Griswold can hatch hatchlings for the player. Hatchlings are a schematic like blueprints or recipes, and are unlocked using Thorium. Once hatched, the hatchling becomes a familiar that can accompany the peasant on their journey.

Familiars

Familiars are small creatures that each specialize in something different. The design goal was to make sure each had a distinct flavor and supported a different kind of build. For example: the Canary is the first familiar the player will play with. Like in the current version of UnderMine, the Canary helps the peasant collect gold. The Canary’s theme and abilities revolve around gold and how it is used.

Leveling Up

Familiars gain experience by performing certain actions, as well as by diving deeper into the UnderMine. For example: the Canary levels up by picking up gold. Each familiar has 3 levels, and every time they level up they gain a new ability. At level 2 the Canary will increase the gold income for the peasant.

When the peasant dies and the run is over the familiar will revert back to level 1. We didn’t want these levels to be permanent because we didn’t want to encourage grinding to increase power. We also wanted to make leveling up a familiar feel like completing part of a build.

Why Familiars?

Familiars were a feature planned for the Early Access release, but they were also much simpler. Late in development we decided we wanted them to be a more significant system, and came up with the leveling idea. So, they got pushed out of the initial release. The reason we want familiars to level up is because it allows us to create abilities that will really support certain builds, but would be very underwhelming as a relic.

For example, the Firebird and Thunderbird increase the peasant’s fire and lightning damage at level 2. We felt this would make a terrible relic since if the player has no fire or lightning damage it pretty much does nothing. Each of these familiars’ level 1 abilities though, has them attacking using their respective elemental damage. Therefore their level 2 abilities are guaranteed to do something regardless of whether you have the right relics or not. But, because the birds increase their own and the peasant’s elemental damage they also combo with relics like Bottled Lightning and Salamander’s Tail.