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Anatoly Karlin

Game Review: UnderRail

UNDERRAIL  (2015) Rating: 5/5

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WARNING: SPOILERS.

UnderRail is an isometric turn-based RPG set in the deep future, long after an unspecified disaster has made life on the planetary surface impossible. The remnants of humanity scrape out a subsistence existence in the subterranean bunkers and warrens of the UnderRail. The flickering embers of industrial civilization survive in great station-states, which are tenuously connected to each other by dark, gloomy, and bandit-infested railway tunnels. Their prospects appear dim, beset as they are by wildlife infestations, banditry, wars, epidemics, and technogenic disasters. And deep within the abandoned bowels of UnderRail stirs an Eldritch abomination that desires to slave all life to its expanding biomass.

I should state at the outset that I’m not the biggest fan of old-school isometric RPGs – in fact, until now, I hadn’t played a single one. The early Fallouts, classics though they were, passed me by. Nonetheless, UnderRail is when I finally decided to make an exception a few months ago. There were two main reasons for that. The first one had to do with the rather banal purpose of eliminating the one major lacuna in my gaming experience.

But the second draw was the world that Dejan Radisic (“Styg”), the Serbian lead developer of the game – and for a long time its only one – had created. From a young age, I have been fascinated with tunnels, caves, warrens, metros, and nuclear bunkers . I had heard about D-6 and Yamantau before I read Metro 2033, let alone played the game. Moreover, since 2014, I have been toying with an idea for a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, in which the Earth gets knocked out of the Sun’s orbit and civilization survives in a massive underground network*. As a game that is so intersectional with these very specific interests, and with so much in potential inspiration for my own world, I knew I had to complete it and to write this review to organize my thoughts, ideas, and impressions of it.

This is not a gaming blog, and game reviews are a dime a dozen on the Internet, so I will not spend much time on the pure gameplay aspects here. Should my gamer readers buy it? Depends. UnderRail has often been described as early Fallout underground. If you don’t care for old school RPGs, you probably shouldn’t. (I wouldn’t have either if not for the unique setting). But of you enjoyed those titles, and want to relive them in a fascinating new world, then sure, go ahead – you probably won’t regret it.

Note that Styg released an expansion pack (“Expedition”) a couple of months ago, which introduced a “Black Sea” area to the world map and some new weapons. I haven’t played it and don’t intend to.

Anyhow, first things things. In the past, I made the observation that while American post-apocalyptic games tend to coddle you to the point of parody (e.g. Fallout), their East European equivalents dump you in the middle of the wasteland, give you a dull pocket knife, and wish you good luck (e.g. STALKER, Metro, etc.). So yes, UnderRail is HARD . If you want to have a good time, I would suggest no higher than “Medium” difficulty for your first playthrough. I would also strongly suggest “min-maxing” your character base abilities – pick a specialization (e.g. guns, melee, psi) and stick with it, because “jacks of all trades” aren’t going to get far**.

Things that the game gets right :

• The combat system is logical and engaging. While I don’t exactly have a base for comparison with similar games, it is cited by many reviews as the game’s single best feature.
• People also praise the crafting mechanics.
• “Oddity” system of XP gain by seeking out and studying unusual objects promotes immersion, avoids level grinding, and encourages exploration.
• Entrancing music from Josh Culler that syncs perfectly with the dark tunnels and gloomy caves of the UnderRail.
• It is clearly a labor of love, with rather detailed worldbuilding – all the more remarkable in that it was mostly done by one person!
• Unlike most RPGs, the very structure of UnderRail forces you to think in three spatial dimensions. The entire world is one very large building, or spaceship.
• The AI is pretty good. There is a cool scene where a guard pretends to be fooled when you present the wrong ID, but then reveals that he was just playing along when he acquires backup.
• You need to solve a rather sophisticated puzzle – pen and paper required to work it out – to make the fight against the final boss much easier.

Things that could be improved upon :

• Inventory management is chaotic; as in many other RPGs, all your items are scrambled in a big pile with limited sorting ability, which can get quite inconvenient when there’s dozens of them.
• Merchants only buy a limited range of products and are chronically short of cash – one needs to wait a couple of in-game days for them to replenish their money and stocks.
• Can’t expect much in this department because this is an indy game largely developed by one person, but the dialogue trees are generally limited and unresponsive to major game events.
• There is no means of fast travel, which can get to be quite the chore when one needs to cross a large station-state. (Though I hear this has been fixed in the expansion).
• The game did not do a great job of justifying the quests you need to do for a certain faction at the end. Many RPGs give you a choice between supporting one faction or another – but here, I feel I was… railroaded (heh) into fighting for a faction that I did not necessarily support and for reasons that I couldn’t make myself care much about (whereas good RPGs try to indulge player choice to the maximum extent possible).

The World of UnderRail

Many centuries ago, life on Earth’s surface became untenable for reasons that have been lost to the sands of time – even one of the oldest and most learned men in UnderRail says, “ the only certainty is that [the surface] is currently uninhabitable. We desire to repopulate it, and for that to succeed we require change within us, we need to advance ourselves – evolve – in order to withstand its living conditions. ” Some fraction of humanity descended into the UnderRail, a massive system of underground tunnels and bunkers created by Biocorp, an ancient organization that combined elements of a corporation, a state, and a research institute. It was organized in three hierarchic tiers, with “Apex Technocrats” at the top. Biocorp worked to make UnderRail entirely self-sustaining, cutting off contact with the outside world.

But its hold on power was not to last. The population strained against UnderRail’s carrying capacity, and there was unrest against corruption and rumored “immoral” experiments at the Hollow Earth research facility. 189 years ago, the Apex Technocrats lost power in a revolt sparked by what would later become known as the Hollow Earth Incident, which resulted in the birth of a faction of terranaut cyborgs known as the Faceless, as well as the biological abomination that would come to be known as Tchort (translating to “demon” in the Slavic languages). In the coming chaos and civil wars, Biocorp fragmented, and bandits roamed the tunnels in between heavily entrenched sovereign station-states.

One hundred years ago, a man known as Eidein discovered Tchort in the Deep Caverns of the abandoned Hollow Earth facility. It had since become overrun with dangerous minions slaved to the bioconstruct, and before long, he was the only surviving member of his expedition. However, Tchort deigned to spare him, instead inducting him into its mysteries. He returned to UnderRail and started up the Institute of Tchort in the abandoned Old Biocorp University, which devoted itself to the study and worship of Tchort. Over the next century, they would have recurrent battles with their mortal enemies, the Faceless.

Between 50-100 years ago, a group of scientists attempted to restore Biocorp. The new state was centered around the three cities of Core, Hexagon, and Dis, and was ruled by a council of technocrats residing in Dis. This “New Biocorp” didn’t last long. 18 years ago, a military force known as the Protectorate was formed by General Malek, which quickly took over Dis, its capital. The Protectorate integrated Biocorp’s power structure into the United Stations (US), the federal polity that now dominates North UnderRail. Meanwhile, Core City in South UnderRail staged a revolt against New Biocorp, commanded by second in command of Core City Security Forces Archibald Knight, and supported by Ruppert Simmons, a Biocorp technocrat. Core City is now an independent station-state ruled by an oligarchic triumvirate consisting of Knight (Praetorian Security), Simmons (CoreTech), and the newcomer Gunnar Edstrom (JKK).

South UnderRail is currently in a state of geopolitical ferment. The US is trying to extend its influence and cavort/coerce its independent station-states into its federation. Meanwhile, a partisan force opposed to what it sees as the Protectorate’s tyranny has risen up to oppose this expansion. The rest of UnderRail’s station-states maintain a state of armed neutrality. You start the game as a new citizen in one of these station-states, South Gate Station (SGS).

The world of UnderRail is divided into several distinct topological zones, each with its own characteristic built environment, ambiance, and flora and fauna:

• Upper UnderRail is the most civilized zone, hosting the Institute of Tchort and the bulk of the Protectorate’s military presence in South UnderRail.
• Lower UnderRail hosts the South Gate Station and most of the other independent stations, and also includes the Lower Passages (cannibal-infested utility tunnels) and the Upper Caves.
• Lower Caves hosts many of UnderRail’s mines, hunting camps, and – being at the main water level – its major rivers and the Black Sea.
• Deep Caverns is the most hostile and inhospitable zone, with only three elevators connecting it to the rest of UnderRail. It hosts a variety of unique and deadly ecosystems, the post-apocalyptic ruins of Hollow Earth, and the spawning grounds of Tchort.

One interesting consequence is that geopolitics happens in three dimensions, as controlling the limited number of elevators between different “levels” is no less important than occupying strategic crossroads and chokepoints. The more powerful station-states tend to stretch across two or more topological zones, which enhances their access to trade routes and logistical strength. Some of the missions in the game revolve around collapsing or seizing these access routes.

