Underworld Ascendant's Kickstarter Campaign Launched

Paul Neurath, who recently formed Otherside Entertainment, today announced the launch of a Kickstarter campaign for Underworld Ascendant, the sequel to the UltimaUnderworld series that began more than two decades ago.

OtherSide aims to make its in-development Underworld Ascendant to be a modern sequel to the original Ultima Underworld series. The company acquired the rights to use all the content from the original game, all the design and art, all the IP, everything except for the Ultima brand itself, Neurath said to Game Watcher. The game will return to theStygian Abyss in the original series.

The original Ultima Underworld was released in 1992. It was the first game to have a texture mapped first-person 3D world, pioneering the category of immersive games. Beyond its cutting-edge visuals, it heralded an era of sandbox, dynamic play, giving players the tools to craft their own stories. Far more than simple dungeon crawls, Ultima Underworld and the 1993 sequel Ultima Underworld II, were fully-realized worlds. According to Neurath, these games "influenced a whole generation of games: Doom, Thief, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Bio Shock, and more. Today, leading game designers view the Underworlds as still astonishingly modern in design."

Regarding the Underworld Ascendant that they are now developing, Neurath said that it will "retain the distinctive fantasy RPG gameplay of the originals" but it will "push forward with new innovations." As gathered, Underworld Ascendant would retain the archetypical RPG classes of thief, mage and fighter seen in the original series, but players can mix skills across the three as the game progresses. Player choices will also affect feuding factions across the subterranean underworld.

Otherside already has an early Underworld Ascendant prototype running on PC. But the game won't happen without the help from the fans. Said Neureth in his Kickstarter pitch: "This can only happen with your help. As an indie studio, we are looking to our fans to fund a significant portion of the development through our upcoming Kickstarter campaign, which begins on February 4. We aren't shy about our ambitions to make a great game, but that takes serious resources and effort."