This is the two hundred forty-second entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred forty-second random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality has accidentally killed the hero. It’s Underhero, by Paper Castle (AKA Paper Castle Games), and its tagline in the bundle reads:

One in a minion

No, not those minions.

Paper Castle Games state that Underhero is inspired by Paper Mario and other Nintendo role-playing games. I’m not in a position to verify this claim; Paper Mario released in 2000, but my Console History series hasn’t progressed past 1989 (and is currently on a detour back to 1987 to fill in some games I missed). Maybe I’ll get to Paper Mario in a few decades. What I can say is that Underhero mostly plays like a platformer, with players exploring 2D locations, until running into an enemy. This triggers a special combat mode that resembles a traditional turn-based role-playing dust-up, except there aren’t actual turns. Instead, players have a slowly recharging stamina meter, and actions drain stamina. The idea is to correctly time one’s attacks, while evading, blocking or parrying enemies attacks. Is that how Paper Mario works? I hope to eventually find out.

There’s a lot of story setup before players get into any fights. Brief introductory text tells us of the Chestnut Kingdom, where idyllic life is disrupted by a villain who kidnaps the princess, only to be defeated by the chosen hero. This has happened many times over, but this time things are a bit different. Our protagonist is a Masked Kid — one of the minions of the evil Mr. Stitches charged with guarding his castle against the hero’s final assault — who ignores his orders and springs a trap that kills the hero. Oops! But the hero’s sentient weapon, Elizabeth IV, survives, and recruits the Masked Kid to become the new hero. Ostensibly, however, the kid is still working for Mr. Stitches, and must do his bidding to return the three Triviality Stones the hero was carrying to the three bosses in different parts of the kingdom.

This is an overt send-up of common game tropes, and I initially worried it would be a bit too silly in tone. But Underhero stays on the right side of that line, and the premise allows for some fun twists. Our nameable protagonist (I called them Dudley) lives in a secret part of the castle along with all the other monsters and minions who serve Mr. Stitches. There are apartment rooms in the basement levels, and a cafeteria where the minions socialize and occasionally protest for better working conditions. These places are full of folks to talk to, and Dudley could also talk to enemies they encountered out on their mission, since they are ostensibly on the same side. These other minions were all too happy to dish about what it’s like to work for the different bosses, and provide little bits of backstory to the world.

It’s clear early on that Mr. Stitches and those in his employ are putting on a show for the hero. A lesser game would have left it at that, giving players a backstage view of a stereotypical lighthearted game with a simple hero’s journey premise. But Underhero goes beyond this, dropping hints about how Mr. Stitches manipulated the bosses into working with him, and how there might be something even more sinister behind it all. Having the hero die at the start turns out to be a better idea than I realized, because it means the cycle is already thrown off. Putting on a show for the hero is what the bad guys usually do, but now no one is quite sure what’s going to happen. The story goes to some interesting places, and manages a good bit of character growth for the main cast as well. By the end I was fully invested and found a highly satisfying conclusion.

It takes a little while to get going, though. Underhero is a large game that will take players about a dozen hours to finish, so it has space for its story to unfold gradually. But I wish it got to the interesting parts sooner. It does have production values to match its scale, however: beautiful and colorful pixel art, characterful animations, a solid and lengthy original soundtrack, and good sound design. The frequent conversations are paced well, often with a bit of screenshake for extra drama and emphasis when characters get upset. That type of visual and audio feedback pervades everything, making movement feel good and combat feel weighty. It’s slick, which is all the more impressive given that the Paper Castle Games core team is only three people (although they did hire a composer and QA team for Underhero).

Underhero takes a little while to get going mechanically, too. The platforming never gets that involved, relying on genre staples like moving platforms, climbable vines, and raising/lowering water levels, but the first world that players will explore doesn’t even have much of those. I spent my early hours of the game simply jumping between platforms, using Dudley’s hood as a parachute that lets them glide a bit, and occasionally swimming. It didn’t help that the verdant forest I was exploring soon gave way to the interior of a giant tree, which is the blandest looking location in the entire game.

