Underworld Ascendant brought to you by Zombie Looking Glass

I’m in! I have backed only at the $20 level, just to get my spot. But I’m really wrestling with upgrading to the alpha or pre-alpha levels of involvement. Have to wrestle with the costs, though (hm, maybe I can secretly launder some income tax refund monies toward this… good thing my wife doesn’t read these forums).

UW was a seminal game for me too (which I’ve already related here), so yeah, I’m also really pulling for this.

November 2016 can’t get here quickly enough (though realistically setting a date of Nov 2016 means it will probably arrive ino earlier than January 2017).

Looks Like Brian Fargo kicked it forward to the tune of the $10k level!

Brian Fargo ‏@BrianFargo 55s55 seconds ago
We have become a major backer for Underworld Ascendant thanks to the http://kickingitforward.org/ initiative. @Kickstarter http://kck.st/1yH1wpv

yes…yes he did. :)

Ship date- currently see no reason why we can’t hit that date.
I really wouldn’t want to miss christmas.

The reasons I am a bit skeptical about hitting any date that’s so far out:

  • kickstarter stretch goals ( = feature creep, = additional development)
  • programmers/managers routinely underestimate how long it will take to get something done
  • writing programs is hard! Something always comes up.

But I don’t want to sidetrack the discussion, and I hope you do make it by Christmas. Let’s talk about how awesome the new Underworld is going to be!

Backed! Ultima Underworld was also life changing for me. We got a demo VHS tape at the Babbage’s store where I worked for this game. I must have watched it 10 times. It was the first time I had seen smooth scrolling 3D texture maps.

I still have my manuals, runes, and hint books from UU 1 and 2. Such great memories. Strangely, the spiritual successor, Arx Fatalis, really didn’t capture my attention.

I enjoyed Arx Fatalis at the time, but it doesn’t occupy the same place in my heart as UW1.

I was pretty much on board but then I saw:

Improvisation Engine – Delight in player-authored gameplay taken to a whole new level, with a suite of technologies that empower you to solve challenges with astonishing ingenuity. Be the ‘MacGyver’ of a fantasy world.

As Rocket said: Oh. Yeah.

I am so in now.

But how will emergent gameplay work in a world that hasn’t yet invented air ducts?!

Lava tubes.

I’m terribly excited for this.

Actually come to think of it, dwarves could have stone-worked airshafts in their areas. Dark elves could use tough lichen to refresh the air in their caverns, allowing players to climb the walls and ceilings. Mushroom dudes smell like dirty socks when they die, so they ignore players with powerful B.O. Just do 5 minutes of jumping jacks before stealthing through myconid caverns.

So … lava tape?

That is funny.

Backed. The prospect of returning to a faithful reboot of one of my favorite series ever is too exciting. Best of luck, Otherside!

#DON’TFUCKINGCARE

I’m in. Couldn’t say no to helping a successor for games which hold such great memories for me. Good luck to the team. And here is looking forward to those KS updates to tell us about more aobut the game and the innovations you are planning.

Wendelius

Backed. The in-game items just kept pushing me up higher and higher…

PC Gamer interviewed Paul Neurath.

“It’s interesting to me that almost the standard of role-playing games is hack and slash. You go through the typical RPG today and kill, what, 5000 monsters? 50,000 monsters? You have a pile a mile high of dead monsters when you play one of these games through,” he continued. “I get it, it’s a grindy kind of thing, there’s nothing wrong with it, but that’s not the Underworld. The Underworld has combat, you can fight monsters, that’s perfectly fine and a lot of players like that, but there’s almost always non-violent solutions, ways to outsmart the monster, or outwit them, or dispatch them without just swinging swords at them or casting fireballs at them.”

Woah! How did i miss this news, this sounds exactly the cure to my disenchantment with modern AAA games. Time to check the Kickstarter, and yes the ‘kickstarter fatigue’ thing is an issue for many new projects these days, but if you do a professional pitch and actually have a good game to show, you will be fine. People do still want good games :)