Underground Utopia

Underground Utopia had a really good introduction, but got somewhat confusing as I kept playing. The closer to the ending I got, the more I felt like I was missing small facts that maybe were explained after following choice options I didn’t go with.

The AI-voiceover was all over the place at times with some audio pieces being louder than the other and the intonation not matching the situation. I found a few minor yet noticeable mistakes in text, such as a missing “or” in one of the choice questions and the choice option names not quite matching the way they were presented in questions.

I like the story’s overall concept. I could easily imagine the city and it’s atmosphere. However, I feel like there are opportunities for improving the immersion by fixing the minor mistakes with the text and voiceover, and perhaps adding more insights into this world that every player will get after different choices.

Underground Utopia was an excellent story that pulled me in quickly and didn’t let go. I found myself hungry for the next part of it as I made decisions. The story’s protagonist is Theo, a new arrival to a facility underground with his family. But is it his family?

Kevin Phu, the story’s author, wielded mystery with expertise. I was completely enveloped in the story.

I found the friendship between Theo and Hana, a girl he meets, to be beautifully innocent and powerful in a world where everyone else is cold and blank. They worked together to unravel the mystery and free themselves. As far as character goes, these two showcased Kevin Phu’s ability to create relationships.

All in all, this tale shows the power of friendship both as a force of nature and as something very important in difficult circumstances.

It was a good story but I felt like it didn’t quite commit fully at times. The characters were a bit flat and there wasn’t details that could have helped flesh out the why of the story that wasn’t otherwise explained.

Interesting concept, fun execution!

I do feel like for a puppet-replacement utopia compound, it felt strange that running through it was just “empty plazas.”

[spoilers]

Not sure if this was a bug, but I chose to “leave everything as-is” and the characters bashed the control panel apart anyway.

Continuing my thought from above the spoiler tag, I also would have liked to know more about what purpose the place served. Why go through the effort of building the place and replacing everyone with puppets? Maybe this is a short proof of concept or intro chapter, and maybe other choices would’ve revealed more in that vein, but I did feel like the characters were more “trapped in the story’s concept” than anything else.

Still, like I said, fun!

This sci-fi dystopian mystery was an interesting story, but it leaves more on the table than what is actually discovered. It plays to the overall questions surrounding the world, but Theo and Hana (in my play through) don’t feel like they were fleshed out as individual characters. This story could be explored by a set of different teens and the plot wouldn’t be different for it.

In this, the AI was not great. I ended up playing the story by just reading it in silence as the line delivery hurt some vital moments.

It has potential in the groundwork it has made, but needs some more time to be built into a fully engaging experience.