Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

UnderRail Released

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 24, 2012

Yesterday was something of a banner day for RPG fans – we got the re-release of Ultima 9 and Lands of Lore 3 (sadly, neither were considered the apex of their respective series) on gog.com, Knights of the Old Republic 2 on Steam, and the pre-release “alpha demo” for UnderRail (formerly entitled Timelapse Vertigo).

May I make a recommendation here, and suggest you do not ignore the latter in your enthusiasm for the other games?

I think I will. Guys, try out UnderRail. This sucker’s got promise.

I think it draws immediate comparison to the original Fallout games, with its perspective, sci-fi setting, and turn-based combat.  And detailed character creation! It takes more than filling out a checklist of old-school RPG elements to really make me happy, but it has the basics pretty well covered.

The game opens with what seems (so far) to be a pretty interesting setting.  Not too sure about story, yet, but the world is intriguing to me so far. One interesting thing about it that stood out to me was the inclusion of psionics. As far as I can tell, according to the UnderRail game world, psionics is a rare but natural ability in the human race that is naturally suppressed as a protective measure (to prevent infants and children from causing all kinds of destruction).  It can be unlocked the “old-fashioned way” by years of meditation and practice, or by modern science with a simple pill.

Hey, I thought it was amusing.

According to Styg, the full game is still a ways off. But from what I’ve played, the core engine and basic game systems are in great shape, and should provide a very solid foundation for the game. And hey – it’s a non-medieval-fantasy RPG! That alone would make me take notice!

You can download the UnderRail alpha demo directly from IndieDB.


Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



  • hexagonstar said,

    “Knights of the Old Republic 2 on Steam”

    FINALLY! I’ve been waiting for this for a long time! Can now go purchase SWKotoR 1 and 2.

    Underrail looks promising! The graphic reminds me a bit of a game on Amiga named “D-Generation”. Psionics … my own upcoming (*cough*) game Trailed Alliance will make use of something similar I call Psychic Abilities, even tough they are rare abilities and the player will not immediately be able to learn them right from the beginning.

  • Maklak said,

    I’ve played Underrail demo. It was pretty long and took me about a day to finish. It didn’t crash and played fine, but it is still an alpha and I’ve run into some issues. One was with “HUD” positions on the screen in 1680×1050 (16:10) resolution. Another was that I moved to another area when dying from poison, which resulted in a rather weird bug, where I was unkillable, but couldn’t reload my weapons. Some interface improvements would also be good and the combats were often too difficult for me. All in all, this is going to be an enjoyable game and quite similar to Fallout with prettier graphics, but not quite the same.

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