A nice little effort from a small company.

One of the best kinds of game experience a player can have is role play. To lose oneself in a character while playing a game is a very pleasant way to spend a few hours gaming, and all you need is a decent game to play. It’s nice to see that in these times of financial hard knocks gamers can still pick up cheap games that are fun to play at a low cost. Kivi’s Underworld is that kind of game.

Kivi’s Underworld is a third person role playing quest adventure where the player assumes the role of Kivi who is trying to save his people from a dreaded evil in the standard RPG fashion. As the lead character you must explore underground passages and ancient cities while trying to save your people, the Lumen, from a horrible fate. As the game progresses you can unlock other characters to play as giving the quest some variety.

The game is set up in levels for the player to explore and a set goal is given to complete each quest such as killing a certain number of monsters or finding missing people and so on. The game map is invisible until you travel across it and many areas are hidden or locked until you find the correct trigger be it a color coded key or a spell that lets you see the entrance.

As you explore the level you will be attacked by a number of bad guys who look quite cool but are easy to defeat at first. This is a game about combat as much as exploring and you must hack and slash through your enemies who will miss, be stunned and fight back even as you do. You start out with one power move but you can buy more moves later as you earn points in the game.

As you kill enemies and destroy barrels and open treasure chests you will find temporary powers ups of a wide variety that will help you kill the enemy, or regain health or mana. Mana is what is what is used to do your better power move that does considerably more damage then just slashing away with your weapons.

As you clear each level the game board becomes more complex and starts to throw secret attacks at you such as flaming statues and poison barrels as well as more dangerous opponents to battle in the underworld. The bad guys are done very well, and the game includes a screen that gives you a three dimensional view of every bad guy you face as well as a running total of the number of them you have killed. Even Kivi himself can be displayed and it’s a cool feature for the game.

Each level has a set objective but there are also secret rooms that give you more points if you find and unlock them. A cool feature is you can go back to a played level and try to find something you may have missed the first time around. Since playing a level only takes about 15 or so minutes the game moves right along.

The game has a very simple to use interface that displays everything you might want to know and tells you the shortcut key to bring up the display. The characters move nicely on the game board, and you can sometimes slip on the ice or race past an opponent while battling him. I also noticed you get bonus points if you destroy barrels quickly, as well as a cool kill frenzy bonus if you wipe out a number of bad guys quickly.

The music fits the game well and includes a nice narration of each chapter. Since this is a simple game you don’t talk to anyone, you just march around and fight and explore, which reminded me of games of old that were not to deep in story yet still fun to play. You can even buy power ups to improve Kivi, the amount you have to spend depends on how well you complete each quest in the game.

Overall this is a nice little game. It’s not trying to be anything but a fun RPG and in this it does well. You won’t be wowed by the graphics or the story but you will probably be entertained, and that in the end is what a game should be doing. At a low price of $19.99 it certainly is a nice game for download.

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