Video Game / Underspace

"Battle storms, chase monsters, trade, mine, and explore the galaxy in this richly detailed, hand-crafted, open world space-shooter!"

Underspace is a Lovecraftian open-world spacefighter RPG made by Pastaspace Interactive that serves as a Spiritual Successor to Freelancer. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, a free, periodically-updated demo was made available. The game launched in early access on Steam and GOG on April 10, 2024, with the full release planned for 2025.

For aeons, the Croft galaxy has been plagued by storms in space caused by civilizations using a dimension called "underspace" for faster-than-light travel. These storms destructively warp reality, and spew forth both nameless horrors and incredible treasures. Croft is littered with the ruins of civilizations swallowed by storms, and only the interstellar military alliance known as the Union has been able to establish any kind of lasting order across the galaxy, a feat made possible by the ingenuity of its four member races (the Vauldwin, the Macrovari, the Ijuni, and the Ballden) and their willingness to actively hunt the storms despite the immense risks. The player can choose between a single-player and a multiplayer campaign, each with its own story.

In the single-player campaign, the player takes on the role of Kardoz Speakerson, the head of a noble house of the Vauldwin race and owner of a struggling interstellar trading company. When one of his convoys is destroyed under mysterious circumstances, Kardoz is convicted of sending his crews out to die in a storm so he could collect the insurance money. Stripped of his titles and fortune, Kardoz is left with no choice but to leave his homeworld of Vauldric and take his chances in the wider galaxy to make a living. As he pursues a new career as a "starchaser" (a contract pilot) while attempting to clear his name, Kardoz soon finds himself in a conflict between the Idolsmashers, the local starchaser chapter, and the Doomsdayers, a nihilist splinter sect of a cult of storm-worshipping pirates.

Much like its inspiration, Underspace is a Wide-Open Sandbox crossed with an RPG and a traditional space exploration game. Unlike Freelancer, the roleplaying mechanics are a major focal point, with a skill and quest system as well as an Unbroken First-Person Perspective when walking around in settlements and other facilities. It also fully embraces Freelancer's Acceptable Breaks from Reality, leading to a Denser and Wackier setting that is implied if not explicitly Science Fantasy.

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This game contains examples of:

• Absent Aliens: Inverted, there are no visible humans of any type, with the "rubbery and floating" Vauldwin serving as the closest stand-in.
• Abstract Eater: One sidequest has you cleaning barnacles off an old battleship. Said barnacles eat the structural integrity of the ship. Not the metal, but the actual concept of the ship's structural integrity.
• Adventure Guild: Starchasers and starchasing chapters; organized groups that hunt storms and protect the Union.
• Alien Sky: The nebula backgrounds of Underspace are definitely far brighter and more colorful than anything in real life, but this trop is definitely at play in the star system found if the player takes the ancient gate hidden in the Vauldrim nebula.
• Alliance Meter: Returns from Freelancer. The player can also view how much favor they've gained or lost with a faction.
• Ambiguous Gender: Your squad leader, Yunelese, uses male pronouns but has a female voice actor. Given that he's stated to be a Macrovari it is likely that normal gender roles don't apply to him at all.
• Apocalypse Cult: The Washers are stated to be a galaxy-wide cult that worships the storms and seeks to subsume the Union into them. The Doomsdayers (encountered in the main quest) are stated to be even more extreme, with a tendency to commit mass suicide in religious rituals.
• Artistic License – Space: Beyond even just the Acceptable Breaks from Reality involving scales that would be found in Freelancer. Croft is stated to be an elliptical galaxy, but resembles a spiral one, and the backgrounds of star systems are far too bright and colorful even if their nebulas were visible. Justified, as the entire setting is a Constructed World and runs off differnet rules.
• Asteroid Thicket: Asteroid and scrap fields are fairly thick, and wrecks can be found within.
• Author Appeal: Trains can be found in the game, and one of the major stations in the demo area is Spolen Trainyard.
• BFG: The player can acquire "heavy equipment" that serves as the game's Limit Break. Many of these are very large space lasers.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The codex states that the Vauldwin have over 50 different sexes, with each one being assigned a pair of numbers. A Vauldwin can only reproduce or even be attracted to another Vauldwin complimentary number. Kardoz is stated to be a 0-10, but no 0-10s exist.
  • The Macrovari end up even stranger, being hyper-intelligent microscopic single celled organisms that are nevertheless able to interact with the world at large.
• Breakable Weapons: Averted. Unlike Freelancer damage to you ship only disables a hardpoint until its repaired. Played straight with wrecked equipment looted from enemies, which has to be repaired with special items.
• Character Customization: Ships can be painted different colors, have decals stuck on them, and the player can place items in their cockpit. In the single-player campaign, players can also customize Kardoz to give him different clothing and clothing colors. In the multiplayer campaign, players can choose their character's race (Ballden, Ijuni, Macrovari, or Vauldwin).
• Clear My Name: Kardoz is wrongfully convicted of conspiring to murder his employees and is stripped of his fortunes and house titles. He wants to find out what really happened, but is also trying to make money just to live.
• Crapsack World: The galaxy is constantly under attack from monster-creating storms. Ships go missing and come back as angry ghosts. Lethal accidents in space are considered normal. The only real civilization is stated to be a military dictatorship.
• Eldritch Abomination: Stated and often shown to be a common thing in the galaxy.
• Eldritch Location: Underspace and the storms it creates. Nebulas become dark cloud banks filled with strange glowing symbols and the occasional thing can be seen moving in the distance. The center rift that each storm has also heavily distorts the player's screen until it can be destroyed.
• Enemy Chatter: Similar to Freelancer. Ships will talk to one another and announce their goals and actions out loud.
• Expy: The game's nature as a Freelancer successor leads to this at times, with many factions and areas being clear parallels to Freelancer.
  • The two starting pirate factions the player encounters in the demo area the Family Matta and the Washers. The Family Matta fly weak ships with weak guns, and usually are the most common enemy the player faces and are stated to be petty criminals under a common flag making them the game's equivalent of the Liberty Rogues.
  • The Washers fly much more powerful ships, and while they are described as a piratical cult movement that worships storms, their primary modus operandi is flooding the Union with drugs. This puts them as dead-ringers for the Outcasts.
  • The Vauldric system is one for the New York system, being a relatively safe starting area that features a homeworld orbited by two space stations and a mysterious badlands with a hyperspatial anomaly deep within.
  • The Vauldwin themselves appear to be an expy of the Bretonian colonies in Freelancer, including their brown-and-red lighting, and a corrupt upper class with a destitute lower class.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The 2022 teaser trailer features an absolutely massive squid-like leviathan opening an enormous eye to look at the player... before opening many many many more eyes and roaring.
• Famous Ancestor: The Speaker, for Kardoz. A famous Vauldwin orator who used his skill in speechcraft to stop an entire invading empire from Underspace by Shaming the Mob so much that they retreated. The Speaker's descendants make up the noble House Speakerson, and none of them have ever come close to equaling the Speaker's achievement.
• Fantastic Ableism: Kardoz is unable to experience romantic attraction or reproduce because his sex, 0-10, has no corresponding mate (which would be a 10-0, the only Vauldwin sex that cannot be born naturally or through genetic engineering). This makes him a pariah among his race, who are heavily focused on raising families, and this discrimination was an underlying factor in Kardoz's Kangaroo Court conviction.
• The Federation: The Intercelestial Union of Commonly Aligned Sapient Beings, or Union. It is an ancient military alliance founded by the Vauldwin, Ijuni, Ballden, and Macrovari to coordinate efforts to eliminate the storms. While countless previous civilizations only thought to flee from or try to endure the expanding storms and ended up being destroyed, the Union achieved significant progress in clearing storms and restoring whole regions of the Croft galaxy to habitability.
• Flash Step: Ships can instantly shift left or right to avoid incoming attacks, but doing so consumes energy also used by your ship's thrusters.
• Game Mod: The game comes with a menu to load and sort plugins, similar to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
• Genre Buster: A space shooter about fighting magical leviathans with a spaceship that wouldn't look out of place in a far more normal spaceship game.
• The Great Serpent: Serves as the game's mascot but can also be encountered as bosses in storms. Multiple types can appear at higher levels with different abilities.