UnderRail doesn’t correspond to any modern society. Racially, they are mostly white, but with a few blacks, while onomastically, it is melange of primarily Anglo-American and Slavic influences. As Styg wrote in 2010 , “ Fallout is kinda “industrial age nuclear apocalypse that happened in recent history,” while this will be more “early space age non-nuclear apocalypse that happen quite some time ago”… ” Bearing in mind that the game features things like laser weaponry and shield emitters, one assumes that the early Space Age in question refers to our world a century or two into the future. Perhaps, by that time, the US and all of Europe had become a common economic area, and millions of Balkanites and East Europeans had emigrated to the part of the US that would eventually host UnderRail?

The common tongue is English. Over the centuries, it has become colored by its underground setting, with expressions such as “derailed”, “pipeworker”, and “it’s all pipes and barrels to me” seeping in.

The universal currency in South UnderRail are charons. However, some of the biggest stations (such as SGS) have their own currencies, while United Stations Dollars are used by the Protectorate forces.

Food production appears to be based on aquaponics (that, at any rate, is the case at SGS), as well as hunting and fishing in the caves and rivers surrounding the manmade parts of UnderRail. While geothermal or nuclear energy would appear to be the logical choice for powering a subterranean civilization from our modern-day perspective, UnderRail appears to rely entirely on cold fusion power instead.

At a certain point, the “hard” sci-fi elements break down. An indeterminate number of centuries ago, there occurred a genetic mutation – most likely artificially induced – that allowed some humans to access psi powers (a form of in-universe magic that consists of Thought Control, Psychokinesis, Metathermics, and Temporal Manipulation). This may have been connected with the coming of the “Godmen”, a small group of alien immortals that – according to the “Mysterious Pillars” that sprouted throughout UnderRail at that time – had been destroyed by another alien civilization. These “Godmen” have since infiltrated human society and play a distinct role in its politics.

As a setting that combines cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, and cosmic horror, one shouldn’t be surprised that life is nasty, brutish, and short for the masses of UnderRail’s denizens. Countless “zoners” lead a wretched and precarious existence deep in the “ underhive ” of Core City, their numbers constantly pruned by epidemics, accidents, and banditry. Others exchange their health for relative affluence working in the mines and forges of Foundry, or live and die on the whim of raiding bandits, as at Rail Crossing. At best, an ordinary citizen of UnderRail will find himself in a well-run, clean, and strongly defended station such as SGS. Though even there, material living standards are spartan, life is highly regimented, and citizens are subject to conscription. Probably the nicest and most comfortable lives will be those led by the upper middle class citizens and Oligarchs of Core City… though even they are not entirely safe from the intrigues and political jostling in that treacherous megapolis.

Violence is ubiquitous in this world at both the state and individual level (indeed, it usually seems to be either/or). At the start of the game, you learn of a war that took place between SGS and a rival station-state known as Omega Station. While SGS took casualties, they won the war and exacted a Carthaginian revenge: “ Unfortunately for them, we were stronger and it was us who ended the war. They no longer have a station or a community, but we paid a high price as well. ” So yes… your home isn’t exactly the Shire. This theme of Black and Gray morality is reinforced at the end of the game, when yet another faction that you had developed ties to is exterminated by the game’s supposed good guys.

This brings me to the point that UnderRail is morally ambiguous. While going on blind killing sprees will turn people hostile against you, merely robbing, kidnapping, and murdering your way through UnderRail isn’t going to lose you any in-universe karma points, at least so long as you do it discreetly. For instance, in one mission, a barbarian “Rathound King” tasks you with kidnapping a woman from a hunting camp whom he has taken a liking to: “ She would make a perfect woman to bear my children! “, and to Tchort with consent: “ Whether she agrees with it or not right now is not my concern. ” On bringing her in, the Rathound King tosses her into a locked cage. Rather curious that the professional SJWs have yet to raise a stink over such an unbridled display of toxic masculinity…

In UnderRail, most people can only afford to look out for their own skin, altruism be damned. As a grizzled veteran explains to you in Core City, “ Help them? Don’t be stupid, bud. Every day I see people getting killed like pigs, or beaten or, or dragged away somewhere into the darkness. If I tried to help every single poor soul I’d be a goner by now. Dead. Ice cold, bud. I mind my own business and let the world do its freakin’ thing. ”

The world of UnderRail is divided into factions vying for geopolitical influence consisting of station-states, bandit clans, and more secretive organizations.

South Gate Station

South Gate Station, where you start off, is a nine-story tower connecting with Lower UnderRail at the top and Lower Caves at the bottom, where a hermetic gate – a homage to Fallout? – separates it from the dangers outside. Facilities include an admin section, aquaponics farm and animal pen, engineering, an armory, shooting range, hospital and psionics area, library, commons and cantina, gym and showers, and private quarters.

As in the Greek polises and New England colonies, citizenship is not given away lightly; you need to pass a set of tests before they take you in. Inequality is low. The three Councilors who run the station live in similar conditions to the rest of the citizenry, though with better pay – their main reward is the respect that comes with the position. It is considered to be the strongest station in South UnderRail, despite being first in neither military nor economic terms. There are heated debates over whether to join up with the expanding US or to retain independence.

This scrappy, derelict town in the Lower Caves by the Black Sea is accessible via ferry from SGS and Core City. It hosts the US Embassy in South UnderRail, a modern concrete and glass structure with a lift going up to Lower UnderRail. There is an area of the city called Old Junkyard, or Depot A, that was overrun by aggressive mutants in the wake of failed Biocorp experiments more than a century ago. The town lives on salvaging old-tech from that dangerous zone.

The town’s two main gangs contest each other for control over the harbor and access to Depot A. You can help one of the gangs seize full control of the settlement, which will determine whether Junkyard falls under the sway of either SGS or the Protectorate.

United Stations vs. Free Drones

The United Stations is the single most powerful polity in UnderRail, and though it has no member stations in South UnderRail, it maintains a visible presence through its Embassy in Junkyard and Protectorate military bases. As mentioned previously, it is headed by a Council of Five, though some say it is only a front for General Malek. From the name and usage of dollars to the haughty behavior and tightly guarded Embassy, the resemblance with the United States is obvious. As of the present time, it is seeking to expand its federation into South UnderRail. Supporters claim that it will be good for trade and security, while opponents are suspicious of its authoritarian inclinations. But its presence in South UnderRail is precarious. Only a single vulnerable troop elevator connects Fort Apogee, its main base in Upper UnderRail, to its Embassy in Junkyard.

Opposing the Protectorate are the Free Drones, an anarchist outfit that was founded by someone called Wallace “Steel” Cholokashvili (heh heh). They claim that the US is a ruthless regime that tortures, kills, and imprisons thousands annually. And it has been confirmed to take hostages and wage chemical warfare against rebels. However, it’s not clear that the Free Drones are so much better than the Protectorate. In your first encounter with them, they will be guarding a stolen Protectorate train that was carrying critically needed supplies to Rail Crossing, a small, struggling town that has been ravaged by bandits. They would rather it starve than allow the Protectorate to earn humanitarian propaganda points.

That said, perhaps the one thing that makes the Free Drones worth fighting for is Kokoschka, their token tankie. He hails from “Fatherland,” a “very much great place” in West UnderRail that is run by a “great leader.” As a Borat-like source of comedic relief, his social views are… very based and redpilled: “ Women not fight… clean, cook, wash our feet and shut up when we tell them. Here they talk when they like, it crazy! It derailed! ”

Core City is the biggest station in South UnderRail. Core City encompasses three levels, from Upper UnderRail through Lower UnderRail down to their docks and sewers in the Lower Caves level. As mentioned above, it is ruled by three oligarchs who separately dominate the security, technology, and entertainment sectors of its economy. The Protectorate has been granted limited transit rights, as well as their own dock, but there are otherwise no intentions of joining the US. The social center of the city is the Hardcore City Bar.

In contrast to the egalitarianism of SGS, Core City is a cornucopia of contrasts. The Oligarchs and their progeny, as well as the other moneyed families, lack for no material comfort. Sophie Talloski, the spoiled and perennially bored sprog of a wealthy family, is happy to shell out the equivalent of a yearly salary on an exotic creature you captured.

Those who manage to find employment with one of the Oligarchs tend to have comfortable, middle-class lives… at least so long as they don’t get caught up in their intrigues. For instance, while working for one of them, your handler vanishes: “ It’s just, well – she’s gone. Too bad, I know, but you should simply forget about her. ” You are told that she was a spy for a rival Oligarch, and would be well-advised to leave it at that.

Not even VIPs, such as the successful and celebrated gladiator Rocker, are safe should they cross the wrong people. One merchant tells you, “ In one of the caves close to this – this very place I found Rocker’s corpse. In case you don’t know, he was one of the gladiators who fought several years ago. Damn good he was, but he just… poof, disappeared one day. He committed suicide by shooting himself five times in the head – and no one knows why to this day. I found him a few months after his death. I… may have taken some coins from his pocket – don’t judge me! ”

On the other side of the social chasm is the wretched hive known as Drop Zone. Murderers and muggers haunt every corner, constant epidemics keep the population down, and one cannot even be sure of the ground underneath one’s feet, with many ledges that suddenly fall away into the abyss.

