Underground Level

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"Gee... it's kinda dark."

Underground levels, carved out of endless expanses of rock, are among the favorites of video game designers, primarily because they can shape these tunnels and cavities to any sizes, shapes and lengths they desire without having to resort to the Insurmountable Waist High Fence.

Visitors may encounter Bottomless Pits, falling rocks, stalactites, breakable walls, giant mushrooms, lava, an underground lake, and/or minecarts. Goddamned Bats abound, and watch out for the monkeys. Visitors will probably not encounter stalagmites, because game designers prefer flat, uninterrupted floors for the characters and enemies to walk along (though stalagmites may show up from time to time as the cavernous version of Spikes of Doom). The music often gets more low-key and adds drums and bass.

In most cases, light is strangely never a problem—it might be darker than usual, but you've always got enough to see by (maybe there's some sort of glowing fungus). Oddly enough, although spiders are common, Cobweb Jungles are not.

An extremely common variant is the crystal cave, featuring quartz and precious gems wall-to-wall. No one ever considers mining them out, because they're just there to look cool. And wouldn't you know it, sometimes the crystals are ice crystals.

The RPG version is usually either a fairly difficult dungeon with little reprieve, or the very first one, used as an introduction.

May at times overlap with the Down the Drain or Blackout Basement. If there are people living there, see Beneath the Earth.

Examples of Underground Level include:

Literature

• In JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the Mines of Moria and the caves beneath Helm's Deep.
• The Stand has Larry Underwood journey through the pitch black Mannhattan tunnel

