Escape From The Underworld - Don't Mess With Angels!

Escape From The Underworld is the latest indie game that’s getting a lot of buzz in the indie gaming scene. It’s by Banov, the guy who made Assasin Blue which I covered last time here. It’s one of those indie games with rather simplistic graphics but with a strong theme to it. In Escape From The Underworld, you’re an Angel. Well, at least for while.






Escape from the underworld does the revelatory introductory scene trick. It fools you into thinking it’s one type of game before pulling the rug right under your feet to reveal what it’s about. You start off not knowing what to do other than to move to your left(which in itself, is a paradigm shifting move away from the stereotypical 2D platformer which has what I call right sided movement bias).

I’ll let you figure it out for yourself, but things sort of hit the fan. For most people, perhaps you were curious when the game encouraged you to hit ‘X’. Well go ahead and hit ‘X’. Once the game begins for real, you’ll have to collect your ‘angely stuff’ to regain all your powers. That also includes lives(which is the tiny circley dots on the top left of the screen once you get them).



The underworld is a giant square grid with locked path and non passable areas that you can traverse later once you’ve got some of you powers back. I suppose it’s Metroid like in a way with a lot of back tracking to old areas to get to newly opened areas. Much of the gameplay centres on this, platforming, avoiding projectiles and jumping over enemies and platforms.



The graphics are understated and rough. This was done in a short time for an indie game challenge, so it’s not a big deal. The music is really good although there is just a single track that repeats every time. Escape From The Underworld weaves narrative with gameplay and borrows from the classic Metroid formula. You can’t go wrong with that. It can be a baby puncher at times.   

Download the game here