The Luminous Underground

The Luminous Underground
N/A
Metacritic
70
Steam
45.75
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$6.99
Release date
17 December 2020
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
70 (10 votes)

Blast spirits out of a haunted subway system! Can your team defeat rival exterminators, shoddy gear, and City Hall?

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The Luminous Underground system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: 7

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
Updated
App type
Steam APP ID
1362520
Platforms
Windows PC
Mac
Linux
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Dulkan
Dulkan

One of those cases where it would work better as just a book than interactive fiction. Very little control over the story and player character is not the main character at all. But it's well written.

Mint-e Fresh
Mint-e Fresh

This is a choose your own adventure book with some RPG bits added in. I really enjoyed the story It's well written and flows nicely (which is impressive with how many options you get). There's a nice bit of humour in there and a definite nod & a wink to Ghostbusters.

I'm looking forward to going through it again and seeing if I can make a total mess of the situations.

icarosaurvus
icarosaurvus

Perhaps the meatiest CoG game I've played. Not my favorite - there were some things that threw me off, like the occasional change of perspective, and the romance felt tacked on - but decent, and long. Most of the games by this company take me three hours or less to finish - this took me something like eight hours for one play through. It's good enough to satisfy, and long enough to be worth the price.

ahnkra
ahnkra

So first lets get this thumbs up or down out of the way. Ill give this one a thumbs up, all in all its a very solid read with alot of interesting things going on and just an absolutely amazing amount of detail and action to loose one self in. That said, its not without its shortfalls, and for me they are important short falls (though for others perhaps it wont matter much at all.)

The hardest / most annoying thing about this story is the way it constantly makes the MC second fiddle to everyone else around them. Your constantly dealing with and worrying about everyone elses problems (or choosing not to over and over again, that is an option),... not because they are really important to you in any way, but because they are part of your team. Your team captain, but honestly your more like team cheerleader. Maybe if there was some personal pay off for all the work you invest in your team members it would be worth it, but all you get out of it in the end is team cohesion and team members not leaving, which while important, so isnt worth the literal chapters worth of holding their hands.
Secondly the romance options make no sense, you dont get to even consider any until a good couple of hours into the story, and then its offered to you as a drop down list,... of people you have literally only met once (with the exception of your past partner, in which there is a "before the current story" history implied but not fully fleshed out) and would really have no reason to be interested in, in the first place. If you choose one of the random offerings you will be treated to about 4 very short scenes inbetween action scenes to go out on dates with them. You never get an opportunity to really interact with them (seriously i think the interactions are limited to one choice per date scene) even if the character is present in the action scenes that play out after you have started seeing them. Finally, the MC is further thrown into the "not really important to this story role" by the fact that a certain team member becomes empowered to a ridiculous degree so that not only does every scene hinge on coddling and getting that npc to do what you need done, but the author then decides to literally start split screening between the MC and the rest of the group in one place, and SUPER BARBIE in another. In the end it very much leaves you feeling like everything you do, say or think is meaningless as this is actually some one elses story.
All in all I think this is a good story, that could have absolutely been great if they had just left out the dating stuff (because there is just no heart in it) and Wonder Woman (because she was alot more believable as an interesting member of the team that needed help like everyone else, than after she becomes Ms Indispensable.)

PaleHorse
PaleHorse

I bought this cause it sounded like a fun ghostbusters-inspired text adventure. It's so dull, mind numbingly dull to the point where I was just skipping pages at a time to get to anything even remotely interesting.

Squish That Cat
Squish That Cat

With a first-play time for me just over 11 hours, The Luminous Underground provides more "gameplay" in read time than many of its graphical peers, while effortlessly blending decisions you could and couldn't control into the narrative of each page. I'll explore how much variance there can be in the story on my second playthrough, but shallow it is not, and I found my time spent satisfying. Of particular note is how well done the human interaction is. I suspect many situations were no-win, but people's reactions to different tacks in conversation felt real. Hit someone with an empty platitude when they're hurting and they get upset. Push someone past their limits, and you'll have to think hard about what motivates them to keep them together. There is no magic button for success, except, perhaps, whichever skill you trained the most. I put all my time into Luminosity, and when all you have is an esoteric light-based magic hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. But that's the point of training a skill, and in the instances where I couldn't apply it, I struggled accordingly. I look forward to my second playthrough, and I enjoyed the game.

risayaluk
risayaluk

The first few chapters were interesting but boy did it get boring quickly afterwards. Out of around 30 text-based games I've played, this is the only one where I've started skipping filler texts and there were so many of them.