Under The Tree

There are quite a few Playdate games that you could play for 20-30 hours. HEXA. Hand of the Divine. Bloom, eventually. Spilled Mushrooms (post coming soon!). But fewer are the games where the actual game is that long. Under The Tree is, at its core, very inspired by the classic Apple II game Wizardry, which itself was just remade for the modern era by Digital Eclipse. UTT, though, adds a lot of quality-of-life things to make it playable on a tiny screen for anywhere from ten minutes to three hours at a time. It’s the first Playdate game I’ve ever really played compulsively. It was something so novel, and the drip-feeding of dopamine each time I made it just a little bit farther into the dungeon means that I didn’t even feel like doomscrolling on my phone. Pick up the Playdate instead!

I’ve always been interested in Wizardry, but I’ve been a console gamer for my whole life so the one that really spoke to me was the NES version. Which is, well… it’s not really the ideal way to play Wizardry. Luckily, every time I found a loose cart in the wild, it was just a little too expensive, or I found another game at that retro shop that was a little less intimidating, and a little more inviting. Wizardry has always been more of a concept to me: a first-person dungeon crawler, super unforgiving, ready to suck away hours and hours of your life. Maybe you’ll have to take notes on a piece of paper, ugh! But put that concept on my favorite tiny yellow machine, and it seems so much more approachable. A few dozen hours later, I might’ve been right to be scared! But it really is, as one Discord-user described it, “a GAME game.” There’s so much here.

It’s called “Under The Tree” because that’s where the dungeon is located. You wake up with just a wooden sword and some rags, dragged to the local medical facility on the… main floor(?) of the tree. You meet shopkeepers and animal people that will heal you or restore your mana. Then you go down and start to explore. There’s a map in one corner of the screen that fills in automatically as you explore, which was very handy, and the monsters get harder the deeper you go under the tree. Each floor is a big square, and every corner of each floor is packed with monsters, secrets, and treasure. You’ll want to check every nook before venturing down to the next floor, or you won’t be strong enough to handle it.

Most of the monsters that you defeat stay gone on your re-visit, so it’s easy to zoom back to where you got knocked out the last time. There’s also an intricate system of stairs, holes, and teleporters to zip you all over the place. And there’s no penalty for losing all your HP. Sure, you’ll have to pay to repair your armor and buy more potions, but it’s a pittance compared to how much money you’ll have after just a short time adventuring. It’s still dangerous to explore, since you never know when you’ll accidentally come upon a much-too-hard monster (it’s not uncommon to use all your mana and lose a big chunk of armor and health from even a regular battle), but the only real penalty being the time you spend getting back down here makes it okay to be a little bold. The RNG gods can be fickle, however.

Many monsters have their own strategies and elemental weaknesses, and the weaknesses at least are saved in an in-game bestiary. You’ll figure out things you didn’t quite get at first, too, but organically. For me, I realized why I should carry extra armor and leave auto-equip “on” – it will swap out a stronger helmet/shield/armor automatically mid-battle if one is damaged, letting you fight for a lot longer before having to return to the surface! But make sure you’re not carrying too much – each armor item has a weight and you only have so much strength.

There are a few times in the game when you become strong enough to carry a stronger class of weapons and armor. Like getting a new sword you’ve been saving up for in the original NES Dragon Warrior, these are the moments when you really notice the power bump, much more than just leveling up. You’ll continually learn new spells, too, and they can mean the difference between life and death.

Anyway, I got pretty granular in this one, but there aren’t a lot of Playdate games I was able to play for this long without wanting to do something else. Oh, and I didn’t even get into the set of very well-done arcade-style minigames that you unlock as you delve deeper, many of which reward you with in-game items if you do well. There’s a Robotron-like, a Defender-type, a platformer, video poker, Breakout, and more. Just for fun! They didn’t have to go so hard. On a home console, these would be extra DLC. Here, it’s all included. And there’s lockpicking, with the crank! Reminded me of Skyrim.

At $12, this is one of the most expensive Playdate games on the market, but it’s worth every penny, especially if you are a certain type of gamer that would really like to get sucked into something right now. I went into so many little details here because that’s what really made me want to keep going deeper. The fact that a GAME game like this is on the Playdate? Nothing short of a revelation, and the Catalog description really downplays how robust this world is. Get it if you don’t mind spending a little time away!

A final note: the developer made a first-level walkthrough and a FAQ for people that had never played Wizardry before, and they’re invaluable. I’d read both before jumping in to really have the best time! Or else you’re not going to equip the right armor to have full elemental protection. You just aren’t. Unless that’s the type of old-school gamer you are? Then have it; this game is made for you, too.

(Released December 12, 2023, on Catalog. Copy provided by the developer.)