The denizens of this law-forsaken place subsist on a vile brew known as barrel soup: “ Recipe is simple – take whatever’s edible and put it in a barrel full of water, heat it up and eat when it’s ready! That’s all there is to it. A full barrel can last a long time and feed a lot of zoners… each barrel adds a different and unique taste to the soup. I often hear zoners talking about the best barrels to use – some of them even refuse to eat from a different barrel! They just add water and ingredients to the single one they think is the most hardcore… and eat from it. ”

Opulence and destitution come together in the city’s star attraction: The Arena. In the chaos following New Biocorp’s collapse, that area used to be the scene where rival gangs duked it out. Since then, the Oligarchs have regulated and commercialized the violence. Gladiators fight animals and each other to advance in the ranks, encouraged by the “bloodthirsty maniacs” watching them. Their ultimate goal is to become the reigning champion – the Invictus. Those who fail meet a less glorious fate – the bodies of the slain are chucked down the rubbish chute in the surgery room into the sewers, sometimes while still alive. The proceedings are televised across South UnderRail by the third major oligarch, JKK’s Edstrom.

JKK have recently used the lucrative profits from the Arena to create a new game called the Gauntlet. This consists of nine different rooms connected by a series of elevators that competing “runners” have to complete ahead of each other. There are no prizes for second place – they get electrocuted along with the other losers.

Foundry is the industrial heart of South UnderRail, and host to its only metallurgical complex. It is one of the richest settlements, and its residents enjoy an unusually wide variety of social benefits, including pensions and health insurance. It also maintains one of the best trained and equipped security forces in UnderRail, which keep them safe from the Ironhead bandits who prey on their metals shipments. Its leaders are democratically elected, and it is the only major settlement with something resembling rule of law. As the local sheriff boasts, all prisoners get a fair trial, in contrast to most other places in UnderRail, where “ usually, it’s “You seem guilty. BOOM! Next please.” Sad but true. ”

Inevitably, there are downsides. While healthcare comes free, so does the highest level of industrial pollution in UnderRail – many workers develop acute respiratory problems by their 30s. Mortality in the adjoining mines is also high, and that was before they got infested by borers.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, the town is now stalked by a psycho manhunter whose basement holds some rather grisly secrets. No wonder that everybody seeks to make their money there and retire in Core City as soon as possible.

Rail Crossing

Rail Crossing is noted as the weakest station in South UnderRail – occupying a strategic location with only weak defences, they are constantly savaged by bandits, and a recent raid by the Faceless hasn’t helped matters.

It is most notable for hosting the Dude – a comedy character who likes his mushroom brew so much that he has a vision of an entire trove of them that he asks you to fetch (mind the room full of mines protecting them). As it turns out, his cryptic references – e.g., an “all seeing Eye” somewhere in UnderRail – are invariably true. You may later discover that he is far older and more important than he lets on.

Oculus is the “eye” of UnderRail, a hidden object deep in the caves that can only be revealed by psi powers.

It is an alien-built structure. The Occulites who now occupy it keep watch over the UnderRail, manipulating its geopolitics through spying and assassinations for their own secret and unrevealed ends***.

Oculus is a huge lore goldmine, so you should really try not to miss it. Hacker man Twitch on the upper level has all the history, while another Occulist on the main floor can explain the geopolitical details of today’s UnderRail.

You can have a rather interesting conversation about the philosophy of medicine with Phyllis, one of the Occulites.

Lurkers are a brutal cannibal gang that resides in the Underpassages and steals babies and children, especially from the smaller settlements.

The Lurker base is a little carnival house of horrors, with flayed and decapitated prisoners hanging from meathooks and a cannibal chef preparing the gang’s next humanitarian supper in the kitchen.

Lunatics are a gang of psi-using bandits, rather mentally unstable, who have an inordinate fondness for poetry (“ demented limericks chaotically scribbled in blood… about gods, pyramids, mushrooms and carnal pleasures “).

One amusing scene has them standing in a circle around each other doing jazz hands, surrounded by a dozen cats.

Institute of Tchort

This is perhaps the single most interesting faction in UnderRail. Combining elements of a religion, a cult, and a research institution, it is dedicated to the study of Tchort, a primordial being that is formless, constantly regenerating, and adaptable to any environment. As a Tchortist tells you during the admissions interview, “ Tchort holds the key to evolving the human race to new heights… One day perhaps, through directed evolution – as Eidein originally named it – humankind will hopefully find a way to adapt to the life on the Surface and escape this gloomy underworld. ”

The Institute is located in Upper UnderRail, but has a single elevator that leads all the way down to Deep Caverns (the site of the Hollow Earth complex, the mutagen tanks, and Tchort itself). At first glance, the Institute is one of the safest, most civilized and self-contained communities in South UnderRail… the throngs of people camping out at the Institute gates in hopes of admissions are a testament to its level of civilization. Many Tchortists are Institute-born, and have never even ventured beyond its gates… as the cook tells you, it is safer here, and people care for each other. Acolytes address each other as “brother” and “sister”.

As befits a monastic community, the musical ambiance features choral music, and Institute ranks are based on Eastern Orthodox degrees  (e.g. noviates, rassophores, stavrophores, etc). The Institute is divided into three departments: Preservation (security); Investigation (research); and Propagation (propaganda). During your stay, only the first two are accepting new acolytes. That said, you can see Propagation agents preaching the glories of Tchort throughout UnderRail’s bigger settlements. They are eugenic transhumanists, who strongly despise “devolved” and “dystrophic” forms of life, such as Lunatics and the Faceless. That said, they are not stereotypical dour zealots – they do know know how to have fun. Lame science jokes abound in the labs. One of the missions involves testing out different alcoholic drink recipes with one of the investigators.

The Institute’s lore is collected in a text called the Original Report****. As mentioned, the Institute’s founder and present leader is Eidein, the man who discovered Tchort a century ago, back when he was still Aiden Travers. At the time, he was the only surviving member of a doomed Biocorp expedition to retrieve valuable equipment from Hollow Earth. In the long decades since the facility’s abandonment, environmental hazards had accumulated, as well as natural predators of a “ horrid and surprisingly alien ” nature. Just as the expedition’s captain expired, and he was about to be consumed at the locked gates to Tchort’s demesne… the creatures retreated, and the gates swung open. And there, he encountered Tchort: “ All I could see is pure flesh with tentacles sprouting from it in all their glory. ” He studied Tchort for the next few weeks, discovering that the creature is able to enter unique regeneration cycles in which it loses any recognizable form and undergoes genetic self-repair with help from its junk DNA, which serves as a sort of backup for the creature: “ How it knows what sort of adaptation it needs to survive in the new environment is not yet clear, nor how it is able to recombine or even create these new sequences… ” The Report concludes with instructions to continue learning from Tchort, in the hope that humanity too can learn to adapt itself at will, seek immortality, and “ finally return to the surface world.”

Science, security, eugenicism, transhumanism, biosingularitarianism… sounds like a dream faction! But there’s always the distinct impression that something about the Institute is… just a bit off.

For a start, the radical life extension treatment – which is supposed to have tripled Eidein’s lifespan – has only been tested out on Eidein himself thus far. He explains that keeping the treatment to one subject – that is, himself – is necessary, because they need to wait at least one generation to complete a life cycle and to make sure that the modifications to the genome do not have undesired or disastrous effects. This seems rather convenient, and one gets the lingering suspicion that Eidein’s transhumanism is very much just for himself. As the Faceless commander in Deep Caverns tells you – admittedly, not the most unbiased of observers – “ The whole premise of Tchortism is a fabrication, and Institute of Tchort serves to be nothing less than a tool at both of their disposal, one they use as a means of achieving their goal… Eidein’s goal was transcendance, elevation of form and mind – power. The only way to achieve this was by allying himself with Tchort; Tchort’s goal is liberation, and the only way to achieve it is by granting Eidein what he wishes. They both benefit from the relationship. ”

But an exploratory approach soons reveals that many more things are not quite as they are. For instance, in one of the missions, you need to track down a missing rassophore soldier. When you find him in an apparently abandoned warehouse, it turns out that he is a conscientious defector: “ I saw beings – abortive, rejected creatured, malformed and miserable. I was shocked. Thankfully, no one noticed I wasn’t supposed to be there, much less that my face was twisted from horror; blame it on the masks were are obligated to wear while on duty. But those things… they looked human! Luke humans that had been crossed with… something. ” (Incidentally, good for him that he defected – should you let him go, he ends up being one of the few Tchortists to survive the events to come). As it turns, there is a full-fledged laboratory of horrors in a closed section near the Institute elevators, in which a race of gray-skinned, humanoid bioconstructs are industrially created to be experimented upon and then put down. You may optionally help them to escape.

Nor is such callousness in the pursuit of SCIENCE! limited to non-humans. Outside the Institute gates, you find a guy called Detritus. He is a zoner whose entire family died in one of the recurrent plagues that “dominated” the Drop Zone, but he survived thanks to his high immune resistance. He, too, is interested in seeking out Tchort – to regenerate, to live forever, to go to the surface – at any rate, it’s better than rotting in the Drop Zone. Or is it? One of the Tchortist investigators wants to bring him in, to study the source of his immunity. Despite having developed second thoughts, you can persuade him to go ahead: “ Alright, count me in… Hardcore, hardcore. I’m as nervous as a caged hopper, but count me in. I’m ready. ”

Turns out, he should have listened to his instincts. Next time you meet will be in Deep Caverns, and poor Detritus will no longer be… the same.

