Underworld Enters Crowdfunding

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 4, 2015

It’s funny how much I’ve been looking forward to throwing money at OtherSide Entertainment. I wish I had ten grand to send them, because I’d… well, no. Actually, I’d spend it on Frayed Knights. But I’d be tempted.

The Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter is live.

As of the time I’m writing this, they are 1/10th of the way to their goal. I think I’ll join them in saying I’d be thrilled to see ’em hit their goal the first day. I’m very cautious about pushing Kickstarter campaigns, because of the risk. The risk is still there, but speaking for myself, I personally think they have what it takes to make it happen, and so I’m willing to pony up a bit to give them their chance. And if they hit the stretch goal for co-op play. Well. If they pull it all off and manage to recapture the feel of the original, I’ll be ecstatic.

I still have a design outline I wrote up years ago for an Underworld-like game. I opted to go for the Frayed Knights design instead, though a couple of ideas from the one design found its way into Frayed Knights.  A couple of other ideas temporarily found their way into the game, but it turns out that they sucked, so they were gotten rid of again. For a brief period of time, though, my mouse control mirrored the movement control in Ultima Underworld.  You know what? Bad idea. I’m glad that didn’t catch on back in the day.

But I realized there was a big, empty hole in the modern RPG experience. As much as the Elder Scrolls games borrowed from Ultima Underworld, they were very much their own games, with a very different (and very cool) flavor. One of the few games that came close to capturing that feel was Arx Fatalis, and that game was published over a decade ago.

I used to call games like the Underworld series more of a “survival RPG,” but that’s taken on a whole new meaning in an era of post-apocalyptic titles. But really, the thrilling thing about them was that they were kind of “Dungeon Simulators.” Which, I’ve come to realize much later in life, is perhaps closer to the old-school RPG style… where the emphasis was much less on “role-playing” and more on surviving in what feels like a “living” interactive world. Where creativity and cleverness can trump high stats, and cool events happen organically rather than being scripted.

I feel I have reason to believe that’s what we’ll end up with at the end of this process. But that’s me. YMMV.

And in only vaguely related news (in the “old-school comeback”) department – Becky Heineman is planning a long-overdue sequel to Dragon Wars.

What an amazing time it is to be a CRPG fan.

 

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