• Guest-Star Party Member: While inside a storm other ships with unique names may occasionally come to your aid, leaving after the storm is destroyed.
  • All normal party members also count, as calling them into battle only means having a temporary ally before they jump back out.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Underspace is the titular realm that jumpholes take the player to reach other star systems. It's also where monsters, ghosts, and storms come from.
• Hyperspace Lanes: Called "lanelines" in the game. They're still capable of being disrupted by pirates, and now, storms.
• Lovecraft Lite: Galactic society is at war with monsters and horrifying Eldritch Abominations from a horrible storm dimension. And society is winning.
• Magitek: Talking to a policeman in Planet Vauldric's bar suggests that this trope is at play. Mentions are made of technology that are made or maintained by "mystics". The Allinone Repair Kit is implied to be this, and was mentioned to have been developed as the result of intense drug use and ritual sacrifice.
• Megacorp: Junktech is directly stated to be this. They have a massive base within the Vauldwin's capital system as well as their own shipline, as well as vaguely threatening descriptions for said ships.
• Metal Slime: Ships can sometimes spawn with skulls next to their names. They'll have extra attacks or abilities, but drop special items the player can use to repair wrecked equipment.
• Player Character: Kardoz Speakerson is the main character, a member of a species called the Vauldwin who was (formerly) a high ranking noble and is now wrongfully convicted of sabotaging his convoy and committing insurance fraud.
• Precursors: The Croft galaxy is packed with the ruins and relics of extinct precursor civilizations wiped out by the storms or their own actions. Salvaging and studying their tech is a dangerous yet lucrative business for the modern races.
• Proud Scholar Race: Kardoz states that the Vauldwin are usually poets, scholars, and diplomats, and their society looks down on any Vauldwin who tries to be anything else.
• Random Drops: Equipment and loot drop from destroyed ships. While sometimes intact, usually it is wrecked and has to be repaired with special items.
• Sibling Murder: Kardoz had a brother who died 13 years earlier. Ever since, rumors have swirled that Kardoz murdered his brother to take his place in House Speakerson, because a 0-10 like Kardoz would not normally have attained such high status within a High House. Kardoz claims the rumors are just another example of Vauldwin society's prejudice against 0-10s.
• Space Is an Ocean: And has lighthouses, storms, barnacles, and giant killer leviathans.
• Space Pirates: The Matta and the Washers in the demo. The Matta are stated to be only remaining criminal family in Vauldwin space, while the Washers are a galaxy wide pirate cult that deal drugs to the population.
• Spiritual Successor: To Freelancer, as well as the game mod /v/lancer. There are also elements from the cancelled Skyrim mod Tatterdemalion.
• Starfish Aliens: Basically every race other than the Vauldwin:
  • The Ast, a race of crystalline entities with only one emotion: intense righteous fury. Despite this, the Ast are generally not violent, place a premium on personal choice and freedom, and build beautiful cities and ships. They also curse incessantly and greatly enjoy drinking alcohol.
  • The Ballden, a race of multiple hiveminds consisting of thousands of individuals each. When a Ballden hivemind reaches a certain population size, its constituents are placed in cryogenic caskets to curtail the hivemind's growth and resource consumption, since Ballden individuals lack the intelligence to control their reproductive instincts. Ballden culture is deeply religious, and they worship the Demenvani as gods.
  • The Demenvani, a race of mobile, sentient stars with a political and social media presence in the galaxy. One Demenvani named Astraden is not only the creator of the Ballden race (and she is, in fact, the star that the three Ballden homeworlds orbit), but she also runs an advice column.
  • The Ijuni, a race of aquatic crustaceans with a cultural fixation on materialism. Each Ijuni spends its life trying to amass some form of wealth, and the wealthiest and longest-lived Ijuni grow into city-sized "Largeboys" who rule as oligarchs on the homeworld. Ijuni also possess a form of racial mass telepathy that functions regardless of distance, which they can access at will and treat as an analogue of the internet.
  • The Macrovari, a race of hyper-intelligent, single-celled organisms that inhabit robotic bodies and are incomparably skilled at whatever task they undertake. Macrovari are individualistic to the point that any two Macrovari will always dislike each other, and in close proximity they will instinctively fight to the death. Eventually, a single Macrovari will reproduce through mitosis, and the two resulting offspring will retain their original's skills but not their memories.
  • The Us (pronounced "Oos"), a race of sentient fungi that must inhabit the corpses of other sentient beings to do anything, including reproduce. They are pacifists and friendly, but the other races treat them warily due to their macabre nature. The Us operate the Deadstations, which serve as neutral trading hubs and necropolises.
  • The Veilers, a race of organic, militaristic beings who encased themselves in mechanical suits to survive their harsh, storm-enshrouded homeworld. Due to the necessity of continual mandatory military service to combat unending threats, the Veilers had no time to develop things like art and philosophy, but they are nonetheless at peace with the other races (following a recent first-contact war with the Union) and enjoy the novelty of their cultures. Veiler females outnumber males by a 10-to-1 ratio.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Downplayed for the Vauldwin, since all sexes are expected to be raising kids; "Wanderers" are looked down upon. Also downplayed for the Veilers and Ijuni, who have compulsory military service, and the Macrovari, whose unique biology precludes them from raising their offspring.
• The Swarm: The 2022 teaser trailer features the player being chased by one of these inside what appears to be a dense twilight forest. In space.
• Weird Weather: The game features a dynamic weather system that causes storms from underspace to take over systems. Entering nebulas while they're active can spawn hazards and recurring bosses, but also grants the player rewards. Storm intensity is measured by a system similar to the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes (category 1 to category 5), with stronger storms being more dangerous and more lucrative. A storm can be dissipated by finding the underspatial rift at its heart and destroying it, which drops a rare form of energy that can be used as currency to obtain unique ships and weapons.
• Weird World, Weird Food: The caches that the player uses to repair their shields are also stated to be edible rations.