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

Lorne Whiting

Seriously I love that music.
Tanner

I’ve really enjoyed it, despite me being absolutely horrible at it. The music is indeed awesome in the ruins.
AmnEn

Any second now…
godsavant

I was with you all the way, Arthur.
konjak

Cave Story love letter.
konjak

The game is also cool!
Jay

This is a rip off of Cave Story! Just look at the similarities. They are both computer games. They are both downloadable from the internet. The main characters in both games can jump!

This is a travesty of plagiarism. And look out for my write-up about how the cult classic game from the NES days called “Super Mario Bros.” ripped off most of Cave Story’s core gameplay mechanics.
Lorne Whiting

Jay is boring me. >:[
originalcontent

not a cave story ripoff
avoidobject

Someone use the mod tool to recreate Cave Story. That would be hilarious.
MedO

Reading “Eragon” has taught me that even when you stick very close to clichÃ© genre conventions and borrow heavily from other works, you can still create something great that has its own very distinct personality.

If the game has its own feel, it’s its own game, no matter how similar the art style and interface are.

Now, I should really try the demo to figure out whether it does…
levi

I played the demo that was up about a month ago, and I can’t play any more until it’s done. It’s good, but I have a feeling playing through the content piece by piece, as well as probably starting over more than once each release, would ruin it a bit.
http://www.phubans.com phubans

Very Cave Story-ish but I would definitely play this, nonetheless… It looks great!
avoidobject

There are way too many insta-death spikes in this game. Yeah, Cave Story had them, but those were pretty minor and not to this extent. This game almost puts Mega Man to shame.
http://www.bradkav.com Kibble

It’s as if Earthbound and Cave Story got together and had a beautiful little baby! <3

Love the music.
Faceman

Well, it does rip off Cave Story in terms of art style and game mechanics.
ZOMGBananas

Shouldn’t really matter all that much if it rips off Cave Story. Don’t they say that emulation / copying is the most flattering kind of compliment? :P
Kovski

Wow, this is why i love TIGSource. I really expected the first commen t to be a ‘cave story rip-off’, but I am pleased to see this community mature and evolve.
I was really curious about the underside, so i gotta check it out, even though it’s 5 am and im stone drunk!
hug s and high fives all around!

ops: i finally ordered those sexy polytron t-shirts today! whoopdeeewhoooooooo
Sninnyer

This is a platformer! And its maker is a platformer maker!
squish

I remember all of the shit Arthur Lee caught when the first demo, almost two years and 5 million bad Cave Story rip offs later the Underside is looking to be the BEST game influenced by CS. Now no more demos till it’s done! You proved yourself it’s awesome!
Quetz

I too am kinda scared of the whole demo thing. Besides the fact I might be playing through a lot of what I played through in the early demos, it could totally diminish the experience when the real thing’s out. Still, there are few games I’m looking forward to more than this.
Skofo

Being like Cave Story shouldn’t be bad. Cave Story is awesome. Noone criticizes games being similar to Rogue.

Also this game is *amazing*.
Jay

For those who couldn’t pick up on the facetiousness of my comment, I was being sarcastic. People throw around “cave story ripoff” like Cave Story was the first platformer. You might as well call platformers SMB ripoffs.
Nyogtha

Not that they didn’t get it, it’s just that the joke sucked :P

I was first pretty annoyed, thinking that this was going to be a cheap Cave Story ripoff, but I played it and then saw it as more of a tribute than anything else. It’s great fun…characters and dialogue remind me a little of Paper Mario somehow…I don’t know why.
UnrealClock

I don’t quite see how you can compare people calling The Underside a “cave story ripoff” with calling all platformers a “smb ripoff”. The Underside was intentionally made to feel and look similar to Cave Story.
Cliftor

I’m glad we’ve all gotten past the mean spirited “CAVE STORY RIPOFF” sillyness and can now appreciate this game for the unique dose of awesomeness it is.

This could easily end up being a “must play classic” of freeware gaming. I can’t wait. This demo is awesome.
Lorne Whiting

Yeah, Jay, I think we all got you were joking, but it’d be a lot more topical if you waited until SOMEONE ELSE SAID IT FIRST because you ended up just being annoying, and now UnrealClock is trying to debate with you.
Pete

Cave Story 2: The Underside :)

This came out for the SNES in an alternate dimension, and super mario came out as an indie game.
Fepic Ale

You have the opportunity to make a game. Any game. Any idea, no restrictions, the world’s your oyster, so to speak. What to do, what to do?

Clone another game! Don’t make it look original, that’s for chumps. Make the main character, as well as the entire game look almost exactly but not quite like another, EXTREMELY POPULAR indie game. That’ll win points with fans who wouldn’t know a ripoff if it hit them in the face. They’ll vigorously defend it, despite the fact that they’ve never actually bothered to play this incredibly popular, indie game. Because this is the Internet, and you don’t need to actually see if it’s actually like anything similar. Just shout until you’re blue in the face that it isn’t, and it’ll be alright.

