DISCLAIMER: we thought it would be really funny if we didn’t update at all in october. seriously. the idea of us – we’ve got orange in our logo and we’re youtube verifiably spooky, not making an update in october (and not because it has anything to do with the fact that none of us have been playing videogames and all of us have been drinking too much and watching old bruce campbell movies) is laugh worthy. BUT BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU, THE READER, we’ve got this piece from Catherine Brinegar AKA Twitter Dot Com’s  CTHONIC CATH / CATHROON 

the streets of Seattle are paved with broken dreams.

most of the west coast is, to be honest. from San Diego to Vancouver, the tech boom from Silicon Valley has reverberated across the bleak landscape of North America, a siren song beckoning those to flock to these cities whose blood runs electric. brow beaten or turned away, just as many find themselves struggling to eke out a meager living while suffering the torment of an unpaid internship or the gig economy.

but, don’t worry! the Pacific Northwest is full of beauty and adventure! enjoy the scenic mountain ranges dotting the horizon, the azure skies, the bodies lining the streets; they pour from their tents lining the underpasses. the police march again to tear gas protestors and their medical supplies, a necessary protection for the men pounding away at their computers in the skyscrapers choking the skyline. the azure skies are branded: Microsoft Azure™. Amazon splits the skull of another unionizer, Bezos grows fat sipping their marrow. and far, far below it all: an Underground.

a spiraling network of tunnels that were once the streets. through clever engineering, the sidewalks were paved over 30 feet higher, ensuring commerce run unabated against the flooding waters of Mother Nature demanding man get the fuck out. opium dens grew here, the homeless sought refuge. it became another world, now long since abandoned and turned into yet another tourist trap, a bullet point on “100 facts about the city you love” in the city hall.

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Going Under is a game from Aggro Crab (@aggrocrabgames), a small development team based in the godforsaken corporate hell of Seattle. crafted in a rented shared-office space, the game focuses on Jackie, a hopeful at the recently subsumed drink start-up Fizzle; incorporated into the monolithic entity known as Cubicle, a shipping giant turning the city of Neo-Cascadia’s sky into the domain of drones flitting to and fro in service of customer’s deliveries.

Fizzle rests squarely in the teat of Cubicle, their office sprawling across a floor of the parent company’s fortress. below them, seemingly endlessly, rests an ever-more sprawling labyrinth making up the bowels of the building, feral remains of start-ups that met the titular fate. the city paved over to make way for the new.

it is here that Jackie learns her true purpose, that she is not to be a marketing intern, to learn a trade, to create, to feel fulfilled in some way. no, she is here as the Exterminator. a problem has arisen and the far more important people are too busy to deal with it themselves, so this lowly intern must debase themselves for the comfort of the powerful. Going Under is far more cheery and tongue-in-cheek about this than i may suggest, but Jackie’s fate is nothing short of a tragedy.

while couched in the mechanics of a roguelike, Going Under’s primary commentary exists through its satirical writing and presentation, but goes further than one would first expect.

i don’t think it’s any coincidence that the game is a roguelike. analyzing its systems through the decaying lens of capitalism, we can uncover that at its heart, the roguelike is analogous for our current systems and problems.

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crumple a paper wrapper, another fast food burger. toss it in the corner. the tower is growing when i pay attention.

it’s trash. disposable. transitory. fuel for the machine. it doesn’t matter and it never has: it is utilitarian food, with one purpose. a “run” for a roguelike is the equivalent at its base.

you throw yourself down a slide in Going Under, you jump out a window in Hades, you enter the ruins in Spelunky, you leave the dungeon in Dead Cells, et cetera ad infinitum. the paper wrapper is peeled off. there’s a momentary glimpse of delight here; the burger’s soft bun glows in the light/you found yourself a wonderful drop in the first room. this is going to be good.

you take a bite, tentatively. you don’t want to give this your all. rooms/chambers/levels/bites wash over you. a decent/ascent through things you’ve done a million times. you accumulate whatever meaning there is here to gather, hardly stopping to savor the taste, and eventually: it’s done. you die/finish and it’s time to start again. the leftover refuse? toss it in the pile growing in the corner.

the run is disposable, something meant for consumption once and then never again. the novelty here is that no two runs are “ever the same” but it’s always the same. it’s the same assets coalescing over and over at the whims of the developer to provide a palatable, expected experience — Sisyphus rolling a rock up hill.

