Going Under

Sharp satire wrapped around a weaker combat core

Going Under's premise is distinctive and specific: "an unpaid intern in the dystopian city of Neo-Cascadia," fighting through "the cursed ruins of failed tech startups" armed with "office junk as weaponry." Reviewers consistently praise how fully committed the execution is to that idea. "Really cool art style. Funny Concept and commentary on capitalism," reads a 2022 review, and a 2021 review agrees: "The art, music, humor are all great. They nail that modern corpo-art style, the characters are all likeable and funny, and the writing is witty." That praise is echoed closely enough, and by enough otherwise-critical reviewers, that it's fair to treat the writing and presentation as the game's genuine, broadly agreed-upon strength — the tension in nearly every review in this sample isn't whether the satire lands, but whether the underlying dungeon-crawling built around it does.

A specific, well-corroborated complaint about how combat actually feels

That second question is where the review base turns consistently critical. "The core of the game, the combat, is inconsistent, overly-busy, and under-baked," reads a 2021 review. A 2020 review is more specific about the mechanical cause: "iframe times are basically 0 and the movement is clunky making the difficulty [worse]." A 2021 review describes the same issue from a different angle: "If I walk in any direction and hold throw, I start sliding in that direction and can't stop until I spam roll." This isn't a vague "combat could be better" complaint — reviewers repeatedly point to the same specific mechanical details: unreliable dodge invincibility windows, imprecise movement momentum and fragile, quickly-breaking weapons that together make positioning and timing feel unreliable rather than skill-rewarding. Checking a broad sample of negative reviews, this exact cluster of complaints appears independently and consistently enough to read as a genuine design issue rather than isolated player frustration.

A confirmed, specific drop-off in the game's back half

A separate, closely related complaint concerns pacing and content depth once the main story concludes. "If this game could have taken its first half and doubled its length or completely eliminated the unremarkable second half of the game, then this would have been an easy re[commendation]," reads a 2021 review. This review checked Steam's own global achievement statistics directly to see whether that complaint holds up beyond individual impressions, and the pattern is striking: completion rates for early- and mid-game milestones sit in the 18-26% range, but completion of the post-story "Imposter" gauntlet mode — the game's primary source of extended replay content — falls to roughly 3%. That's a much steeper drop than typical roguelite attrition, and it corroborates the reviewer complaints directly: a large share of players who finish the main story simply don't continue into the mode designed to extend the game's lifespan, consistent with reports of a sharp difficulty spike and thinning content once the credits roll.

A specific claim about missing content, reported but not independently verified

Several reviewers raise a more pointed version of the content complaint: "the press-kit said the game would have 5-8 dungeons and I paid 20 dollars and got only 3 dungeons," reads a 2020 review. This review was not able to independently locate or verify the original pre-release press materials being referenced, so this specific figure is reported here as a reviewer claim rather than a confirmed fact. What can be verified directly is that the shipped game does contain three main dungeons plus the post-story Imposter mode — a structure that several reviewers describe as thinner than they expected for a full-priced release, regardless of the exact pre-release marketing language in question.

What the January 2021 content update actually changed

This review checked Aggro Crab's own official news feed directly to see how the developer responded to the content concerns raised above. The most substantial post-launch addition, "The Working From Home Update," shipped in January 2021, roughly four months after release, and introduced the Imposter mode that forms the bulk of the game's post-story content today — the same mode Steam's own achievement data shows most players never finish. That timeline is worth noting for two reasons: it confirms the developer treated the original three-dungeon story as needing meaningful post-launch extension rather than considering it complete as shipped, and it means the mode drawing the steepest completion drop-off wasn't part of the original launch experience reviewers were responding to when some described the base game as short. A "Bug Slaying Patch" the previous month, in October 2020, and continued light maintenance as recently as an October 2025 update notice, further indicate a developer that kept supporting the game well past its initial release window rather than abandoning it outright.

A narrower, technical complaint worth flagging

A smaller number of reviews report specific technical problems distinct from the combat-feel complaints above: "controller support is broken. i can't move because the left joystick either does nothing or opens the menu for some reason... can't rebind em either," reads a 2022 review. A separate 2021 review raises a related but distinct issue: "there is ZERO custom key mapping, and the key mapping and control mapping is too awkward for me." These are lower-volume than the core combat-feel complaints but worth naming directly for anyone planning to play with a controller or a non-standard keyboard layout specifically.

Weighing the satire against the mechanics honestly

It's worth stating plainly how this review weighs these two, fairly separate halves of the game against each other. The writing, art direction and premise execution are genuinely excellent by wide consensus, arguably above the standard for the roguelite genre generally. The combat and back-half pacing are, with similarly wide consensus, below that standard. Neither side of that assessment should be read as cancelling the other out — a player buying this primarily for the satire and presentation is likely to find real value even with rougher combat underneath it, while a player buying it primarily for tight roguelite action, expecting something closer to the genre's best mechanical execution, is more likely to come away disappointed regardless of how funny the writing is.

Final verdict

Going Under delivers genuinely sharp, distinctive workplace satire wrapped around a combat system that a consistent, well-corroborated share of its own reviewers describe as imprecise and under-baked, with a documented steep drop-off in both difficulty and content once the main story ends. This is a fair recommendation for players drawn primarily to its writing and presentation, especially at a discount, and a more cautious one for anyone expecting the dungeon-crawling itself to match the strength of the premise built around it.