UnderRail (2013)
UnderRail is a 2013 role-playing (rpg) video game made by Stygian Software.
Deep beneath a dead surface, humanity clings to life in isolated metro stations strung along old transit lines. UnderRail drops you into one such station-state as an ordinary recruit, then lets the underground swallow you whole. Sprawling caves, feral fauna, rival factions and buried tech reward patient exploration and punish carelessness. Combat is turn-based, tactical and lethal, built on a dense character system where a stealthy crossbow build plays nothing like a psionic mind-bender. Every skill point matters. This is an old-school isometric RPG that trusts you to read the room, hoard your options, and survive on your wits.
Quick answers
What is UnderRail about?
Deep beneath a dead surface, humanity clings to life in isolated metro stations strung along old transit lines. UnderRail drops you into one such station-state as an ordinary recruit, then lets the underground swallow you whole. Sprawling caves, feral fauna, rival factions and buried tech reward patient exploration and punish carelessness. Combat is turn-based, tactical and lethal, built on a dense character system where a stealthy crossbow build plays nothing like a psionic mind-bender. Every skill point matters. This is an old-school isometric RPG that trusts you to read the room, hoard your options, and survive on your wits.
When was UnderRail released?
UnderRail was released on 24 September 2013.
Who made UnderRail?
UnderRail was made by Stygian Software.
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Explore UnderRail guides
UnderRail in our writing
- Companion guide: The CRPG: The Complete Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games
- Companion guide: The CRPG Renaissance: How Kickstarter Brought the Genre Back from the Dead
- Companion guide: Post-Apocalyptic RPGs: From Wasteland to Fallout and Every Ruin Between
A few thoughts on UnderRail
The cyberpunk kinship runs deep. Ghost in the Shell shares the same claustrophobic tech-noir texture, bodies and minds hacked in cramped underground sprawl. For a soundtrack to the dread, Deltron 3030 builds a whole dystopian sci-fi world in rhyme. Fans chasing that Fallout lineage should read Metro 2033, whose Russian subway survivalism is UnderRail's closest cousin in tone and setting.
Life underground after the surface world ends
UnderRail strands its metro stations far below a dead surface, forcing a slow, careful kind of survival. Metro 2033 shares that same claustrophobic tunnel setting and hostile factions, The Last of Us and Half-Life 2 both ration hope across ruined cities, and The Scorch Trials sends its survivors across a wasteland with just as little room for mistakes.
Isolated societies built on top of dangerous old tech
Every faction in UnderRail survives on tech nobody fully understands anymore, salvaged from a world that ended without warning. Ghost in the Shell and Fullmetal Alchemist both build societies on science treated like scripture, Phoenix stretches that same idea of dangerous power across whole eras, and Old Man's War drops its recruits into a universe where old tech decides who survives.
Cold, desolate soundtracks for a world gone quiet
UnderRail's tunnels carry a cold, hollowed-out quiet that never really lifts. Irrlicht's drifting electronic drone and Blade Runner's score both sit in that same empty register, Deltron 3030 raps its way through a matching dystopia, and Universal Migrator, Part 2 spins a concept album out of the same interstellar isolation.