Underhood
A city to live in, and a long way down underneath it.
What it is
Two halves joined by a subway. Up top is a city to come up in — a place to live, a car, a barber, shops, the court, the booth, the dojo, the arcade, and a street name that is worth whatever you have made it worth.
Underneath are three tiers of ruin. The Runoff is shallow and has its own forge and black market. The Driftmarsh sits below it. The Root is deep enough to keep a camp in. Past those are places that do not appear on any map you start with.
Everything below ground has its own enemies, its own gathering chains, tiered crafting, armour with independent slots, and loot that rolls affixes. The health bar only exists down there — nothing on the surface can kill you.
The descent is the point
Plenty of games give you a city. Plenty give you a dungeon. The reason this one exists is that the two are the same save: the money you make hustling buys the gear you take down, and what you drag back up is what the shops will take off you.
You can play the surface for an evening and never go down. You can also ignore the whole city and live in the Root. Neither is the wrong way round.
Church reads the bones
There is a man at the Boneyard with a table and a set of dice, and nothing is staked on them. He casts for what is below and tells you what he sees — whether the seams are running close, whether something down there is awake.
The reading is rolled when you sleep rather than when you visit, so it is the state of that day's underground whether or not you go and ask. He reads it; he does not cause it. Two of the four omens help you and two do not, which is what makes it information rather than a button you press for a bonus.
How to play
- WalkThe stick, or tap the ground
- Look aroundDrag
- Move the camera in and outPinch
- Use what you are standing atTap it
On a desktop, W A S D or the arrow keys walk, dragging swings the camera around you, and the scroll wheel pulls it in and out. Clicking the ground walks you there, which is easier across a wide space than holding a key.
It keeps your game
Progress is saved on your device and nowhere else. No account, nothing uploaded, and nothing that phones home — the whole game, including everything underneath the city, is one file with no external requests at all.
What isn't settled yet
Whether the omens change what you actually pack before a descent. The numbers move, and the wording tells you which way — but whether a player reads something is awake and takes more potions is a question only descending answers.
Church could post contracts rather than only readings — a named thing at a named depth, which would give the descent a reason on a day when you have no shopping list. That needs a system behind it rather than a line of dialogue, so it is a project and not a build.
Build Log
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Build 2
The Boneyard was a betting table: stake cash on two dice against Church, 1.9× on a win. It is a reading now. He keeps the table, the dice and the five-cycle tumble, and nothing is staked — he casts for what is below and tells you what he sees. Two of the four omens help and two do not, on purpose: a reading that can only help is a buff button rather than information. The build fails if an omen moves no number, so it cannot quietly decay into flavour text.
Credits and licences
Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence. Cover art was composited from a base image created with Grok (xAI).
Underhood is original work by Launchway Games.