Seriously though, well done on carbon copying the look and feel of another game. You’re well on your way to being hired in the game industry. Good for you.
http://www.youtube.com/malefact Malefact

Woah, why all the hate for this game, Fepic?

Sure, the Underside copies the look of Cave Story, and does it pretty well. Even so, the face-sets and the character art manage to be distinct – just look at Al (unmasked), Duncan and Johnny.

But as for the ‘feel’? I wonder if you’ve actually played through the demo, because the feel of the game is unquestionably “The Underside” and not “Cave Story”. First up, the humour in TU is quirky, surreal and satirical and as such the game has a completely different tone to CS. Even when you have equivalent items (CS’ Health Box and the Invincible Burger, for example) the strength of the imagination in TU’s concepts set it completely apart.

Furthermore, TU introduces a lot of mechanics completely alien to CS: the cannon jumps, the tyre swinging, the left/right screen wrapping, the melee combat. All of these feel original and comfortable within the world of the Underside.

But I guess you can’t please everyone, eh?

RIGHT

With that over, let me just say that I’ve played through the demo until the point where the Pondunkian HIMSELF stopped me – and I thought it was a complete blast from start to finish. The level design, the characters, the enemies and the puzzles – they’re all so fun and satisfying. Five thumbs up.

P.S. @Lorne: Baseball bat? I thought I found everything; clearly not. Time to fire up the demo again…
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

I loved it, too bad Pondunkian still uses a lot of sprites from cave story.

Also people saying “if that’s a cave story rip-off so every platformers is a smb rip” are dumb or what? a platformer is something, stealing a lot of sprites, effects and “feel” recreating them almost 1:1 is another thing.
It’s just like how Giana Sisters ripped off SMB.

Too bad because the game has his own soul
dippy

Eclipse, Podunkian hasn’t used any sprites from any other game. Some may look similar, but they’re completely his own.

Also, Kid Icarus ripoff.
Paul Jeffries

This looks like it should be good, however I feel it is my civic duty to take issue with this statement from the about page:

“the game’s graphics and engine are (believe it or not) completely original. the game’s engine is written in clickteam’s multimedia fusion 2”

So… the game’s engine is completely original to clickteam then?
dippy

that’s like saying every engine coded in game maker belongs to the people who made game maker
Paul Eres

yeah, it’s perfectly reasonable to code an engine in another engine. i created the ‘tomato engine’ for the game ‘fedora spade’ in ‘game maker’. it’s an engine to create adventure games created in another engine, and so far 4 adventure games have been made on it, another on the way
Paul Jeffries

I’m not saying that it isn’t, but to say that it’s **completely** original is barefaced bullshittery. MMF is supplying the graphics engine, the sound engine, the event handling, the collision detection… Sure, you can add some stuff on to that but it’s still like building a sandcastle and claiming you invented the beach.

That said, its purely a picky point of semantics and I’m sure isn’t an evil plot by Mr. Lee to take over the universe.
Paul Eres

by that argument, you can’t say that something is original if you use C++ libraries or something, because you’re still using someone else’s code
Paul Jeffries

I put the word ‘completely’ in bold for a reason, you know. Don’t make me use allcaps, you rascal…

To answer your point anyway; I would personally say that depends on the library you use. For example, I’m currently writing a game engine which uses irrLicht as a 3d graphics renderer. All the physics, AI, editing tools etc. are mine, but I still wouldn’t say the engine is ‘completely original’ because the graphics engine is such a major part of it.

But maybe that’s just me. And like I say since he gave full credit to clickteam it’s not like he’s trying to pull anything. Losing interest in 3… 2… 1…
O

No, you weren’t interesting in the first place.
anothergol

“MMF is supplying the graphics engine”

Well, then the graphic card is supplying the “graphics engine” for most modern games. There is then no such thing as a “graphics engine”?
Eduardo

Nice game! But I’m stuck now… I got the hotel room from the mayor and went there but there’s nothing interesting inside. Where should I go next?
Andersonger

fun game but i think it should have nicer graphics, maybe something cool and 3d like Teenage Lawnmower, that game looks really nice.
SirNiko

Eduardo: Your goal at this point is to return to the caves where you started the game, particularly the house where you got the hi-jump sneakers. Use the grappling arm to explore the area beyond the mayor’s office until you find a path that leads you back towards the start.

It’s easy to get lost at this point. Just keep exploring and you will find your way.
Lorne Whiting

Eduardo: Now that you have the grapplan’ hook you can backtrack to the first area of the game.
Eduardo

Thanks for the tips.
Tet

Diablo rip-off
http://www.phubans.com phubans

“Cannot load pxplay.mfx. This object might need an external program or library not yet installed.”

Weird, I ran it in Windows 95 mode, and even tried running it as an administrator… But still to no avail. Anybody else having this problem on Vista?
avoidobject

I’m able to run it fine in Vista using the ALL CAPS instructions given by the site.
http://www.phubans.com phubans

All the site says is:

“VISTA USERS: RUN THE GAME IN WINDOWS 95 MODE!”

Which I tried, and it still doesn’t work.
Fail

CAVE STORY UP IN THIS BITCH