The Underside, demo 3

By: Lorne Whiting

On: July 3rd, 2009

Arthur “Mr. Podunkian” Lee released a new The Underside demo into the hungry claws of the indie games community recently.

I personally have nothing but words of cloying praise for the game, I mean, except for the tutorial phase but that’s been talked about enough. But yeah, it’s bitchin’, and obvious that Mr Lee put a lot of love into the game. The demo’s about twice as long as the last, and features such awesome things as beating a turnip launching flower with a baseball bat, and murdering no-good cheats in order to steal their improvised grappling hooks.

Though it’s fairly linear at this moment, all the areas blocked by signs and pig-cops will supposedly be places you can explore later.

Anyway, check it out, it’s pretty goddamn awesome, and the Ruins (pictured) has some super-bitchin’ music.

Posted in Freeware, Platformers, Previews, Windows | Tags: ThePodunkian

http://josephkingworks.blogspot.com/ Joseph

I got stuck after you turn the switch on…
nyarla

I love it, nice work :D

I really like games whose worlds feel “real” in some way, with their own little mythologies and such, which this one does beautifully. Great atmosphere. (someone said it feels a bit Paper Marioish, yeah totally, I love those games in the exact same way)

The tutorial bit at the start didn’t bother me, it’s total nintendo style. You seem to be able to skip the text faster by pressing Z and X together.

Nice engine too, I like the scrolling and the way the screen snaps to certain places.
Harold

Did you hear that, Cave Story?! You can SKIP the TEXT in this game. SKIP THE TEXT. Bloody cave story.
Onion

This game is gonna be way better than cave story

CS will become the ripoff
Mr. Podunkian

paul jeffries — the word ‘completely’ original was used simply to try to make it clear to people who thought the game was a cave story mod that the underlying game engine is entirely separate from that, without outright stating “this is not a cave story mod,” which would sound a little awkward i think.

i’m glad the indie community’s gotten past the similarities, it shows a lot of growth in the attitude of its members (^:. thanks for the write up!
Mr. Podunkian

sorry for the double comment, but, phubans, someone said on the comments section of my unbearably disgusting looking website that downloading and installing ‘msvcr71.dll’ fixes the issue. it has to do with me stupidly writing the pxtone player extension in not-visual-studios-6.0. i hope this resolves the issues
renkin

“…almost two years and 5 million bad Cave Story rip offs later…”

I must have missed them. Please mention a single bad Cave Story ripoff that I can try.
DNA

unexplained crash for me (game just completely froze) right after I was given Buzzdrin’s reward… boo :(

really wanted to play the demo to death but it crashes at that point everytime.
http://hurp Joeru

I really like the game (And I Do!) but… the movement and jumping physics are absoloutely -aggrivating-. You just feel like you don’t have any weight and you are slideing and stopping harshly, jumping even more of an ordeal.
v1510n

Kibble stole my words. Yeah, Earthbound + Cave Story. Two of my favs, together!
Quazi

“characters and dialogue remind me a little of Paper Mario somehowâ€¦I donâ€™t know why.”

me too, its that quirkyness and and the way it doesnt take itself serious. also you feel like your part of the city like in papermario, and there are events going on.
mots

great humor and solid gameplay ( to be expected from a cave story rip… uh inspired game )
UltimateWalrus

Very cool! Really nice gameplay, graphics, and music. It’s clear that a lot of love went into the making of this game. I can’t wait to play the full version.

Wiktionary defines “rip-off” as “A theft or robbery; A scam; A copy, especially one that is illegal or inferior.” The Underside is clearly none of these things — and anyone who sees it as such is probably just an a-hole looking for something to complain about. Personally, I see it as more of a tribute, though it stands on its own just fine.
http://www.phubans.com phubans

Great! I got it working… Fantastic little game so far.

My only suggestion is to make the game full screen to immerse the player fully into the experience.

Other than that, well done!
Mr. Podunkian

phubans – alt + enter goes into fullscreen mode. alternately, you can change it in config.ini
Bisse

Great damn fun! This game’s gonna rock when it gets finished.

I find myself thinking it’s a shame with the Cave Story similiarities though. I’m not saying it’s a ripoff, i’m saying this is a man who had the chance to do something entirely original and awesome. So it’s a shame to see basically reused tiles and character designs from Cave Story when he could have done all his own thing instead.

That’s all it is though, a few tiles and some characters here and there. It’s all good. But try and tell me Ip looks nothing like Quote and i’ll smack your teeth in!
Mr. Podunkian

ip looks nothing like quote
Hola

Will this Cave Story mod be compatible with the PSP version?
Phasma Felis

@Bisse: Once again, no, Underside doesn’t “reuse” anything from Cave Story. It’s done in a similar style, but every tile and sprite was made from scratch.
Phasma Felis

Oh, and Ip looks nothing like Quote.
Hyper Emerson

Yeah, he looks nothing like Quote.
Ip is a cat who dresses like a Earthbound hero. =)
DarkFalzX

Just finished the demo – I’m sure I missed a bunch of stuff along the way, but I don’t want to spend any more time with it until the full game is out. The demo was pretty long – it took me close to 4 hours to finish it.
Wonderfully done – even though the whole Cave Story-ness of it is hard to look past at first.
Someone mentioned a crash right after getting the Buzzdrin’s thank-you-letter – I thought I got it too, but it wasn’t a real crash – wait a while and the game will resume I think – it’s a scripting error of some sort.
Moreover – I got some serious performance issues in larger rooms on my netbook.
TCM

The game’s totally a ripoff of Dwarf Fortress.
Faceman

Podunkian is a shameless unoriginal bastard.