there are echoes of it after, aren’t there? the calories are the same as Going Under gifting us with an abstracted currency, Cubits, that you can use to buy more things to throw into the grab bag of elements that can crop up during a run.

what do these truly add? it’s a staple in many roguelikes, the meta-advances of the player influencing later runs by some small margin, a reason to keep ploughing the game until it lays bare, bereft of content. but is the base game not sufficient? have you even experienced all its permutations before mutating it further? when is it “enough”? it’s a treadmill, a goal to keep you moving, the carrot-on-a-stick writ to code. they certainly aren’t necessary but in the context of the game’s world, they’re deemed things you need. what else are you going to spend that money on?

thankfully, Going Under is at least economical with its runs. Jackie is quick to snatch anything that isn’t nailed down (and in some cases, things that are) to utilize as weaponry. she’ll eviscerate a Joblin just as effectively with a knife as she would a keyboard. most roguelikes focus on improvisation and short-term planning, but Going Under thrives on this with breakable weaponry acquired by looting these corporate corpses. much like how the ever-shifting needs of an ineffable market force the individual to adapt, Jacke is always on her toes, ready for the next few minutes to become the worst she’s ever experienced or to soar at heights unknown to her prior.

apt as the metaphor is when stretched this far, it rings hollow when it comes to the conclusion of the run. not the end of the story, or the peak of the game’s content, no: when the player dies. in any roguelike, the hook is predicated on the fact that the protagonist will be reborn, or the player will inhabit another bag of meat to pilot (see: Void Bastards line of cryogenically frozen prisoners utilized as fodder to throw at problems until it’s solved). Jackie will find herself once again in the warm embrace of Fizzle’s office space, but our reality offers no such solace for the people.

time again, each attempt to push through the barriers of the system, every failure, beats people down. the system stomps down hard on the neck of those who can’t get up on their own anymore.

there is no salvation to be found in late-capitalism.

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please, don’t mistake my derision of society for dislike of Going Under, or the roguelike et al. if anything, i admire Going Under’s clever utilization of the genre and the ways they frame things contextually: “mentors” serving as an optional additional effect for your run, or “endorsing” skills you use frequently to be able to start with them. there’s obvious care for making an entry to the genre, and the game is nothing short of a blast.

but, again, it being a roguelike reinforces and explores a field rife with capitalist ideals. the idea of the “modern roguelike” design, its trappings, have grown directly from interacting with the current landscape of players and other games. since their surge into mainstream popularity in the late 10’s, roguelikes have morphed from niche, harsh, or dense to things far more approachable, accessible, and marketable.

a core aspect of the pitch for a roguelike is the assumption there’s a lot of value to be had from it. roguelikes (then and now) mostly come from smaller devs who lack the funding to provide 60+ hour crafted experiences, procedural generation lightens the workload of the elements that need to be made. it’s a good investment; the dollar-to-hour ratio being quite enticing for the gamer.

one of the core conceits of the genre has been reduced to having content as commodity, the need for an ever-bigger patty on the burger, more ingredients, higher quality ones too.

the genre grows ever more towards fostering engagement, keeping you coming back. these same desires can be found in the design of plenty of gig economy services or even Amazon’s system for their warehouse workers. surely there’s, somewhere, already an argument made directly tying elements seen in roguelikes, most recently popular mobile games, and so on into these gamified work settings.

the beauty here, at the end of the day, is that beyond the playable aspects of Going Under there’s further attention given to how the satire plays into it. specifically, fitting the skewering of corp-life, the characters and stories, into the mechanics, context, and overall experience/presentation of the game. like, Going Under’s glittery, candy-coated sheen is lifted straight from the design trends of flat design. even reality itself can’t escape corporatization in Neo-Cascadia.

altogether, Going Under is a potent piece of art, going beyond the most basic levels of what people expect from roguelikes. it’s a surprising work, and incredibly human. Aggro Crab get what makes games so unique as a form; being able to explore nuanced critique not just through words or visuals, but baking it into the core experience of what the game is.

now, if you’ll excuse me, i’m gonna go get a burger.

GOING UNDER CAN BE PURCHASED ON STEAM. YOU CAN’T BUY DEEP-HELL ON STEAM.