Roguelike indie Going Under puts its dungeons in a tech startup’s basement

Going Under is an indie game whose premise sounds as procedurally generated as its levels: Explore, loot and fight in dungeons — which are the ruins of failed tech startups set in the future.

The debut work of of Seattle-based Aggro Crab Games, founded by Nick Kaman and Caelan Pollock, Going Under was announced last fall for Windows PC; the studio said Thursday that it’s also coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In a PlayStation Blog post, Pollock described both Going Under’s gameplay and backstory.

The player controls Jackie, a new college graduate beginning an unpaid internship in the “not-so-distant future city of Neo Cascadia.

“While she originally applied for a marketing job,” Pollock added blithely, “it quickly becomes her duty to fight off monsters in the basement before they can disrupt workplace productivity on the surface.”

That carries the player into the procedurally generated dungeon, where they will improvise weapons out of office junk, such as stabbing a demon with a thumbtack or running over a goblin with a smart car. Players will also add powerful effects to their combat, such as torching an entire room, converting enemies into combat allies, “or just make your arms really buff or something.”

Going Under is scheduled to launch in September 2020 on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One. A demo of the game is currently available on Steam.


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Owen S. Good
Polygon