Underworld Island is an FMV (Full Motion Video) game with horror themes. It is currently in Early Access (EA) but already has exceptional quality and felt complete. The game is made by Chinese developers, and the translation is decent throughout the game (but avoid the English dubbing). Despite graphical quality issues, I found this to be an excellent addition to the FMV genre, and being priced very fairly at only $AU15.50, it is an easy recommendation.

Pros

• Many different choices, endings & narrative paths
  
• Immense replayability and with 60+ achievements
  
• Engaging & interesting story with many twists
  
• Interactive sections to find clues
  
• Dramatic and thrilling sound design

Cons

• Awful lighting in interactive areas
  
• No chapter/scene load
  
• Minor issues with English translation

A father and teenage daughter visit Huangquan Island in search of his missing wife, but shortly after nightfall, things begin to go awry. The island has a thick fog blanketing it, and people are acting strangely. A little girl continues to pop up, sometimes bleeding from her eyes, sometimes appearing innocent. Is it all hallucinations? Is the island cursed? Can anyone be trusted? The father (and protagonist) is responsible for his and his daughter Yichin’s fate. He must guide her to safety and not get lost in his own head, or perhaps he should focus on finding his wife?

Thoughts on the story
The narrative is a slight mind bender, but I believe it is portrayed well and ties in nicely during the conclusion. That being said, there are many different endings and whilst writing this, I have only completed the “Good Father” ending. As the game continues, the fog does begin to clear and players are not left with an open-ended explanation (or at least, in the ending I received). I am not sure how much the paths diverge, and where the endings begin to differ, but I found the narrative to be very engaging, and it kept me playing until the end in one-sitting.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2919889672


For those unaware of FMV games, they use real footage and often involve players through choices and dialogue options. Underworld Island is very “old-school FMV” in its approach, but it works well. Majority of the game is simply cinematic, and whilst there are choices and one seemingly unnecessary puzzle, most of the time players are sitting back watching the events unfold on the screen. However, the choices that are present, are crucial, with some choices immediately leading to your death, and some altering your relationships towards the other characters and ultimately changing the protagonists fate. Although, I would like to see a scene selection option added to further encourage more playthroughs.



Interactive Scenes
A handful of scenes are completely interactive, featuring a static image where players must click around to find hotspots of important items. Only one item is compulsory to continue, the rest are typically linked with achievements and extra clues. The game also handily warns you if you are trying to continue to the next scene, but have missed an item. I enjoyed these areas and it helped regain my engagement. However, the video quality is awful. Lighting is very poor and trying to find small items of interest was a struggle. Particularly in the clinic area, I could not distinguish outlines of objects from the desk they were sitting on. I ended up clicking everywhere in the dark until I had located everything. This is my main gripe with the game, but reading the EA description, this does appear to be addressed by the developers and they are planning on “...upgrading the game engine to make it more graphically expressive.”

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2919908984

English Translation
As stated earlier, the game is made by Chinese developers and all characters speak Chinese, but this should not deter non-Chinese speaking audiences. The subtitle translation was generally, fairly decent. It was not perfect and I did notice some humorous errors, but it was mostly always clear. Grammar, tense and general sentence structure was near faultless for majority of my playthrough, which I believe to be a large feat on its own. However, the game automatically began with English subtitles and English dubbing. I recommend to TURN OFF THE ENGLISH DUBBING straight away. It is awful, robotic and toneless. The English subtitles are more than adequate to understand the story, and the characters are much more expressive and realistic in their native Chinese. Interestingly, despite the subtitles being adequate in translation, the settings and main menu is awful. It took me far longer than it should have to figure out how to load the game (it is under “history”), sometimes after a choice it says “Satisfactory Value has increased” (I still do not understand what this means) and the .exe file is written in Chinese characters (a minor nitpick). This is alongside many other oddly described settings, such as returning to main menu being “back to mainbar.” It seems these settings have received less attention in translation than the narrative subtitles, but it is not a major concern, given that the game itself is adequately understandable.


