Going Under is another hack-and-slash roguelike game to add to the pile along with other fantastic titles such as the iconic Hades, or the new indie darling Dreamscaper.
Going Under (which released its “Working From Home” update this year, along with new costumes as well) is a game full of charm, comedy, corporate nihilism, and a bit of janky-ness. But, there's a lot about it that players don't really figure out fully until they've already completed most of the game. So, to help you enjoy Going Under's mechanical complexity a bit earlier, here's what you should know before going in.
Updated August 26, 2021, by Jacob Buchalter: Going Under is a very satirical game that intentionally game-i-fies the horrible world of unpaid internships, corporate-startup politics, and just capitalism in general. And, as such, a game like that will also be topical in the modern world, especially in recent times.
Because of this, and the released physical version of the game, this title has seen an influx of new players, so it seemed to be a pretty apt time to go back, take another look at our tips, and offer a few more to anyone trying out Going Under for the first time.
13 How Important Pinned Skills Were
The “Skill” system in Going Under functions mostly the same way as the Boons in Hades, the Items in Binding of Isaac, or even Mutations in Dead Cells. Basically, they’re the way you vary up your build from run to run, and they’re also where a lot of the replayability comes in. But, what we didn’t learn until much later is exactly how useful having the right Pinned Skill is.
Essentially, Jackie can pin a Skill to herself while in the Fizzle HQ, and that Pinned Skill will always be auto-obtained at the start of a run while Pinned. And, depending on the Pinned Skill picked, this can easily set you up to get to the end of a dungeon easily. For example, setting Disaster Proof as your Pinned Skill before tackling the Winkydink dungeon is a smart call, as this Skill nullifies all status effects, which the dating app-themed dungeon is full of such as burning and freezing damage. For a complete list of the best Skills in the game, check this out.
12 How Beneficial It Is To Fully Unlock Each Mentor Early On
Speaking of amazing benefits Jackie can equip while hanging around the hub area AKA the Fizzle office, the Mentor System is so incredibly useful too, yet you don't really figure that out until near the end of the game.
Thinking back, we absolutely wish we knew beforehand how important grinding out those Mentor Missions would be, because we put a lot of them off until Winkydink or even further in the story. Just to give some examples as to why this system is so useful, let's go through all the Mentor benefits:
- Ray (the CEO of Fizzle) lets you spend money worry-free at shops, start runs with an overpowered car, and gain two Skills per floor instead of one.
- Kara, the company programmer, massively improves the versatility and power of Apps, and gives you more avenues to obtain them during a run.
- Fern, a co-founder of the company and flavor specialist, gives you a free healing item from the start, introduces the Fizzle Cans system, and even makes “Forbidden Flavors” of Fizzle appear.
- Tappi, Ray's babysitter and Fizzle accountant, lets you earn more money throughout a run, refresh items in the Cafe, and obtain extra weapons from the Primo Store.
- And Swomp, the barista for the office coffee shop, has the widest range of effects from shoplifting from the cafe for Jackie to making “Swomp Cubes” appear in the dungeons to giving you some free allied monsters at the start of each floor and finally even spawning an extra room in the second floor of each dungeon called “Swomp’s Chill Zone”.
Try and get as many of the Mentor Missions as possible as early as you can before even coming close to the Working From Home DLC stuff or the end-game challenges.
11 How Useful Throwing Items Is
For so many games, throwing weapons is either a feature not included, or is sort of a "last-ditch effort", but not in Going Under. Never did we imagine starting up the game for the first time that throwing every weapon would be a respectable playstyle for this game, as long as you knew which items to throw, what Skills to get, and when to throw them.
Basically, in this game, Jackie can throw any weapon she’s currently holding rather easily. The weapons each do a certain amount of damage when thrown, and some are even designed to be thrown more than they’re meant to be used as weapons.
But, the real overpowered aspect of this system is just how many Skills there are in the game that synergize with throwing items, from Yeet to Hot Hands and even She Don’t Miss.
