Building comparison
head to head
Risk of RainvsUnderMine
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is execution, and it is a single point.
Risk of Rain
Optimization · Practiced Mastery
Side-scrolling roguelike where item synergies snowball against a relentless difficulty clock.
UnderMine
Optimization · Systems & Chaos
An action roguelike about mining gold, dying, and upgrading the next peasant down.
Risk of Rain leans Optimization (Practiced Mastery); UnderMine leans Optimization (Systems & Chaos).
Risk of RainUnderMine
Axis by axis
Execution6 vs 5
Risk of Rain leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
Risk of Rain
Dodging projectiles and platforming under scaling pressure.
UnderMine
Pickaxe-throw combat and dodging in real time
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Risk of Rain
Enemies spawn and chase; no adaptation.
UnderMine
Dungeon creatures are scripted
Variance6 vs 6
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Risk of Rain
Item drops and stage rolls dominate run identity.
UnderMine
Random layouts, relics, and curses each run
Optimization7 vs 7
Same score on optimization - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Risk of Rain
Item stacking and time-pressure routing is solvable.
UnderMine
Relic synergies and permanent meta upgrades compound
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.