by
Paul Broussard
, posted 4 hours ago / 342 Views
The turn-based strategy genre has been rather quiet this year. While a relatively niche genre already, 2024 has been devoid of its biggest hitters. However, this also serves to give the spotlight to newcomers as well, one of which is The Land Beneath Us. It offers a unique spin on turn-based strategy, with roguelite elements, but how well does this new addition to the genre stack up?
The plot is a bit of a wild venture: you play as a robot named Sven, who has become trapped within the (under?)world of Annwn, his creator having been split into fragments. Sven sets out on a quest to traverse the various continents of Annwn and save his creator. Along the way, Sven has to contend with a series of lords that preside over Annwn, as well as their various lackeys. There’s also a “helpful” side character in the form of an accompanying AI, who appears to have been written by someone who wanted to write a comedic sidekick but didn’t quite make it all the way through comedy school.
Gameplay in The Land Beneath Us is a top-down, grid-based affair, split out among various levels or “floors.” You only have to worry about controlling Sven, but there are often quite a few enemies, most of whom can’t be killed in a single turn (at least initially). At the outset of each turn, you can choose where to move Sven and what to attack. The game will display incoming enemy attacks by highlighting the affected parts of the grid, and it’s up to you to get out of there before being hit. At first, this is a pretty simple matter of just not mindlessly smashing the attack command and moving away when an area turns yellow, but later on things get much more complex, as attack patterns evolve and multiple enemies occupy the screen simultaneously, necessitating careful planning lest you get cornered.
As you progress through the various floors in Annwn, you’ll obtain multiple types of currency that can be used to upgrade Sven. These can range from improved weapons, movement, health, and more. This is where the roguelite elements emerge: you can design your character in a variety of ways and focus more on hitting harder or navigating through waves of enemies more easily. The grid-like nature of the game makes it easy to process how your character is moving and what Sven can do, and makes it a lot easier to visualize how certain things will affect a build.
There are additional upgrade options via relics and chips. The former are purchasable, albeit with a chunk of player health rather than money, providing an interesting risk/reward balance where you sacrifice in the short term for long term payoff. Chips, meanwhile, are as best I can tell only discoverable; they cannot be bought. These provide permanent buffs to Sven, and are probably the most valuable to keep an eye out for.
Graphically, The Land Beneath Us is really pleasant to look at, as it boasts a beautiful sprite art style and a plethora of vibrant colors. The different backgrounds are particularly engaging, and always kept me interested in what the designers could come up with next. Character models are solid too; The Land Beneath Us makes an excellent case for games continuing to use sprites.
So the foundation of The Land Beneath Us is incredibly strong, but I do have a few issues with it. Enemy design tends to be pretty bland for the first half of the game or so, and while I don’t mind a slow initial start to proceedings in some cases, a slow entire first half is tougher to swallow. Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, by the time I reached the end, I was feeling almost… tired of the concept, like it had shown everything it could and was killing time to get through its last story beats. I think the game needed just one more level of complexity to really reach its full potential, be that through an additional strategic decision-making element or perhaps a way to switch up the moment-to-moment gameplay. There are also some technical problems at hand, the most annoying being a glitch causing certain abilities to fire when you don’t ask for them.
Despite these issues, The Land Beneath Us is a concept brimming with potential that, when it shines, shines very brightly. There’s a lot to love here, and if you’re a fan of strategy titles, roguelite elements, or ideally both, you’d really be doing yourself a disservice by not trying it. At its current price point, it’s one of the best value packages in the genre this year.
This review is based on a digital copy of The Land Beneath Us for the PC
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