10 How Dodging Works
The ability to cancel an attack animation and into an evasive animation is called “dodge canceling” and it’s something made popular by Character-Action games that is also pretty important in roguelikes. Basically, these games tend to get very chaotic very quickly, and players need a way to back out from an attack that originally seemed smart, but quickly became risky. Certain games are designed around punishing players for trying to attack at a bad time, like Dark Souls, but roguelike games' are almost required to have dodge canceling to work.
Yet, whenever Jackie swings her weapon (especially a heavy one), she’s sort of locked into that animation. There are still ways to cancel out of a swing, but it's not nearly as forgiving as many other games in the roguelike/rogue-lite genre.
Also, players should know that dodging in Going Under isn’t the same thing as dodge-rolling. When players press the “dodge” input while focused on an enemy (AKA locked-on to them), they’ll do a slight hop to avoid the attack, but if they press it while un-focused, then they’ll do the full-on dodge roll. Both of these functions are useful in certain situations, and knowing when to dodge and when to dodge roll can be very helpful for the more difficult areas.
9 Rolling Over Items With Empty Hands Picks Them Up
Speaking of Dodge Rolling, Going Under actually adds new levels of complexity to the roguelike genre, granting its small things here or there but it's still mechanics we haven't seen in other roguelike games.
The primary example is Jackie's ability to pick up items simply by rolling over them. This doesn’t work for extra-heavy items like chairs or boulders, but most other items Jackie can simply roll into and it’ll automatically be equipped in-hand, as long as she was empty-handed before starting the roll.
8 Don't Leave Apps And Food Behind
The whole inventory system of Going Under is pretty neat. Frankly, it feels reminiscent of classics like Dead Rising's inventory system where there's a limit, each item has durability, and you're constantly incentivized to grab new weapons from the environment around you.
In both games, over time, players start to figure out odd little tactics such as leaving stronger weapons behind in rooms that have already been cleared so you can use weaker weapons to clear the easier rooms then come and grab the strong weapon for the difficult room.
But, be careful trying this tactic with the Apps and the recovery items in Going Under because both of these items group lose all their benefits once the player leaves the room. To be more clear, Apps turn into Bricked Phones (which are decent weapons) and Food becomes inedibly stale.
7 How "Smart" Weapons Worked
It might not be immediately clear in the first couple of runs, but weapons can have a variety of different “modifiers” on them. Players will notice these modifiers as little UI elements on the weapon itself in the bottom left. The first time you might notice that this is an aspect of Going Under is usually right after using the Upcycle App for the first time. There are a variety of different modifiers, such as:
- Durability Up
- Attack Speed Up
- Damage Up
- Crit Chance Up
- Smart
That last effect, Smart, isn't exactly crystal-clear in its function at first glance.
Basically, Smart weapons automatically throw themselves at whatever enemy they were thrown at over and over until either the opponent is dead or the item itself breaks.
It's an especially useful modifier on items that apply status effects, or, our personal favorite use, combined with the Cubicle Reverb app and Debt ball and chain from Ray's Mentor abilities. Combining these two things creates a sentient and indestructible wrecking ball that won't stop flinging itself at the boss until it's completely dead.
6 Fire Damage Is Top-Tier
Too many Going Under players are sleeping on Fire Damage, and that’s no good.
That’s right, there are status effects in this game, in particular, Jackie can Burn, Freeze, Electrocute, Stun, or Charm her enemies. Each Status Effect has a variety of Skills that they benefit from, but Burning is by far the best, and here’s why:
- Burning inflicts a hefty amount of damage over time.
- It burns away shields and is a relatively safe way of doing damage to over-aggressive enemies.
- Fire spreads, meaning one flaming enemy can light them all up. But, this can also be detrimental to Jackie as well, since it can hurt her too.
So, look out for fire weapons like torches or lanterns and always try to find the amazing fire-based Skills like Bridge Burner or Hot Hands. Just be careful, as it can be hard to notice that Jackie is aflame as well in the middle of combat, which can lead to an early death.