Nonetheless, all that aside – and even allowing that Eidein misled the Tchortist rank and file for his own nefarious purposes – their extermination is an undoubted loss for UnderRail. For a start, Core City will lose its supply of cheap medicines, making life even more unbearable for zoners. There will be no more science produced in South UnderRail, if not all of UnderRail. Any lingering dreams of transhumanism and returning to the surface will now be permanently extinguished. It is sad that there is no way to prevent this, such as by reforming them from within.

The Faceless

The Faceless were created during the era of old Biocorp as an experiment. Their revolt was one of the triggers of its collapse, as well as the direct cause of the ruination of the Hollow Earth research complex in Deep Caverns. Taken by rage at the scientists who had created and exploited them, they threw them into the mutagen tanks: “ Was it justice or revenge, or both, that I cannot tell you. But the fact of the matter is that our birthplace became their grave ,” says their commander.  But little did they know that in exacting their vengeance, they were also creating their own future nemesis: Tchort.

While the Tchortists are biosingularitarians, the Faceless have taken the cyborg route to transhumanism. They are rumored to have a giant city in the deepest of the Deeps, and traverse the UnderRail within their armored subterrenes. As Old Jonas, a long-term resident and adventurer in SGS, tells you, while the Faceless are not exactly friendly, neither are they necessarily hostile. They generally let others be, so long as they don’t impede or provoke them in some way.

It’s hard to know what to make of the Faceless. On the one hand, they don’t go out of their way to do harm, largely sticking to themselves unless provoked… which is admittedly rather easy to do, and can even be entirely coincidental (as with a certain unfortunate shopkeeper in Rail Crossing). They don’t even execute the Tchortist prisoners they capture during their battles with them in Deep Caverns. On the other hand, it is noted that they do not leave a single man or woman alive in the aftermath of their attack on the Institute of Tchort. They are closely allied with the Godmen – indeed, the Mysterious Pillars describe them as “half god, half man, half rock” – who also each have their own inscrutable agendas. Unlike the Tchortists, they do not appear to be open to anyone joining their faction. Their brand of cybernetic transhumanism is for them, and them alone.

At the start of the game, a mysterious agent working for Oculus infiltrates the Faceless and steals their most precious object. This triggers the Faceless invasion of UnderRail, as they desperately attempt to retrieve the item.

This is where you come in at the start of the game.

You main quest has to do with locating that mysterious item, to return it to the Faceless in order to call off their invasion – and to prevent it from being weaponized by an even greater evil, should it fall into the wrong hands (or tentacles).

The schemer who stood behind this series of events is revealed at the end, and his last minute escape creates ample scope for a sequel.

And there is an even greater mindfuck in store if you were to really connect all the lore you learned from Oculus, the Faceless, and the Mysterious Pillars.  Suffice to say that the game’s executable is TimelapseVertigo.exe for a reason .

At the end of the game, you are offered the opportunity to become an SGS Councilor, or to go north to Hexagon.

Lists of random things that amused me… perhaps somebody can use these to expand the TV Tropes entry?

• Psi abilities are unlocked with a “red pill” (or years and years of intensive meditation).
• Kelly Oliver (the US consul) named his son Magnus (“allegedly after an Old World chess grandmaster”) and daughter Aida (opera by Vivaldi).
• Old Data Medium (floppy disk): “ It’s a very old type of data medium. You can only wonder what’s on it since you have no way to read it. “
• Pack of “Lung Cancer” cigarettes: “ On the back of the packaging there are disturbing images of death and decay of human body. Why someone would package a product in this manner and, more importantly, why someone decided to consume the entire pack is beyond reason. “
• You can reply “They call me Adahn” to questioning from a certain group of bandits.
• Wallace “Steel” Cholokashvili, the founder of the Free Drones – a mishmash of Stalin, and a Georgian rebel leader.
• I probably shouldn’t have to explain Dude.
• Meta: You can “Play UnderRail” on a computer in Foundry.
• The Occulist “Twitch” looks like that hacker man from The Matrix.
• The Deep Worms in Deep Caverns remind one of Tremors.

• The Eye of Tchort (both the sense of impending doom effect, as well as Tchort’s physical form), the Mouth of Tchort (its “envoy”), and even the inability of the Faceless to combat Tchort themselves (because their minds are more advanced, and hence more susceptible to its influence) are all, of course, references to Lord of the Rings.

• The bodybuilder in the SGS never skips chest day.
• Some guy high on LSD: “ Did you know that we actually use less than 10% of our brains? I know I do! “
• Cale the Crazy, who thinks he is invisible, and is very affronted when you don’t play along.

• Al Fabet is a parody of the loot-obsessed player. He walks slowly around Core City, overburdened by his wares, ineffectually trying to sell his useless junk loot to the vendors.

• The exchange of creative insults with Rude Rob at the Hanging Rat.

• Cap’n Coltrane, who speaks like an old-school pirate to increase his custom.

• Kokoschka the Tankie.

• You can find the body of a mauled man, surrounded by a pack of rathounds, with the book “How to Tame a Rathound” by James S. Tupid lying by his side. More Darwin Award than Nightmare Fuel.
• Any conversation with the Dude :
• “I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took a bolt in the knee.” “That sounds awfully familiar…”
• “Neutrinos are whack – maybe they’re giving me a headache (maybe its the mushroom brew?)”

• Some of your responses in the admissions interview with the Tchortists, e.g. “ Ever felt another creature in your body? ” “ Like… Tchort? Yes, yes… “

• Sophie’s naming of her borer pet: “ I was thinking about all these hardcore names, but nothing sounded hardcore enough. Then it hit me! Literally, the creature hit me with its drillhead thing…. in the leg. Drill… leg… So I named him Drilleg! laughs Drilleg – say it… Drilleg. Driiiii-leeeeg. “
• Institute of Tchort:

• While you’d be killed for it if you said it in the admissions interview, you can drunkenly reveal why you really joined the Institute while doing the vodka tasting: “ I saw Tchortists stealing this, eh, things from a research facility in Core City, and I came to the Institute just to find it. “
• * Lame science jokes abound in the labs (“ What does the cell about to undergo mitosis says to an interested investigator: “I hope I have your divided attention!” “).
• Institute researchers still addressing 21st century concerns: “ No, the particle accelerator will not create devastating black holes – that is a derailed thing to think! “
• In Deep Caverns, an old geezer teaches you how to avoid the feeling of doom from being in proximity to Tchort. The trick is to stare into a pit and repeats truths about yourself. After communing with this “Hole of Reason”, you do feel your memory is becoming better… “ Or maybe you’re just losing your mind due to the fact that you’d spent an hour talking to a bottomless pit. “

• The IRIS AI goes BSOD when you shut down the current, homicidal, corrupted version and try to boot the backup version from 189 years ago if you don’t have sufficient hacking skill.

• Repair Bot working on opening the gate to Tchort’s domain is a barrel of laughs.

Nightmare Fuel

• UnderRail as a concept is a smorgasbord of the most horrific post-apocalyptic and cyberpunk tropes. It has everything: Famines, epidemics, banditry, cannibals, cannibal bandits, inequality, monsters, biohorrors, urban magic, wretched hives, ancient conspiracies, Eldritch horrors from beyond the stars.
• There’s also the whole living underground part, never a breath of fresh air or the feel of sunlight on one’s skin. On the other hand, does it matter? Humans have had centuries to get used to this, it’s not like wind and Sun is something they miss. Presumably this is now just everyday reality for them now.
• Pick your political poison: The Core City oligarchy, the United Stations which uses chemical weapons to put down dissenters, the mustachioed “Great Leader” in the far west, or anarchists indistinguishable from bandits.
• In Core City , wretched hive denizens subsist on barrel soup, and are repeatedly whittled down by famines and epidemics… illiteracy is rife (the Arena’s managers assume you can’t write when you apply to become a gladiator). Nonetheless, they replace themselves at a rapid rate – references to families with many children are legion – endlessly perpetuating the cycle of destitution.
• As if that isn’t enough, gang warfare was ubiquitous back in the days following Core City’s revolt – and it is now poised to return in force thanks to a former Councilor in your station who’s decided to go back and relive the good old days.
• The Oligarchs can crush anyone they want into oblivion: From Vivian Young, your “disappeared handler”, to Mykola the mechanic, whom you meet in the merchant district, whose business they ruined. Not even VIPs such as the “suicided” gladiator Rocker are safe.
• The Arena’s chief mortician is a bit loopy: “ I just happen to have a patient that is missing an arm. Care to donate? ” “ I dissected my first eel when I was five. My first human? Six or seven years old. Feels like yesterday. ” “ Who needs a spleen? No, really… it’s not a vital organ. ” And he’s supposed to be better than the previous one! “ Had a wild stare. He used to work here a couple of years ago; the idiot used to throw folks who were still alive down the chute while laughing maniacally! “
• Foundry is a polluted industrial hellhole with low life expectancy, surrounded by Ironhead bandits, where spouses take out hits on each other, a psycho killer on the loose… even so, people still yearn to migrate there.
• Balor, the chief of the Ironheads, once offered a disarmed train guard the chance to use his own massive sledgehammer against him. It was of no use to the hapless guard, he couldn’t even pick it up.
• The story of the psycho killer is actually quite sad.