As aforementioned, the visual quality is lacking. In darker scenes, I could barely make out outlines of objects. Lighting needs a rehaul, particularly for the interactive scenes where this is vital. Whilst the dimmer areas are an annoyance, the quality is otherwise passable. Brighter scenes are clear, but it is certainly not HD. Furthermore, there are some slightly bloody scenes, or death scenes (which can actually be turned off in settings, but I would not recommend this). I found these to be the least unsettling, the little girl’s blood soaked face jumping out at you, or ghastly faces appearing seemed unnecessarily repeated, losing its shock factor quickly.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2919889596

Sound quality is generally very decent and hyperbolic. There are some very minor jumpscares, but the creepiness factor is far more correlated to its excellent sound design. Scenes feel tense and there is a feeling of danger throughout the game.

This game was played using mouse only, and with the following PC specs.:
AMD Ryzen R5 7600x 5.4 GHz
32GB DDR5 5200 CL36 RAM
Radeon RX 6800 XT
2560×1440 resolution
NVMe 3.0 SSD
Windows 10
Comment: I experienced a stable playthrough with no issues. There are also no loading screens

Playtime: 3.5 hours for one playthrough

Controller Recommended? No

Replayability value: Yes, definitely, it is designed for this. Secondary playthroughs allow already witnessed scenes to be skipped, vastly shortening the game time.


Despite being in Early Access, Underworld Island is an excellent FMV game that already seems finalised. It features a gripping story with many choices to make, but suffers from poor video quality and hopefully upon its full release, the aforementioned issues will be rectified. For the affordable price of only $AU15.50, I recommend this game in its current state and for FMV fans of horror, this title is a great pick.

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This is early access and so I am reviewing Underworld Island with this in mind.
There are several pacing issues with the story, bugs such as sound making clicking noises at the cliff scenes, achievements not unlocking at all, some parts lacking English dubbing, subtitles not paced properly alongside the voice over, and lastly the voice acting direction sounding quite "off". I doubt many, if any, of these issues occur when played in Chinese.

The jumpscares remind me very much of the Flash days with online games such as Exmortis or The House, there is a lot of nostalgia that comes to my mind when playing through this FMV experience as a result. Overall I really enjoyed my playthrough, and I find it absolutely hilarious that I managed to play through over four hours without unlocking a single achievement.

Despite the glaring issues, I definitely recommend that you check this game out if you enjoy FMV games.

EDIT: I unlocked a bunch of achievements by installing this on a laptop instead.

Game is really cool! There are a couple issues with pacing but and the translation needs a bit of work but I really enjoyed playing through it. I really liked the music, and there were some stand out tracks that really caught my attention. Also Ding <3

I had no idea this game was early access until I checked back after playing. The story, music, and acting are phenomenal. I'm excited to see any changes they make and will be glad to revisit if they add anything. Definitely worth getting, especially for the price.

10/10
One of the best FMV Horror games available.
Takes around 3 hours to beat the game, another hour to get the rest of the endings during replays

+ The story is fantastic, there are many twists and turns, the way everything comes together in the end is amazing.
+ The music in the game is haunting and beautiful
+ The acting by everyone is well done, especially the father
+ Lots of hidden little secret notes to find
+ Creepy atmosphere for most of the game
+ Fast forward option in a great help and if you die you are not set that far back in time, game flows briskly
+ The English voice over actors did a great job
+ Beautiful editing and cinematography in certain scenes

I literally can't find a negative, I really hope this game sells well, the developers deserve it.
The story / script is exceptional!
It is 100x better than almost all other horror FMV games available.

It was a game I discovered while researching to try different horror games. I bought it with great anticipation as soon as it was published. We decided to play at night with my friend, but it did not meet our expectations. Make-ups and edits were very simple, the horror element was absent, except for the occasional jumpscares. The choices you make seem to affect the course of the story for a while, but if you have made a choice other than the one the game wants, it forces you to make the right choice, otherwise the game does not continue. Since the story progresses too slowly, you start to get bored while playing. Unfortunately, I do not recommend the game.

这不比什么cjb采石场惊魂刺激。期待下一作~~

Theres no way to see progress (how far you are in the game)
When the game is finished, you need to rely on your manual saves (if you dont want to play ALL of the story again)
Im positively surprised how the 2nd ending was from my 1st. Its was a long playthrough after i made a different choice.
Also i hate the timeloop gimmick (the character reply previous scenarios many times).

Sadly I will not keep playing to try and find the next endings (lack of progress + save state system).
Appearently there are 9 endings to this game, and again... no way to.

Im not sure if this game deserves an recommendation, but I think people can enjoy this game

DOUBLE TAP THAT BUY BUTTON FOR DING DING

Didn't know what to expect, but i ended up LOVING the story!