Game News Underworld Ascendant Pre-Alpha Released

[Infinitron]

Tags: OtherSide Entertainment; Underworld Ascendant

As promised last week, OtherSide released the Underworld Ascendant pre-alpha to eligible backers today. Turns out it's not just for backers at the $75 tier but also for anybody who may have paid just $5 for the prototype back in 2015, which is pretty cool. As for the pre-alpha itself, its physics are a bit wonky and the textures look half-baked, but it's finally a real game, not just a tech demo with skeletons. Our resident Underworld watcher Nekot-The-Brave had some fun with it. Watch him run around killing Lizardmen and smashing crates while listening to the ominous intonations of Stephen Russell:

​

Here are some partial release notes:

The Pre-Alpha Build is meant to highlight:

• The game’s visual bar and core tenets of combat, stealth, and magic.
• The world as an interactive toybox full of interesting opportunities for the player to experiment with and areas that provide unique opportunities and challenges.
• Interactive elements that the player can combine with skills, spells, and each other, such as:
  • Physics-based traps that can be manipulated and exploited.
  • Spreading fire that can be weaponized.
  • Caches of useful items.
  • “Glue bulbs” that can stick to objects.
• An initial implementation of rewarding the player for creativity.

The Pre-Alpha Build is not representative of the final product.

• The implementation of skills, combat, stealth, and spells is all still preliminary work. We will be refining and honing how they work, adding functionality, and polishing usability.
• You may encounter bugs and it lacks the full range of weapons, skills, magic, and meta elements such as quest selection and player growth.
• Check the build notes for further details.

What next for Underworld Ascendant? Hopefully it won't take another two years for it to reach alpha.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Wait here.
I'll watch the video and then I'll be back to bitch about what I didn't like.

 

[RatTower]

Performance is pretty bad in some places. Some of the sound design is really good though.
Not sure where they are going with that melee combat but this game seems the most fun with a mage anyway.
Really liking the repel spell. Stylewise it's also pretty nice - though some of the particle effects seem off (the blue shine on the lizardmen's swords - the blood is obviously not final)

What I'm wondering though: Couldn't you just collect a bunch of crates in the begining, cast gravitate to build a bridge to the silver sapling and basically skip the entire level behind it? That was pretty much the first thing I thought of.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Post-view impressions:

 

[flushfire]

Hopefully there's not too much of that overacted narrator.

 

[Excidium II]

Looks really bad.

 

[Outlander]

The guy playing is insufferable.

 

[Excidium II]

The guy playing is insufferable.

it's nekot

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

The guy playing is insufferable.

'preciate it

 

[Outlander]

Taking it like a man, well done.

 

[mastroego]

hmmm. Watched a bit.
Vase hit by a sword, vase jumps in the air and then shatters mid air, when it finally realizes it has been hit with a sword.
hmm.

Ok, pre-alpha.
It's going to take a long while anyway. Progress seems to be slow indeed.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Looked like shit...

 

[Grumpy Grognard]

Still waiting on my code... https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1790.msg23450

 

[Quantomas]

Performance is pretty bad in some places. Some of the sound design is really good though.
Not sure where they are going with that melee combat but this game seems the most fun with a mage anyway.
Really liking the repel spell. Stylewise it's also pretty nice - though some of the particle effects seem off (the blue shine on the lizardmen's swords - the blood is obviously not final)

What I'm wondering though: Couldn't you just collect a bunch of crates in the begining, cast gravitate to build a bridge to the silver sapling and basically skip the entire level behind it? That was pretty much the first thing I thought of.

Well, that's always the problem. It's next to impossible to counter all possible exploits with such a system unless you have an AI that can do that. No one has.

 

[Raapys]

The point with such a system is that it allows such 'exploits'.

 

[Quantomas]

The point with such a system is that it allows such 'exploits'.

Depends on what an exploit is.

 

[Grumpy Grognard]

The point with such a system is that it allows such 'exploits'.

Depends on what an exploit is.

I think you're arguing a different point to the relevant case here.

