Underwurlde

Underwurlde is a platform adventure from Ultimate Play the Game in which the player, as the adventurer Sabreman — also known from Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore — falls into a vast underground world made up of hundreds of interconnected screens full of caves, platforms and enemies. The goal is to find a way out of the maze, and the game gives the player no explicit hints — progress relies on patient exploration, memorizing the cave layouts, avoiding a diverse array of creatures, and mastering jumps between platforms of varying height and distance. Along the way, hidden treasures and bonus items can be found, rewarding more thorough exploration of the underground's various nooks, though the main challenge remains simply reaching the exit of the cave complex safely, a place full of falling rocks and moving enemies, where a single careless jump could ruin even a long, carefully planned path forward.

The game uses what's known as a flip-screen system, where the screen immediately switches to the neighboring room upon reaching the edge, something typical of Ultimate's other titles as well. Visually, Underwurlde is stark but functional, with emphasis on the clarity of individual chambers and smooth character movement, and its sheer scale — hundreds of interconnected screens — was, at the time of release, one of the things that set the game apart from simpler platformers with a fixed route.

Underwurlde is seen today as a lesser-known but valuable piece from the output of Ultimate Play the Game, a studio also renowned for titles like Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore, and one of the most admired British developers of the eight-bit era altogether. Its open structure and emphasis on exploration without hand-holding foreshadowed later metroidvania games, albeit in a much simpler, purely eight-bit form, where the only map remained the player's own memory and patience in repeatedly exploring the same places.

Why play it: For fans of early metroidvanias and open exploration without hand-holding who don't mind that the only map remains their own memory and patience – a lesser-known but valuable piece from Ultimate Play the Game.