* One of the Oddities in the Lurker base is a baby’s hand on a chain.

• While many of the critters in UnderRail are more slapstick than horrific, the Death Stalkers & Black Crawlers – giant scorpions that can strike and paralyze you, before melting back into the shadows – are exceptions.
• The borers who recently infested the Foundry mines use psi energy to cocoon themselves within the entity of its choice, i.e. rocks. SGS experts call them “psi-enhanced polymorphic organisms.” The apex example of its development is the Beast, which is invulnerable to mechanical forces and can only be killed by subjecting it to temperatures of 2,500C or higher. How many other deadly psi-morphs remain entombed in the rocks like Balrogs, waiting to be discovered by future miners who delve too deep?
• The Rathound King, apart from being a beast of a man in his own right, has a pack of rathounds at his beck and call.

• There is a cannibal with his own Saw-like complex built into the Core City sewers. When you enter, the arm of a dismembered body is still twitching. He has a three eyes human skull in his possession, and a knife engraved with the words, “ Man is wolf to man .”

• The Institute of Tchort : Insane cult that worships an Eldritch abomination… and it’s one of the  nicer  places in UnderRail – safe, secure, the only place where some science still gets done.
• Immoral experiments (Rejects, Detritus, etc).
• Even the Institute is falling apart, if more slowly than the rest of UnderRail. While it started with two wings, over time they abandoned the West Wing due to falling numbers. The place became contaminated with dangerous wildlife. During the West Wing Expedition of 67, an elite unit was sent to re-secure the area. Contact was lost. After a few days, one survivor came back… dragging his bisected upper body to the checkpoint before expiring.

• You ended up in a station-station with the resources to teach you how to use your psi powers. But not everyone is so lucky… some are just banished into the dark and dangerous world outside – some, presumably, are killed.

• The Faceless come off as emotionless cyborgs, have by far the best grunt units in the game, appear to have unlimited numbers, and their subterrenes – which no other faction appears to have – give them total strategic mobility within the otherwise narrow confines of UnderRail. They annihilated the Institute of Tchort, one of South UnderRail’s strongest factions, within a single day. It is to be hoped they don’t soon change their isolationist ways – as things stand, they will probably be able to conquer all of South UnderRail in a few weeks of campaigning, if not the entirety of the Protectorate as well.

• To get a certain part needed to open the gate to Tchort’s domain, you need to switch off the auxiliary power to the cryonics pods holding the bodies of cryopreserved Biocorp scientists. Now in fairness, given the ruined state of Hollow Earth and UnderRail’s collapsed scientific production, the chances of anybody coming down there to fix things up before the battery juice runs out within the next 246 years – let alone come up with rejuvenation treatments – is quite minimal. Still, as a transhumanist, I was not happy with having to pull that switch. Doubles as a Tear Jerker  given that we know the backstories behind some of the “patients” via the work logs in the main laboratory.

• The IRIS artificial intelligence in Arke power station produces an endless stream of robots to protect the facility.
• And it’s not even the only such facility! There are RAFs (Robotic Assembly Facilities) for the manufacture, storage, and rapid deployment of armed robotic units in case of conflict throughout UnderRail. They can run autonomously, without outside interference. At one point, IRIS was connected to all of them.
• The default state is to maintain a set number of units and use them to defend against intruders. But imagine if someone was to tweak those conditions and acquire control over an endless stream of weaponized robots.

• Pretty much everything about Tchort :
• The details of its creation.
• Its visual appearance (in the words of the protagonist: “ One giant, disgusting mutated mass of flesh with slimy tentacles sprouting from it “).
• The sense of imminent doom that it projects on all living beings within a certain radius.
• Its ability to generate lesser minions to defend itself.
• How it has managed to manipulate intelligent human adherents into worshipping it and furthering its designs.
• The Mouth of Tchort: “ … instead we got you – another mangy railrait. Trash-digging, foul-smelling, ugly, dysgenic MONGREL!… But, alas, we have not eaten for a while so we must make do… Come, little one, let us take you down the corridors of pain. Take heart for on the other side a greater destiny awaits. You must descend to become exalted. Come… join your river into our sea and become the flesh of a god. “

* Fun fact: The calculations on how many people the world’s current electricity output can support by growing wheat indoors in my post on the world’s maximum population (under today’s tech levels) were initially done for this prospective sci-fi novel.

** For my part, I played as a “psi” character (the game’s equivalent of magic). This is also probably the easiest build, as UnderRail conforms to the “ Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards ” trope. My base stats were as follows: Strength = 3, Dexterity = 5, Agility = 7, Constitution = 5, Perception = 3, Will = 10, and Intelligence = 7. (In retrospect, I wish I had picked much higher Perception – dealing with stealthed enemies, such as the dreaded Death Stalkers – large scorpions that sting you out of nowhere, paralyze you with poisons, and slink away unnoticed before you even have the chance to strike back – was a real pain). This thread is an excellent resource for psi builds.

*** In this sense, they can be compared to the IT directors answering to the cryogenic Mannerbund of Howey’s Silo, the “overseers” answering to the Enclave of Fallout, the “invisible watchers” of Metro, the “Unknown Fathers” of Saraksh in the Strugatsky Brothers’ Inhabited Island, and the Illuminati/MJ12 of Deus Ex.

**** Which one needs to read carefully in order to resolve a potentially sticky situation in the endgame.

Inventor of  Idiot’s Limbo , the  Katechon Hypothesis , and Elite Human Capital.

Apart from writing  books ,  reviews ,  travel writing , and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @ powerfultakes  and run a  Substack newsletter .

Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread .

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Great review. I’d be tempted to buy the game, if I didn’t already own it.

The expansion did add an interesting and quite humorous quest-chain for the Dude, who will proceed to teach you how to rift-walk after you get him the brew. Your attempt to rift walk, however, ends in disaster when you accidentally get teleported into some far flung military base in the balkans. Has a belter of a theme, too.

Oh fine…. I’ll keep donating via Patreon.

I probably will never finish it, since I have a pretty demanding job and a family, but Underrail was pretty fun. The problem for many is that it’s very unbalanced at the start and the Junkyard Depot A is close to impossible. But after you get past that you don’t die quite so often. I did have lots of trouble with the rat king and those borers, but the thing that I hate the most is the travel, shops, and lack of a map. Maybe I’ll give it another go. I don’t remember much, but I have a save right before I have to make a choice with the rat king. I think my build might be strong enough to take him with his rathounds, but only if I strike first. The thing that sucks about the game is that you are only one person so it can make a huge difference of whether you are the first to start the fight. You can’t start with a psi build and expect to live for long in the junkyard. That said, those psi abilities were so fun that I started adding them with increased levels. You still need a good gun and some decent armor. This review actually made me really want to go back and try to get further in the game.

And Underrail by the way, is certainly not an old isometric game. It’s maybe ‘old-style’, but it is a new game and much better than Fallout 2, which is what I played that can be compared to it. Wasteland 2 is more forgiving, but Underrail has more ‘charm’.

Right now I’m replaying the Polish game Thea, the Awakening, which is based on Slavic mythology. Apparently the Slavs still know about that shit, because I was fighting some giant tree and its minions and my wife came by and said, ‘Oh a kikkomora. We used to insult each other as kids that you were an ugly kikkomora from a swamp’. Also I didn’t know what the word ‘smekalka’ meant until she saw it in the game and told me about it. I also recently played a Russian game Eador, which I will never finish because it takes many hundreds of hours, but has really fun mini campaigns and is much better than Heroes of Might and Magic.

I like the premise of the game, however being a one man creation surely means that there are lot of unfixed bugs (as well as the missing features mentioned).

The problem for many is that it’s very unbalanced at the start and the Junkyard Depot A is close to impossible.

In retrospect, Depot A serves the valuable function of filtering out unviable builds early on in the game. I’d suggest the following:

• Extreme min-max builds are the way to go in UnderRail, especially on any difficulty level higher than Medium. I played a stealthy pure psi build Depot A was challenging but doable, and I even neglected to do one very important thing there…

That acid is going to wear you down – so wear mutated dog leather armor. Wish I’d realize that earlier, as I did a huge amount of reloading on that level.

Make sure to learn Force Field to be able to keep enemies at bay to take a breather (can do that as early as Level 3), as well as the Force User feat at Level 4 (extend Force Field to four turns, as well as doubling the force of your TK punch).

… but the thing that I hate the most is the travel, shops, and lack of a map.

Fortunately, a map was introduced more than a year ago – I wouldn’t have bothered playing without it either – and while I haven’t played Expedition myself (or intend to), I did read that there’s a limited version of fast travel now.