But these places are mostly there to get players familiar with the combat, which has some interesting nuances. Elizabeth IV, Dudley’s magical weapon and guide, is actually a magical weapon hilt that can create a few different weapons, each mapped to a face button on the gamepad (Underhero supports keyboard controls too, but a gamepad felt more natural). The sword dishes out quick horizontal slashes, while the hammer is much slower but more powerful. Then there’s the slingshot, necessary to hit flying enemies, which fires in an arc that must be aimed manually. This is the one place where the gamepad felt awkward, as the analog stick was too sensitive for precise aiming. But I enjoyed the need to guide shots like this, especially after I learned that some enemies have specific weak points that can disable them when hit.

Players are free to spam attacks as long as they have enough stamina, but if they completely run out they’ll be unable to dodge or parry, which is a problem. These defensive actions don’t cost stamina themselves, but require a minimum level in reserve. Enemies have “tells” indicating what type of attack they’re about to use, so Dudley can leap over them, duck under them, or whip out their shield for a quick parry that can stun enemies or send enemies’ projectiles flying back at them. Successful dodges or parries also boost Dudley’s stamina regeneration, letting them launch counterattacks. Timing is heavily emphasized: landing hits on time with the music confers a small bonus to damage, and the special “rush mode” that can be activated when its meter is full acts like a rhythm game, with Dudley chaining attacks to the beat. I liked this idea, but found it difficult to tell which beats I was supposed to line up with, and I never quite got the hang of it.

Still, combat is fun to play around with, and I appreciated that battles aren’t random. Every encounter is pre-set in specific locations. That means fights don’t happen too often, and generally offer a nice change of pace when they do occur. They can feel slow, however, with lots of waiting for stamina to recharge. I also wish there was some way to tell how much health an enemy has left, so I could determine whether one final attack would dispatch them or if I should wait for more stamina first. But if things ever felt a bit too slow, Dudley could always bribe their enemies instead, and in fact there are many places where it’s beneficial to do so.

After I learned the basics in the first world, I moved on to the second, which is where Underhero really won me over. Here I navigated a haunted manor house, chatted with ghosts, found items that let me enter new places, and sometimes ventured outside into the blizzard. Exploring here was so much fun, feeling less like a pure platformer and more like an adventure game that happened to control like a platformer. I love some of the details in this section, too. Platforms that disappear shortly after being stepped on — another platformer classic — are cast as platformgheists, ghosts who get grumpy when you step on them, but forgive you quickly. Brilliant.

The second world is also where the story starts to come into its own. It moves beyond simply mocking video game tropes, and begins to dig into character backstories and emerging mysteries. The Chestnut Kingdom, which originally seemed like a generic game setting, is revealed to be something more. This kept me intrigued and eager to learn more from that point onward, even if later sections never quite live up to the bar set by the second world. Late game areas sometimes feel padded out with extra platforming sections, but by then I was enchanted enough that I didn’t mind. There are nominally three worlds to explore, as Mr. Stitches tells players at the beginning, but with new revelations even this structure is subverted, and I found myself venturing into unknown places with unexpected allies.

In the beginning I thought Underhero was merely a good game, but by the end it had become something truly special. It’s not perfect, as I’ve elaborated above, but a few shortcomings and annoyances can’t spoil the adventure. It manages a delicate balance of tone that combines lighthearted silliness with surprising pathos: a game starring villains facing off against bigger villains, that asks if any of them were ever really villains at all. It’s lovely stuff, and made me quite interested in Paper Castle Games’ other work. Underhero was their first game, but they have since released Wander Stars, a role-playing game inspired by shonen anime in which players collect words to combine into special attacks. It looks to also draw on South American culture (Paper Castle Games are based in Venezuela), which is rarely seen in games. It’s available for PC, Switch and Playstation. I’m curious to check it out!

For now, though, I can recommend Underhero. If you missed it in the bundle, it’s sold for a minimum price of $14.99, and is well worth it.

That’s 242 down, and only 1499 to go!