5 How To Get Items From High Shelves
New players might have noticed on their first run through Joblin that there are a variety of fantastic weapons just out of their reach on the shelves above them or even a banana taped to the wall now and again.
Thankfully, it is possible to grab these weapons in a variety of ways, such as:
- Throwing a high-arcing item towards the shelf, knocking it onto the floor.
- Swinging one of the items Jackie holds over her head at the shelf to break it, like an Office Chair or Pot.
- Using the Charge attack of certain weapons to hit the shelf, like Hockey Sticks or Joblin Maces.
But, all of these methods have a chance of hurting the weapon on the shelf, lowering its overall Durability.
Thankfully, there’s one method to get them that doesn’t hurt it at all, and that’s abusing the collision of the game. Running up against piles of dirt, boxes, chairs, and many other items allows Jackie to "climb" them in a sort of way, and players can use this to their advantage.
4 How The "Job" Rooms Work
There are certain rooms on every floor of Going Under’s dungeons that are marked on the map with a caution symbol. Interacting with the floating icon within these rooms starts a “Job” of sorts that Jackie can earn a variety of rewards from.
But, for players who are new to the game, it can be a bit unclear what exactly they're supposed to do in these rooms, so here’s how they all work:
- Joblin: This first one is simple as it gets - just kill all the enemies in the room as quickly as possible. The only thing that affects the ranking is time.
- Styxcoin: The middle yet most annoying Job of the bunch that asks Jackie to pick up as much Styxcoin as possible. While the Job makes it seem like collecting Styxcoin is the objective, in reality, you just need to kill all the enemies as quickly as possible again. You can ignore enemies and run around grabbing Styxcoins on the ground, but it’s entirely impossible to get the highest rank that way.
- Winkydink: The final dungeon with the simplest job to perform. Basically, players pick an Elite Enemy to fight by swiping left or right on them, and if they manage to beat it without taking any damage or possible one hit, that Elite becomes their ally.
3 Cubicle Drones Are Destructible
Most players only figured out this was actually possible after getting to Kara’s sixth mentor task where it forces you to destroy one, but yes, Jackie can actually destroy the Cubicle drones that drop off those Loot Cubes.
It’s a bit awkward, as they’re usually just out of reach, which is why people go the entire game without figuring this out. But, these drones drop free Apps more often than not, so they're well worth breaking. To do this, you can:
- Use a weapon with an uppercut-esque move to hit and break the shelf, such as a Joblin Mace or Hokey Stick
- Find an item in the room that Jackie uses the overhead swing with, such as a chair or box.
- Or, our favorite, bringing an item over and placing it underneath the shelf, then running into the item and rolling until Jackie glitches on top of it, allowing her to grab the weapon off the shelf.
Out of these three methods, the last one is the only surefire way of getting these weapons without also accidentally damaging them, so you sort of have to get skilled at breaking the game a bit.
2 The Hidden Rooms, Weapons, and Bits Of Currency To Find
There are a ton of rewards for players who do their best and inspect each room as they go through them. Sometimes great weapons are “hidden” on the lowest shelf just out of view, sometimes there’s money hidden in breakable pots, and sometimes there are even hidden rooms that lead to extra encounters and mini-bosses.
Styxcoin probably has the most obvious example of hidden money found throughout the dungeon with its Styxcoin Ore that Jackie can mine. And, in regards to the hidden rooms, these are almost always marked on the wall by a door frame with no actual door inside until players walk into the frame, making them easy to find for those who keep an eye out.
1 Bosses Are Just As Susceptible To Status Effects As Regular Enemies
And lastly, players need to know that they can use the Status Effects against bosses too. In fact, a lot of these methods are actually the most efficient way to fight the bosses. Just to name a few ways:
- Joblin's Caffiend Boss can be stun-locked with tablet pens quite easily
- Hustlebones, the Boss in Styxcoin is prone to staggering every time he’s hit with a charged attack.
- Hover Hand, the CEO & last encounter of Winkydink, has two floating hands that can be charmed into attacking each other and also suffer from the fire/ice traps that can spawn in the Boss Arena.