PS. This thread is an excellent guide to pure psi builds which would have helped me immensely if I had access to it at the time: https://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=4149.0

Styg hired some people just ahead of the first release of UnderRail, and there’s now something like four people constantly working on it. Much less of an issue now. There are few bugs these days, IMO the limited manhours show up most prominently in grammar/spelling mistakes in the dialogues.

/ourguy/ Sseth Tzeentach recently did a review of this game:

https://invidio.us/watch?v=SgAn68Uy2jQ

…and it’s everything you’d expect from him – recommended.

Interesting review, thanks, it’s much appreciated. I’m a bit surprised the setting and story was the main attraction of the game for you, most reviews I’ve read so far about the game seemed to indicate it’s nothing special and the main attraction is the turn-based combat system. But it actually does seem to have some interesting elements to its narrative.

I made the observation that while American post-apocalyptic games tend to coddle you to the point of parody (e.g. Fallout)

That’s actually not as true for the first two games which weren’t super-difficult, but not completely without challenge either. The later games are pretty different in gameplay and, with the partial exception of New Vegas , regarded as seriously dumbed down by many fans of the original.

Interesting.

I like the sound of it, even more so since a fellow Serb made it, but dear God do I hate turn-based RPGs – I like to beat my enemies into a pulp without constraints, plus they tend to have annoying enemies every 5 meters (Like Mario & Luigi superstar saga, did the devs try to make some sort of migraine fuel?)

I spent the decade of 1980s playing RPGs…more than any other single activity, LOL. I haven’t played any since the early 90s, but this has tempted me. I suspect my computer may need to be upgraded before I’m able, but otherwise I suspect I’ll be playing this when I get home from work tonight.

Sseth does the best reviews, I couldn’t help but think AK saw the video when I saw this review up.

AK: Never even heard of him. Don’t watch videos in general.

This is going to burn a 100 hours of my life isn’t it?

The use of the oddity system is amazing – this is just the second game that I’ve heard using it. You’ve convinced me to make a purchase.

Since this review of Underrail was inspired by the game world and the philosophical implications of that, and I can’t really add much to it, I did have one comment in general on games such as this. And I knew I had to post it since this awesome review is getting too few comments.

It’s basically the world population economy in these types of survival games. After taking a side interest in demographics it’s hard for me to suspend disbelief and lose myself in the game due to this issue. Your character kills quite a number of other humans and the world of the game is pretty brutal so the average person has a low life expectancy and can die from various causes such as being poisoned, before reproducing. An average woman should have at least four children (by my estimate) in order to replenish the population, yet this is never hinted. There are no children in these types of games (In Fallout 2 you got a ‘child killer’ perk if you killed one and it made you generally hated), but it would put a serious strain on the infrastructure of the SGS to have a giant kindergarten and school basically, which is not hinted at by its architecture. Also the interactions with other characters would be a lot more different if they had five kids and had to keep thinking about them a lot of the time. Maybe the leaders of the stations would take less geopolitical risks…

Anyways, the only game that I noticed that sort of tries to make up the population shortfall due to the brutal world is Pillars of Eternity where if you talk to one of the main characters long enough, you find out he has five brothers and sisters. And that world is a lot less bleak than Underrail and has a lot less attrition. At least they could have a small bureaucratic level in each station where you can talk to the manager and they would tell you the statistics as to the number of citizens and average family size. But that would be perhaps too realistic… and at the same time would allow me to suspend disbelief and pretend I’m really helping SGS more (instead of just sitting in front of a computer).

I’m holding off on playing anything until the gods at CD Projekt Red deliver Cyberpunk 2077.

I’ve always had a fondness for games that take inspiration and ideas from real-life cultures, art, and philosophy. It’s all too easy to settle for a generic worldbuilding environment, or indeed to go overboard in your realism. The balance is part of what makes games like Witcher so great.

I’ll have put this on the interminable list of things I’d like to play. Good review.

Known about this game for awhile, been meaning to try it but been busy with others.

The Cthulhu analogues in Tchort are obvious but never having played the original Fallout you might not have known the similarities it also shares with Fallout’s big bad The Master. The master is also a chimeric amalgum of organisms absorbed by a human after falling into mutagenic vats, and harbors transhuman ambitions (transforming the wasteland’s population into “Super Mutants” who are better suited to the unforgiving environment of the wasteland). It too is a borderline Lovecraftian horror (a melted mess of human and animal features, partially integrated into a Vault’s AI system) that has a cult running out of an abandoned church proselytize to stray wastelanders. It’s back story even starts with the lone survivor of a salvaging expedition, though the survivor himself becomes the master in this case.

But I think your transhuman ideology might be projecting a moral ambiguity onto the plot that most people wouldn’t and that the developers didn’t intend. The followers of Tchort sound pretty throughly evil; from turning credulous drifters into inhuman monstrosities to secretly planning to transform humanity into feed for Tchort, and just generally embracing crimes against nature. To fret over their loss is like how a libertarian might fret over Diablo; if only all the smelters of the hellforge could have been repurposed for productive industry! We could give the denizens of the inferno a chance at a better life, and just think what a boon all that cheap demon labor would be to the economy! If only we could have reformed the pit of fire from within.

Instead of trying to reform an organization explicitly devoted to worshipping a horrible monster (and secretly devoted to feeding humanity to it), to the extent that it would be amenable to destroying it, wouldn’t the path of least resistance be killing the freaks and appropriating their technology and materials for your own infinitely less malign purposes?

Overall great review and I look forward to trying the game.

It’s mostly an issue of the needs of gameplay butting up against cultural and legal reality. Nobody (myself included) wants to play a game that features childrenbeing graphically blown apart, and there’s no developed economy in the world where they’d be allowed to sell a game like that (unless most ratings boards don’t have the power to actually ban sale of a game? I guess I’m just assuming they do).

And from a gameplay perspective, having the most vulnerable members of society be for some reason invulnerable breaks immersion. Plus they don’t really add much as far as important player interactions, unlike other NPCs which can trade, provide quests or resources, etc.

All great answers. Making a game where the decision to kill the most vulnerable has consequences also adds a lot more work, as in Fallout 2. But for me walking into a big city populated by 20-30 NPCs with one adult child each also is sort of immersion breaking in a post-apocalyptic universe. You can hint at real populations in conversations with people responsible for station logistics (such as we need to secure that passage in the back to get so many tons of food here; out population is 600 adults and 300 under 16, etc…) Also I realize that would probably add a huge amount of work for a one person team that is not versed in urban logistics.

Philosophically, I view RPGs like these as a simulation. In real life, Core City will have 100,000’s of people (SGS probably 1 OOM smaller). In fact, I would even say that this is hinted at by Mykola Young, who says that he doesn’t have a daughter when you ask about Vivian Young. If he isn’t lying, it implies there are at least two unrelated Youngs in the City.

In these RPGs, there are often more bandits than normies. IRL, they’ll constitute – at most – 1% of the population. IRL, you won’t be encountering them at every corner. OTOH, a journey from one end of UnderRail to the other is cumulatively dangerous, like a trip through a ghetto is today.

Probably a good idea not to have children. You either make them unkillable and ruin immersion more than their mere absence, or you make them killable and invite a tsunami of SJW whining (and perhaps problems with Steam). Some of the zoners talk of having huge families. Detritus was one of those, so did the guy who sells you the Hercules potion (though he was probably lying about that).

That last suggestion is great, that would appeal to folks like us.

It seems like getting a rep for waxing kids, would be a fine way to get one’s self lynched. Why not just include that in the game?

They did that in Fallout 2, if you killed children, your character would turn up on “Wanted” posters and bounty hunters would attack you. Was a bit unfair though, because there were feral street children in the game who would steal items from your inventory. imo in a post-apocalyptic world most people wouldn’t be bothered much by violence against such criminal children.

The way to deal with Fallout feral kids was to set a timer on an explosive (dynamite stick or something like that) and have them steal it.

Anyway, good review. Is the combat much harder than Divinity 2? I like isometric RPGs but I’m stuck in Divinity somewhere midgame past Black Tar Pits. If UnderRail is harder than that, may not be my cup of tea.

I must admit I read this review in its entirety. I don’t play video games and find articles about them uninteresting, but I currently and involuntarily have some spare time on my hands and gave it a go out of curiosity.

The review was very interesting and informative in several dimensions, from the plot narrative to game mechanics to Mr. Karlin’s commentary on the same, etc. So I am glad I read it, but have to say it was also exhausting and depressing in some ways.

How many of you have the time to spend playing games like this for hours and hours? Did someone mention a hundred hours? Do you not have spouses and children (and pets and hobbies that take you off a chair)?

You always have more time than you think, a teacher told me in high school once. Just don’t waste your time unless you want to. It all depends on prioritizing.

