworld is an isometric hack-and-slash similar to Blizzard's popular dungeon crawler. It is very much a 'what you see is what you get' kind of game, which in this case is both positive and negative. The controls are typical point-and-click; a proven mechanic for this style of game. Underworld plays just as you would expect, and the execution is solid. The key difference between Underworld and the majority of the other hack-and-slashes out there is in character development. Underworld forgoes the typical routine of leveling up a character and decking them out with rare and powerful items. Instead, the levels are littered with boosts that give your character temporary abilities or status alterations. The result is like the soul of Gauntlet trapped in the body of Diablo. It mostly works and can be mindless fun for a good while, but it lacks the deep and complex substance that typically draws RPG fans in for hours and hours.

Russ Carroll: 7

Soldak's last game, Depths of Peril was an amazing game mixing diplomacy and RPG party/guild building in a unique way that landed it in the GT Top 10 games of 2007 (at #2 no less!).

Kivi's Underworld is a much more straight-forward offering, that will likely make it easier for most people to digest, and unfortunately, it will probably sell better.

That's not to say it isn't a good game. It's a very competent dungeon crawler with tons of content and editors to make your own campaigns. There are secrets and characters that can be found, which expands the play and keeps you interested. The game play is rather Diablo-esque with lots of clicking for fighting, but is spruced up with mana attacks and special attacks. The special attacks, which were similar in effect to spells from other games, I especially enjoyed as they are liberally distributed around the levels making for lots of fun as you use them. It's a solid, competent dungeon crawler. My only disappointment stems from Depths of Peril being so much more.