Ascendant is built to enable players to solve problems using both a range of available methods. The whole reason you have a physics system in place in an immersive sim rpg is to *allow* for puzzle solving through means such as these.

Regarding the crate bridge iedea, I think building a bridge out of crates to cross a chasm should be nigh on impossible - unless they were lashed together with lizard-sinew rope or something, or if you had so many objects you could fill the chasm, the 'bridge' should collapse.

 

[Ash]

The point with such a system is that it allows such 'exploits'.

Within reason. All game devs care about balance and minimising potential for bugs. Ideally, every possible player action will be predicted and designed for accordingly, and if it's too exploiting, then removed or nerfed. Playing the whole game floating on a box and bypassing every challenge with that spell is not ideal, for example.
Of course covering everything is not possible, but one must always try. The rest they'll call "emergent gameplay" regardless if it's a bug or ridiculous exploit, or something legitimately good or not (or at least Spector would as he did with LAM climbing).

 

[Invictus]

Meh looks ok I took a $20 flyer on this game so I really don't expect much from it...of all the games I kickstarted 50% have turned to be good fun games worth their investment (Pillars, Wasteland 2 for example) 45% have been simply disappointing shit (Mighty Numer 9, Torment) and one has turned out to be an all time great (Grimoire) and frankly this looks more and more like a disappointment... hope the System Shocks can pull through

 

[karnak]

Doctor, my-frame rate hurts...

And those barrels sure look to be the toughest enemies in the game so far

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

Performance is pretty bad in some places. Some of the sound design is really good though.
Not sure where they are going with that melee combat but this game seems the most fun with a mage anyway.
Really liking the repel spell. Stylewise it's also pretty nice - though some of the particle effects seem off (the blue shine on the lizardmen's swords - the blood is obviously not final)

What I'm wondering though: Couldn't you just collect a bunch of crates in the begining, cast gravitate to build a bridge to the silver sapling and basically skip the entire level behind it? That was pretty much the first thing I thought of.

Only three objects can stick together at a time.

 

[Darkzone]

What i dislike on the pre-alpha is that there are all over the vases, chests and barrels and most of them contain something like wands or arrows or other useful shit. This is not good. There is no challenge, no need to explore a build and etc.

 

[Infinitron]

Updated release notes:

The Pre-Alpha Build is meant to highlight:

• The game’s visual bar and core tenets of combat, stealth, and magic.
• The world as an interactive toybox full of interesting opportunities for the player to experiment with and areas that provide unique opportunities and challenges.
• Interactive elements that the player can combine with skills, spells, and each other, such as:
  o Physics-based traps that can be manipulated and exploited.
  o Spreading fire that can be weaponized.
  o Caches of useful items.
  o “Glue bulbs” that can stick to objects.
• An initial implementation of rewarding the player for creativity.

The Pre-Alpha Build is not representative of the final product.

• The implementation of skills, combat, stealth, and spells is all still preliminary work. We will be refining and honing how they work, adding functionality, and polishing usability.
• You may encounter bugs and it lacks the full range of weapons, skills, magic, and meta elements such as quest selection and player growth.

A few things to note:

• The implementation of skills, combat, stealth, and spells is all still preliminary work. We will be refining and honing how they work, adding functionality, and polishing usability.
• The method of acquiring skills in the Skill Shrine is not how player growth will function in the game. The current implementation acts as a shortcut for demo purposes, so players can quickly experiment with different skills and abilities. Spellcasting is similarly streamlined here and not indicative of how it will work in the game.
• Creature animations are not representative of the game’s visual target. This is an important area we feel deserving of concentrated effort and are focusing on it currently. Also, time spent on vfx and rendering optimization has been very limited.
• While the game supports both keyboard and controllers, some UI issues remain for the latter. Similarly, some loading screens may lag. Crashes may also occur.
• Deeper, darker sepulchral areas and fearsome dungeon creatures will be seen soon in upcoming updates.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Oh man...that terribad Unity camera.

Zep--

 

[Zep Zepo]

I also liked the bug where all the items disappeared...

2018...yeah right.

Zep--