Underrail Preview

There’s a preview for the very Fallout-reminiscent post-apocalyptic turn-based indie RPG Underrail at RPGFan, and it’s fairly positive too. Here’s a snippet with some choice quotes from developer Dejan/Styg:

“I’m a fan of the Black Isle Fallouts myself, and I wanted to an extent to recreate the atmosphere of those games the ruined, barren, and sparsely populated dystopian world. Also, when I developed the turn-based combat system, I adopted some basics from Fallout.”

The game uses an “action point” style of turn based combat, for example. Everything costs action points, and you have a certain number of them you can use before the baddies get a chance to do their thing. Firing a gun, moving around, using an ability everything takes away from the pool of action points that replenish the next round.

But there’s more going on here than just a new Fallout game for more modern times. Dejan is doing things to not just differentiate Underrail from Fallout 1 and 2, but also pay homage to other games that he enjoyed growing up. For example, I asked him about a sequence in the game where you are sneaking through a ventilation shaft and a picture-in-picture view is employed.

“For one, I’m trying to improve on the subterfuge aspects of the game. So in the Underrail, you have security cameras that you can access, patrolling enemies, traps, and vents that you can crawl through and peek out of. Here I drew inspiration from another one of my favorite games System Shock 2. Like in System Shock 2, Underrail is a game where you will often find yourself going through hostile areas where, in addition to the unfriendly humans, you will also be threatened by automated security systems, dangerous creatures, and biohazards.

“On the combat side of things, I attempted to implement a more complex combat system with special attacks, abilities, utility, and psi powers. This is in contrast to Fallout, which was pretty simple (not in a bad way!). I also want to make the creatures in Underrail more diverse, so most creatures you encounter in the game will have at least one special trait or ability that will change the dynamics of the encounter and force you to adapt and think of ways to deal with it.”