Video games are my hobby. Sure, I have all that stuff you mention, not only the spouse and children, but also pets. You’d be surprised at how much physical activity you get to do with small kids around if you go for walks or play with them as part of your usual parenting duties. I don’t watch TV, don’t listen to podcasts or watch Joe Rogan videos, and drastically cut down on reading books. It helps to only get away with only five to six hours of sleep, but on the weekend I often have a few hours to do whatever I want every day and can often play for a few hours. Also one or two hours on a weekday if I don’t check the internet and read the few blogs that I follow. That adds up and I can finish a 30 hour RPG after a month. But 100 hours and there is no hope. I’ll play it if it’s fun, but I don’t seriously plan on finishing it. I also have a pretty demanding STEM job, so I do feel guilty for not reading as many papers as I used to before for my job, but I realized five years ago that most of them are not really worth it unless I’m going to be citing them or they scooped me. I can get all the info I need from the abstract and skimming.

You’ve got to prioritize. That said, video games are a bit of an addiction to take the edge off. It comes and goes and I look forward to a few weeks from now where I think I’ll be back to learning languages as a hobby instead of playing.

Well I do have pets I’m not the one who walks them, and I also have a daytime job that keeps me on my feet most of the day, so being able to stay on the couch for a while is a nice break.

I’ll admit that I would benefit by cutting back on vidya (I have a somewhat “addictive” personality and am a completionist, so I do spend more time on it than I should), but essentially videogames aren’t necessarily inferior to other time-wasting hobbies. Unless it is actively edifying (scripture and theology), pro-social (team sports, maybe dog-walking), or otherwise enriching in some way (language, art, history, weightlifting) then it’s really no better than pouring your hours into games or tv. Is somebody playing a solitary sport, skeet-shooting, reading fiction novels, or pouring his money into his sooped-up car really getting a lot more than the vidya addict from their hobby? Not really.

I used to lift weights a lot more and would like to get back to it, and have taken to reading as much as I can of history and theology on my phone during ‘slow’ days at work (just today I’ve started Eusebius’ preparation for the gospel). I’ve also been toying with the idea of learning latin but it seems like such a task that I’m not sure when I’ll start. Ultimately what separates videogames from the productive set of hobbies is that they’re a lot cheaper and/or easier. After a long day it’s relaxing to sit back, set my brain to standby and play; I can’t do that reading Eusebius or learning Latin.

Doesn’t seem to be much less productive than reading news (much of which is negative value added).

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© Anatoly Karlin

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Coretech research facility

Ok, i'm going crazy. I can't find the facility. The one you need to infiltrate for the last step of the oligarchs mission. Says lower Corecity, but I've been wandering for 2 hours.

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A rooftop air system on a skyscraper in Hong Kong. Credit: 4FR / iStock

Lehigh University is a Core Institution of New $26 Million NSF Engineering Research Center

Lehigh is one of six core institutions of a new U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center focusing on developing sustainable refrigerants to address climate change. Lehigh’s team is led by David Vicic, the Howard S. Bunn Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.

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• sustainability
• Lehigh research
• Jessecae Marsh
• Lisa Fredin
• Elizabeth Young
• Todd Watkins
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $26 million to establish a new Gen-4 Engineering Research Center (ERC) named Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub (EARTH) to create a sustainable and circular refrigerant economy.

The University of Kansas is the lead institution, joined by partners at Lehigh, University of Notre Dame, University of Maryland, University of Hawai'i and University of South Dakota. David Vicic , the Howard S. Bunn Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, will lead Lehigh’s team. Mark Shiflett, University of Kansas Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, will be the ERC EARTH director.

At the heart of ERC EARTH’s work is reimagining the process for heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) systems across the globe. EARTH will develop sustainable, accessible and equitable refrigerant technologies and practices through research, education and innovation that will improve quality of life and combat climate change.

“The EARTH Center will allow participating Lehigh faculty, students and staff to closely interact with the other core institutions to generate new scientific knowledge, engineering and chemical products, environmental policy recommendations, and industry and stakeholder behavioral changes to stimulate HVACR-ecosystem transformations,” Vicic said. “Commercial leaders will also be engaged with EARTH through direct involvement of projects, testbed use, membership programs, training activities and participation at EARTH’s annual meetings, which will allow graduate and undergraduate students to gain unique relationships with industry.”

The open-source educational material that EARTH provides will also benefit HVACR programs at smaller partnering institutions like Pennsylvania College of Technology by updating and refining curricula in a way that would not be possible otherwise.

The interdisciplinary team at Lehigh involves professors Vicic (synthetic chemistry), Lisa Fredin (computational chemistry), Elizabeth Young (molecular spectroscopy), Jessecae Marsh (cognitive psychology) and Todd Watkins (innovation economics and technical entrepreneurship). Watkins will serve as co-lead of the ERC EARTH Innovation Ecosystem group.

David Vicic , the Howard S. Bunn Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, will lead Lehigh’s team.

ERC EARTH’s multifaceted approach addresses a critical challenge

HVACR systems are widespread throughout society, enabling transportation and preservation of fresh foods, storage of medicines and cooling of buildings. Most current refrigerants are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which have high global-warming potential. As a result of leaks from existing systems and the energy required to operate them, HFCs account for nearly 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

In response, the U.S. and 170 other countries are phasing down HFCs in accordance with domestic and international agreements signed in recent years, which creates a tremendous challenge to responsibly and sustainably replace billions of kilograms of refrigerants.

Working closely with industry partners, EARTH will have the resources and expertise to solve the technical, environmental and economic challenges required to create a sustainable refrigerant lifecycle that will benefit the nation and the world.

“Multidisciplinary research teams will focus on three key areas: promoting the recycling and repurposing of refrigerants, developing transformative refrigerants and creating next-generation cooling and heating technologies with higher energy efficiency,” said Shiflett, who is director of University of Kansas’ Wonderful Institute for Sustainable Engineering.

Lehigh’s team will focus on developing solutions to deal with the reclamation and repurposing of high-global warming potential (GWP) legacy refrigerants. These solutions are needed to prevent millions of metric tons of high-GWP refrigerants from leaking and illegally venting into the atmosphere. Approaches will include new security markers for refrigerant producers to use at ports of entry and regional/local distribution centers; low-cost, energy-efficient separations of individual HFC compounds from recycled mixtures, waste refrigerants and future hydrofluoroolefin blends; and new methodologies for repurposing high-GWP refrigerants into diversified fine and commodity chemicals.​​

Lehigh’s Chemistry Department has world-renowned expertise in manipulating refrigerant-like molecules, which made it a top choice for leading these studies.

Behavioral data and analyses to improve new technology adoption, foster business model innovation, and identify social, behavioral and business barriers to transitioning to new refrigerants - together with economic analyses that influence future policy making - will support EARTH’s research and will be led by Lehigh researchers.

Graduate student Cherry Mae Ravidas manipulates air-sensitive compounds on a high-vacuum line in the Vicic Lab. Credit: Steven Lichak / Lehigh University

Building an ongoing innovation ecosystem

The Center’s interacting foundational components go beyond the research project, including engineering workforce development and value creation within an innovation ecosystem that will outlast the lifetime of the ERC.

The Lehigh team, through the Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise, is co-leading those ERC EARTH innovation ecosystem efforts, aimed at accelerating the uptake of new ideas emerging from EARTH research.

“EARTH aims to advance promising technologies by connecting innovators to entrepreneurship and industry resources and partners to tackle key HVACR innovation, entrepreneurship and scale-up challenges by leveraging deep supporting infrastructures across all six partner universities, in order to foster innovation and entrepreneurial mindsets throughout the HVACR research and education ecosystem,” said Watkins, who is executive director of the Martindale Center in the College of Business.

In addition, EARTH’s operational design will cultivate inclusive, interdisciplinary research collaborations and foster workforce development, Shiflett said. This includes partnering of the EARTH team with community colleges and technical schools to ensure availability of the needed workforce at all levels.

The NSF’s Engineering Research Centers bring universities and businesses together to strengthen the competitive position of American industry in the global marketplace.

“NSF's Engineering Research Centers ask big questions in order to catalyze solutions with far-reaching impacts,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said. “NSF Engineering Research Centers are powerhouses of discovery and innovation, bringing America's great engineering minds to bear on our toughest challenges. By collaborating with industry and training the workforce of the future, ERCs create an innovation ecosystem that can accelerate engineering innovations, producing tremendous economic and societal benefits for the nation.”

ERC EARTH was selected from among hundreds of proposed centers nationwide. The NSF project is renewable after five years for another $26 million dollars, for a potential effort of 10 years and $52 million.

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New Pathways for Graduate Students to the Research Enterprise is a pilot training model that aims to prepare senior doctoral students for careers within the research enterprise or as more well-rounded faculty.

Lehigh Joins Partnership with Eight Colleges and Universities to Bring Large-scale Solar Facility Online

The Sebree Solar II project is considered one of the emissions reduction strategies supporting Lehigh’s Climate Action Strategy.

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NSF announces 4 new Engineering Research Centers focused on biotechnology, manufacturing, robotics and sustainability

Engineering innovations transform our lives and energize the economy.  The U.S. National Science Foundation announces a five-year investment of $104 million, with a potential 10-year investment of up to $208 million, in four new NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) to create technology-powered solutions that benefit the nation for decades to come.   

