Despite the indie hall atTokyo Game Showbeing absolutely packed with beautiful, creative games, I found myself circling back to theUndergroundedbooth again and again. Every time I walked past, there was someone new playing it – understandably, as it hadn’t caughtjustmy eye, but those of many other passers by. When I finally managed to find an opening to play it, I was taken with what I found.
Developed by Japanese developer Game Studio Inc., Undergrounded is a gorgeous isometric puzzle adventure game that explores generations of American cultural history. The demo opens on Scott, who’s proposing to his girlfriend on a street corner in New York City. She says no and walks away – you can’t help but feel kind of bad for him. As he stands there, stunned and alone, he drops the ring, and it rolls into a sewer grate.
It falls through, but not into a sewer, as you might expect. Instead, underneath the city lies a sprawling dungeon, each layer characterised by a different decade in history, and the ring falls through it all, down into the depths. In the demo I played, I saw a bit of the ‘80s and explored an old-timey cinema, the kind with an actual ticket booth in the front and lined with red carpets and movie posters. I wandered through the halls until I came across a screen, where a movie buff was intently watching a movie that I’m pretty sure was referencing Back To The Future, and a man stood sadly in the corner. Elsewhere in the level was a projectionists’ room, a collection of movie props hidden behind a movie set, and what looked like a temple from Indiana Jones.
Part of Undergrounded’s appeal is the people you meet along the way. When I spoke to the lone man in the corner of the cinema, he told me he’d been down here looking for his daughter’s teddy bear, which he’d thrown away in a fit of anger. He hadn’t been able to find it, and he asked if I could keep an eye out for it as I wandered. I brought him a teddy bear I found later in the level, and he said that it wasn’t his, but that the whole thing had taught him a lesson about family and patience and… well, you get the idea. It felt a little trite, but sweet nonetheless.
But another major part of the gameplay is, of course, the puzzles. In the half an hour I spent with the game, I found myself punching codes into electronic locks, playing with Rube Goldberg machines, and shredding an electric guitar so hard that it made a wall explode and gave me access to a new area. The puzzles presented never felt overly punishing or unfair, but also weren’t so easy that I could breeze through the whole level without having to stop and think.
One of the most interesting things about Undergrounded is how it handles boss fights. Instead of having you use combat – Scott doesn’t seem like a very aggressive guy – you have to play adaptations of retro games from the ‘80s to defeat them. It’s a nifty way to remove combat from the equation entirely while still giving players a way to deal with bosses typically found at the end of a dungeon, it’s in keeping with the theme of exploring the past, and it’s also pretty fun while not feeling brainless.
Undergrounded is slated for a 2025 release, and I’m already excited to see how it interprets different eras of American history, what other characters we’ll meet, and what games we’ll be playing.
Undergrounded
WHERE TO PLAY
SynopsisMeet Scott, a heartbroken young man whose sweetheart rejected him when he proposed to her.He goes chasing after the ring that he dropped in a street-side gutter, but what he finds is a mysterious dungeon in which people’s dropped possessions and American history have accumulated like strata of the Earth…Game Summary“Undergrounded” is a Puzzle-solving Adventure in which the player plumbs the depths of a dungeon formed by American history folding in on itself like layers of the Earth.■ Explore a Dungeon formed by HistoryAn 80s movie theater and arcade, a space station racing to the moon landing, a roaring twenties speakeasy. On the backdrop of an isometric dungeon reminiscent of the games of yesteryear, find key items emblematic of each era and solve puzzles to advance to the next level!■ Scott’s Personal Growth and a Cast of CharactersAs Scott, meet a cast of people searching for lost possessions in the Dungeon. With his buddy Canary by his side, Scott will learn to face his own problems through hearing their stories and helping them overcome their losses.■ Formidable Bosses and Retro GamesScott must face several powerful bosses in the dungeon that block his way forward. Play various “games within a game” that pay homage to retro games of the 80s to stand up to these mighty bosses!
