$1.99The Underground Man Survive the wasteland, prove you exist
You are one of the underground people, sent up into a radioactive Moscow that does not believe you are real.
Is The Underground Man worth it?
The Underground Man is worth it if…
- you enjoy games that are genuinely difficult and do not mind starting over
- you like reading your way through a story, with text and dialogue carrying the game
- you have a taste for dark, absurd humor and internet-era jokes
- you want a retro pixel world with a strong soundtrack and a bleak, strange atmosphere
Screenshots
A wasteland that wants you dead
The surface is a radioactive desert where survivors rob and kill each other, and it is now your workplace. You travel between settlements, scavenge for supplies, and haul what you find back to the people underground who depend on you. The journey is deliberately brutal: enemies get tougher as you go, mistakes cost dearly, and a wrong step can send you all the way back to the start. Long walks across empty ground are part of the deal, and getting through a stretch that kept killing you feels genuinely earned. This is a game for people who like their progress to cost something.
Conversations you type yourself
Much of the game happens in text. The screen splits between the world above and the dialogue below, and you take part in conversations by typing your answers by hand. Before you even start, you write your character's own backstory, and the game applies it to your adventures. The writing swings between dark comedy, satire and strange philosophical detours, and the characters you meet are detailed and rarely behave the way you expect. One wrong line in a conversation can end you, so every reply carries weight. It is awkward on purpose, and often very funny with it.
What kind of game is this, exactly?
Is it a serious post-apocalyptic story or a comedy?
Both at once, and that is the point. The setting is grim: a ruined radioactive Moscow, desperate survivors, a hero carrying the fate of an entire underground community. The writing then runs that bleak world through dark humor, satire and absurd situations, so a conversation can turn from philosophical to ridiculous in a few lines. If you want a straight-faced survival drama, this will keep surprising you. If you like your apocalypse with jokes in it, that mix is the whole appeal.
How hard is it really?
Hard enough that it defines the game. The difficulty is deliberate: harsh combat, unforgiving platforming, dialogue choices that can kill you, and long stretches of travel between towns. Finishing it takes patience and a willingness to repeat sections. If you bounce off games that punish mistakes, this one will frustrate you. If you enjoy the feeling of finally getting past a section that kept beating you, that is where the fun lives.
