UNDERGROUNDED

Seemingly the first real win for the second half of 2026 thus far! Captivating story, cool references abound, Intuitive puzzles, and just a super chill time. Looks to have quite a bit of meat on it's bones, given the time it's taken me just to finish the first level. Clearly a lot of love & care has gone into it, so hopefully it doesn't buried underneath the Steam Summer Sale promotion, given I only discovered it by complete accident myself. But if you enjoy isometric adventures, with some RPG lite mechanics (in the form of retro arcade goodness to make progress in the real world / defeat bosses) then this is just the meal ticket!

While this game often feels too wordy, forcing you to advance multiple text boxes for many simple interactions, it's an adventure game far more than it is a visual novel, which I always admire. Especially from a Japanese developer. The puzzles and arcade minigames stay widely varied, and that's awesome because of the surprisingly lengthy playtime. I wouldn't call this challenging overall, but your brain cells may fail you as mine did... Even the item-based puzzle-solving stumped me on occasion. You need to thoroughly examine the environments, flex your recall muscles. Beyond that classic, fun form of resourceful puzzles, sprinkled throughout are isolated ones with different gimmicks, like pouring booze between glasses until you fill the exact number of ounces according to the recipe. Combined with the retro arcade games that serve as pseudo-boss battles, this puzzle-adventure can be tricky, though never frustrating. The detailed art of the Manhattan underground's cultural and historical microcosms is great, but I would've appreciated more dynamic flair in the rest of the presentation, as well as 4K rendering. For me, the weakest aspect is the sound design and music. Some moments…