During PAX East I had the distinct pleasure to preview Underworld Ascendant which is a game seeking to be a continuation of the Ultima Underworld series. If this sounds familiar to you, you might remember it’s successful Kickstarter campaign from back in 2015. It’s been a few years since then and it’s releasing this year so it’s a perfect time to look at where the game is currently.
One thing which was obvious right from the first moment was there is very little direction about where you need to go or what needs to be done. There is a sort of narrator who you would think would be telling you what needs to be done and where to go, but mostly he was just super snarky. Occasionally he’d offer some advice which was useful though so outright ignoring him is probably not a great idea. Also, there would sometimes be text which appeared on the screen giving me direction, but it was also very limited in the helpfulness. For example, the text might read something like “click your use key to pick the barrel up”. Since I had never played the game before I had no idea what the use key would be, so I hope for the sake of people new to this kind of game they include something more specific.
One of my favorite parts of the demo I played was every passage way had multiple ways of solving them. This allows for an incredibly diverse set of playstyles and thinking patterns which will be able to get through the game. Related to this I did notice my habit of making things far more complicated than they had to be was in full force. For example, at one point I needed to burn down a door to proceed. My solution was to put a barrel right in front of it and then light the barrel on fire. This worked well as once the barrel was burning the door caught right on fire too. Of course, I could have just used the torch to light the door on fire in the first place.
Another cool thing about the demo was pretty much everything I came across I could interact with in some way. At one point I was just picking up random things and throwing them just to see if I could. Also, what physics there are in game seemed to work well. There weren’t many moments where I would try to do a thing and the result would be something which just wouldn’t happen. Though I did have some maneuverability issues. Sometimes stacking things was just weirdly difficult.
Another interesting aspect of this game is they are really trying to downplay the gameplay of “just kill everything”. One way they discourage this is by not giving the player a weapon at all until they are a good way into the game. This forces problem solving and creative thinking to the forefront.
Overall the game did feel a bit rough around the edges, which makes sense because they are still actively working on it. Those rough edges didn’t detract from the fun and interest of the game though. For anyone who enjoyed the Ultima Underworld games this one will be a must for sure. For anyone who never played those games if a game where it’s up to you to figure out your own solutions to things and not be lead through the game by the hand sounds appealing, you’ll also want to check this one out.
