So gonna have to take what follows with a grain of salt, as these impressions are based off the ten minute demo available on Steam. But from what’s there, I’m excited to see what might come out of it. Underling Uprising is an up to 4 player side scrolling 2D beat-em-up with a story mode, and what appears to be some pretty humorous dialogue from what’s been presented so far. There looks to be four playable characters to pick from, although the demo only featured one sadly. It also appeared that maybe around 1/2 or a 1/3 of a full level is available? What I do know is that you only have a limited number of credits to play, or else you have to restart from the beginning. One aspect that really bothered me was that I couldn’t skip cutscenes if that happened. But I would say that’s my most critical feedback of what’s been presented so far, besides maybe the fact that after finishing the demo, you basically have to manually close out of the game.
Ok let’s get into some of the details: so I was able to play young teen girl with a ghostly companion. Things start pretty simple with a jump button, move, move twice to run, attack and a grab button. You do have a jump attack and a running dash attack, which were pretty darn effective against certain enemies that can throw a wallop if you’re facing them. That was another factor to be aware of: enemies can kinda combo stunlock you since your invincibility after getting up is limited. I think in those situations, the hail mary may be using the last move in your arsenal as far as I know, your invincible slowly charging special move. For this character, it was a full screen beam that did pretty decent damage, I had it readied pretty often. Grab looks like a good amount of fun, you can use it to pick up environmental objects or straight up the enemies in the map. It appears that this will likely help against blocking enemies, and I’m sure especially with multiple players it could lead to some devastating combos.
That’s really all I have to evaluate for this demo, I do like the comic book cartoon aesthetic and the cutesy Saturday morning cartoon voices/dialogue. I think if combat is a bit tightened up in terms of how the hitstun and invincibility frames function, it can be really fun and feel balanced. Overall, I’m pretty excited to get my hands on the full version of this game, particularly to try out multiplayer. I was a big fan of arcade beat-em-ups and loved more modern takes like Castle Crashers with friends, so this seems right up my alley. I really want to see how some of the other characters play, as they appear to belong to different archetypes. This isn’t a full review, but from what’s there, I’d say give it a go: it’s free and pretty easy to get through.
Underling Uprising is developed by Dummy Dojo.
Found on Steam.
Downloaded public demo on Steam
Hellfirebam recommends wishlisting Underling Uprising
Indie Gamer Team 