Video Games

• The first two Avernum computer games take place entirely underground, and there are underground parts in all the others.
• Glitter Gulch Mine from Banjo-Tooie.
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has everything below the Marble Gallery area, which includes the aptly named Underground Caverns, the Abandoned Mines, and the Catacombs. This makes it all the more confusing later on in the Reverse Castle, where all three of these levels are the highest points in the game, yet retain the attributes of an Underground Level.
  • These are recurring locales in the series. Underground prisons are also common.
• Cave Story. The only thing that's not underground is the surface right before the final boss. However, while that's the official setting, only a few levels look like actual caves; there's a desert level, a grassy outdoorsy level, some techie levels, an a plantation level, among others (most of which have a rocky background).
  • The Outer Wall appears to be outside the caves, although it's always night there, whereas it's daytime up on the balcony.
• Crystal Caves takes place entirely underground, but this is one case where someone is there to mine it out.
• Chimp Caverns from Donkey Kong Country, with various other areas also qualifying.
  • Occasionally subverts the "there's always" light, with levels that require you to free a parrot to carry a lantern for you, giving you an annoying flashlight-style lit area. Other stages are lit by torch light and thus have normal lighting.
  • Donkey Kong Country 2 improves on this with its mine shaft stages (Namely Kannon's Klaim), whose awesome music and level design make it the Crowning Levels Of Awesome. It also features giant ice caverns found for the first time in the penultimate world, featuring appropriately echoing and cool-sounding music.
  • Donkey Kong Country 3, however, took a bit of a step backwards, with more generic cave levels taking the stage. The music did sound pretty nice though, whether you went with the SNES or GBA versions.
• The Ecco the Dolphin games manage to cross this level with Under the Sea several times. At one point the severely reduced visibility is actually acknowledged, and the use of Ecco's sonar is required to get through.
• Final Fantasy VII has the Mithril Mines, with glowing green rocks.
• Final Fantasy IX has the Ice Cavern, Fossil Roo, and Gargan Roo.
• Final Fantasy XI has quite a few areas like this: Gustav Tunnel, Kuftal Tunnel, Korroloka Tunnel, Sea Serpent Grotto, Ordelle's Caves, and Aydeewa Subterrane. And yes, there does seem to be glowing fungi in that last one.
• Final Fantasy XII has a bunch of these, including the Lhusu mines, Barheim Passage, the Henne Mines, the Sochen Cave Palace, and Zertinan Caverns. One may or may not also include Giruvegan, as the paths and platforms are man-made.
• Final Fantasy XIII had the Mah'habara Subterra, a network of tunnels dug for whatever reason by the fal'Cie Atomos under the Gran Pulse.
• The Underworld in Kingdom Hearts II is half this and half Big Boo's Haunt.
• Dodongo's Cavern, Beneath the Well, and the Fire and Shadow Temples from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
• The various Mario levels and bonuses reached by warp pipes. World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.. is the iconic example.
  • The 3D Mario games have Hazy Maze Cave from Super Mario 64, and "Spin-Dig Galaxy" and "Slimy Springs Galaxy" from Super Mario Galaxy 2.
  • Most of Stage 4 in Super Mario XP takes place in a cavern underneath Bowser's castle. Cheep-Cheeps jump out of the lake to annoy Mario, and the boss is a serpent-like Cheep-Cheep.
• Brinstar, the beginning cave area from many Metroid games.
  • Most of the first Metroid game is divided between Brinstar (caves) and Norfair (lava caves).
  • Later games mix things up with Marida (flooded caves), Phendrana Drifts (frozen caves), and the Phazon Mines (irradiated caves).
  • Metroid tends to be either underground or in a space station, aside from some of the areas in the Prime series. Almost the entirety of both Super and Zero Mission (remake of the first game, which lacked the outside part in ZM) are underground in Zebes.
• The area beneath Rogueport in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is fairly extensive, but it also overlaps with Hub Level and Absurdly Spacious Sewer, as it's the ruins of the original Rogueport (destroyed the last time the Big Bad was active).
  • Super Paper Mario has the Floro Caverns.
• Too many in the Pokémon games to name them all- each game seems to feature at least 3, and at least one is an ice cave, and another one is pitch black and requires the Flash power to navigate with any accuracy. Victory Road is always among them, however.
  • Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum have a set of underground passages filled with treasure that spans the entire region
• Mystic Cave Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
  • Aquatic Mine from Sonic Adventure 2.
  • Skeleton Dome from Sonic and the Secret Rings.
  • Coral Cave in Sonic Rush Adventure, mixing it up with Under the Sea. And it's very pretty.
  • In Sonic Adventure, most of Ice Cap before the snowboarding portion, and the second part of Sonic's version of Red Mountain (the whole level, for Gamma).
  • Crystal Cave from Sonic and the Black Knight.
  • Underground Zone and Gimmick Mountain from Sonic 2 8-bit.
  • The second half of Flame Core in Sonic 06, similar style to Red Mountain, and also Lava Reef from Sonic and Knuckles. And the 2P level Endless Mine in Sonic 3.
• Mole Mines in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, complete with minecart-riding minigame.
• In Star Fox Adventures, once the speeder bike in the Darkice Mines passes a certain point, the rest of the level is cave.
  • The original Star Fox even had one of these in the planet Macbeth- explained away as a planet where the core shrunk due to strange experiments by Andross.
• Young Merlin has a cave system with mine carts. There are passages everywhere between various cave entrances—you just step in the entrance and get transported to a different cave entrance somewhere else. Unless you step into the cave entrance and get killed by a bunch of creatures with evil eyes (the only thing you ever see). As far as this editor can determine, choice of movement and chance of death are completely random.
• The Hollow from Primal Rage.
• The entirety of the first two Descent games, sometimes crossing into Lethal Lava Land. Justified in that you're flying through mines to clear out berserk mining robots.
• The final levels of Plok (pictured above, middle-left) take place in the Flea Pit.
• Virtually every Kirby game has one. The Great Cave Offensive in Kirby Super Star and its Updated Rerelease is a Metroidvania subgame that takes place entirely underground. (though there's some weird locations, a castle underground!?)
  • Said cavern is also apparently large enough to have its own atmosphere and clouds floating around in places. Uhh, physics say "no".
• World of Warcraft has several although Ahn'Kahet qualifies the best. It is an underground city that here and there borders natural subterranean life. It features large, glowy mushrooms, insects of different types and sizes and bioluminiscent birds/bats that fly around. It also contains large number of undead that took over the city as well as the few surviving Nerubians that orginally inhabited the city. While the dungeon itself is fairly linear, players are able get a good view of the massive underground caverns from ledges and combinations of creepy music, darkness and mysterious whispers (courtesy of an Old God under whose range of influence the city is located) make this place quite Nightmare Fuellerific.
  • Although dropped in the inital stages of development, Azjol-Nerub, of which Ahn'Kahet is part of, was meant to be a whole underground region.
• Dragon Age: Origins has the Deep Roads, which contain equal amounts of caverns and ruined dwarf strongholds. Also That One Level for many players, though the abundance of great loot (two of the best sets of armor in the game, and several top-quality weapons, can be found down there) can help make up for it.
• The first Ultima Underworld game in its entirety.
• The entire setting of Manic Miner (duh).
• The "Melon Mines" level of Keen Dreams and the cave levels of CK4.
• All of Touhou Project: Subterranean Animism is like this as the plot requires the characters to investigate a disturbance coming from the underground.
  • Except the extra stage, which revisits a location from the previous game.
• Sector 5 of Jumper Two is an underground cave which Ogmo fell into while asleep.
• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil: The Lair of the Blind Ones.
• The Old Underground Metro Area, a forgotten city district engulfed by an earthquake and used as a base for the new city, in F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate. There aren't any human enemies in the two levels it spans, which doesn't make them any less terrifying. In fact, the sheer amount of hostile apparitions probably makes the place the games' very first Big Boo's Haunt.
• This is arguably the most common type of dungeon in The Elder Scrolls.
• The first and second chapters of the Hordes of the Underdark expansion for Neverwinter Nights are (except for the very start) spent underground.
• LEGO Rock Raiders. The entire game is an Underground Level.
• Huge chunks of the Gears of War franchise.
• Any of the caves in Minecraft and Terraria.
• The Catacombs and Tomb of the Giants in Dark Souls.
• The Fallout series has featured underground areas from the beginning, ranging from the buried Vaults and their entrance tunnels to mines and abandoned subways.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura has a number of mines and underground cities to explore, usually infested with weapon-eating golems and corrisive blobs.
• Athena has World of Cavern as the second level.
• The ancient Vanu caverns in PlanetSide. Megalithic rock formations, giant crystals composed of nanites, multiple vertical levels, zip-lines, and abandoned (but totally functional) Vanu buildings.
• Rockman 6: Unique Harassment
  • A huge portion of Tomahawk Man's level is underground, given the stone tiling and dark background in that portion of the level. Mega Man even has to deal with Doc Robot using Magma Man's powers as this section's mid-boss.
  • Jewel Man's level takes place in an underground mine since it uses a recolored version of Jewel Man's tileset in the first half.
• Colossal Cave Adventure is the Ur Example. There's even a clue in the name.
• The Very Big Cave Adventure, like Colossal Cave Adventure, is almost entirely underground.
• Moraffware's Dungeons of the Unforgiven is all underground, including the town level. This is semi-justified in-universe, as there is a theory/legend that the entire 'world' is actually an ancient Generation Ship travelling to an unknown destination.
• Starquake is set mostly inside a planet , as is the suspiciously similar game Dynastar.