"NSF's Engineering Research Centers ask big questions in order to catalyze solutions with far-reaching impacts," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "NSF Engineering Research Centers are powerhouses of discovery and innovation, bringing America's great engineering minds to bear on our toughest challenges. By collaborating with industry and training the workforce of the future, ERCs create an innovation ecosystem that can accelerate engineering innovations, producing tremendous economic and societal benefits for the nation."  

The new centers will develop technologies to tackle the carbon challenge, expand physical capabilities, make heating and cooling more sustainable and enable the U.S. supply and manufacturing of natural rubber.  

The 2024 ERCs are:  

• NSF ERC for Carbon Utilization Redesign through Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) — Washington University in St. Louis in partnership with the University of Delaware, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University.   CURB will create manufacturing systems that convert CO2 to a broad range of products much more efficiently than current state-of-the-art engineered and natural systems.    
• NSF ERC for Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub (EARTH) — University of Kansas in partnership with Lehigh University, University of Hawaii, University of Maryland, University of Notre Dame and University of South Dakota.   EARTH will create a transformative, sustainable refrigerant lifecycle to reduce global warming from refrigerants while increasing the energy efficiency of heating, ventilation and cooling.    
• NSF ERC for Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity (HAND) — Northwestern University in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, Florida A&M University, and Texas A&M University, and with engagement of MIT.  HAND will revolutionize the ability of robots to augment human labor by transforming dexterous robot hands into versatile, easy-to-integrate tools.     
• NSF ERC for Transformation of American Rubber through Domestic Innovation for Supply Security (TARDISS) — The Ohio State University in partnership with Caltech, North Carolina State University, Texas Tech University and the University of California, Merced.   TARDISS will create bridges between engineering, biology, and agriculture to revolutionize and on-shore alternative natural rubber production from U.S. crops.  

Since its founding in 1985, NSF's ERC program has funded 83 centers (including the four announced today) that receive support for up to 10 years. The centers build partnerships with educational institutions, government agencies and industry stakeholders to support innovation and inclusion in established and emerging engineering research.  

Visit NSF's website and read about NSF Engineering Research Centers .  

Research areas

Hollow Earth

Hollow Earth
Location information
Music
Located in
Areas	Hollow Earth research complex Mutagen Tanks A gate Mutagen Tanks B gate
Connections
NPCs	none
Technical Map file(s) Hollow Earth is a location in Deep Caverns . 1 Description 2 Enemies and other hazards 4 Map Gallery Description Hollow Earth was old Biocorp's vast research complex located far below the Underrail network in Deep Caverns. The research complex itself consists of four large main zones and all surrounding infrastructure serves the research complex's needs. Mutagen experiments were performed at the Mutagen Tanks in north, Caerus Residential Block in the southeast housed the research complex personnel, DC Warehouse Blocks to the east were used for storage and Arke Power Station just north of the warehouses provided power for the whole complex. Inaccessible areas that used to be part of the research complex during original Biocorp's heyday include BCAF - Detachment Hollow Earth and Tartarus Maximum Security Prison somewhere deeper underground. Hollow Earth was built centuries ago by the original Biocorp, and subsequently abandoned following the Hollow Earth Incident . Hollow Earth's main connections to Underrail above it are three elevators. University elevator which leads to the Institute of Tchort , Lower Underrail elevator which leads to Hanging Rat and south elevator which leads to BCAF installation S-8, nowadays known as South Gate Station . Most of the research complex lay in ruins after decades of battles between Tchortists and the Faceless over the control of Nucleus . The situation as the player enters Deep Caverns is a stalemate, with the Faceless unable to advance due to Tchort's influence and the Tchortists weak due to a recent Faceless assault and being cut off from the Institute. Enemies and other hazards Cuttlesnails Industrial Robot Tchortling Devourers Tchortling Scanners Tchortling Sowers Find Leo's knife Repair the gate mechanism Mutagen Puzzle : some of the mutagen reagents can be found here. Map Gallery Hollow Earth vehicle park Hollow Earth (Toxic waste, Hanging Rat elevator) Hollow Earth labs 1 (Organic Processor, Mutagen Scanner, entrance to Tithonus Laboratory ) Hollow Earth labs 2 Biohazard shelter, vehicle park Biohazard shelter, toxic waste Biohazard shelter, labs 2 Named locales of . See also and . Stations • • ( ) • ( ) • • • • • Dungeons • • • • • • Other   •   •   ( , ) Stations • • • • • , , , , , , , , ,   ,   ) Dungeons • • • • • • • • • • Other • • • • • • • • • • • Towns • , , , , , , , , , , ) • • • Dungeons • • • , , , , , , ) • • • • Other • • • • • •   Waterways   • • ) • • • • • • • • • ) • •   • • • • • • • • • • • •   • • • • • • • • • • • • •   •   •   •   Uncontrolled zones Needs expansion Navigation menu Programs and Projects Work with us Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at NTI Annual Reports and Financials National Research Center Kurchatov Institute Location Kurchatov, Kursk Oblast Type Nuclear-Research and Development Facility Status Operational Want to dive deeper? Visit the Education Center My Resources Send saved resources to: Report this post 147 IMAGES Research facility (JKK) Blistering Shores Research Facility Research Facility Research Facility Coretech [Underrail] Episode 35 COMMENTS Research Facility A secret Coretech research facility under Core City, accessible from lower level Drop Zone during the final mission of any of the three oligarch's questlines. Also accessible from Core City Sewers afterwards. Its first level contains some mutagen experiment victims and a couple of crawlers in the open corridors. Hecate Research Outpost Description. HRO is a small research facility that belonged to Old Biocorp before it was abandoned during Core City riots. It is located in Lower Underrail 5 zones east of Core City Gates and two north. There are two stories to the building; the first is mostly safe aside from some gas in the room with a dead mutant, along with a cafeteria containing Crawlers; the second is infested with Coil ... [Underrail] Episode 35 The Cube is currently being examined by Coretech scientists in their secret research facility hidden near Drop Zone. What at first appears to be a simple ass... Coretech Research Facility :: Underrail General Discussions Underrail > General Discussions > Topic Details. After turning in the Cornell quest, Rupert Simmons gave me a new quest to assure an artifact is safe. He gave me the Coretech Research Facility Keycard (to access) and the Biocorp Research Facility Pass (to wear). When I arrived at the research facility front entrance, the door won't open. Hephaestus Research The Protectorate Dreadnought can't leave the facility, and must be dismounted to crawl under the gate to exit; Enemies. Hephaestus Research houses perhaps the largest Burrower infestation in the entire Lower Underrail. The facility is completely overtaken by Burrowers and their Spawn, with massive numbers of them residing in the inner facility ... Mutated dogs in a Coretech research facility Let's Play playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXabidRc6PFBhW5de4Iz5Qot0hrgm-aEfLet's Play Underrail: Expedition. The expansion is out for this ... Where is hecate research outpost? :: Underrail General Discussions Probably redundant info but just to be sure, North is the upper right corner of the screen as indicated by your Compass [www.underrail.com]. To clarify further, the door to Hecate Research Outpost is on the same screen where there is a pit in the floor that leads to the Upper Caves. It says East of lower underrail metro station in core city but ... Need help with a quest(spoilers). : r/underrail You have to use the computer in the Coretech research facility in Core City where the Tchortists break through the wall, kill the 2 techs, steal the cube, and escape into the sewers. Upstairs from where that happened, in the area patrolled by Plasma Sentries is a computer terminal you have to use to learn his assistant's name. New core city questline :: Underrail General Discussions Anyone saw new, alternative to oligarchy questline? For now i only saw a strange man, who was trying to hack coretech research facility, tried to follow him, but he disappear after 2 zones. UPD here is a a solution First, you need to complete the game to the moment when you need to seek acid hunters. Then go at the core city docks, 1 area west and 1 area north west. There you will see a ... Can you get Stasis before Research Facility? : r/underrail Theres a good likelihood someone can get it early via random psionic drop locations but the RNG must favor you. Other then that starting expedition early can get you one in that Naga filled ruin on the pirates base (also a random drop but has a high likelihood droping high tier mentors and one guaranteed plasma beam one.) Coretech research facility with Phreaks quest? : r/underrail Related Underrail Indie game Gaming forward back r/Kenshi Subreddit for Kenshi from Lo-Fi Games, the revolutionary mix of RTS and RPG with a huge dystopian sword-punk world to explore. New Core City Questline : r/underrail Animals and Pets Anime Art Cars and Motor Vehicles Crafts and DIY Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Ethics and Philosophy Fashion Food and Drink History Hobbies Law Learning and Education Military Movies Music Place Podcasts and Streamers Politics Programming Reading, Writing, and Literature Religion and Spirituality Science Tabletop Games ... Death Delivering Dreadnought Episode 169 of Let's Play UnderRail: Expedition is here! We go to the Hephaestus Research facility to locate the missing Protectorate expedition, and get to ... UnderRail Ep 34. Acid Hunters / Cornell, Cube Research Facility In which I get scared of the dark, ... and the light too if were being honest.http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=InsomniaKnights Subscribe... Help with reaching Hephaestus Research :: Underrail General Discussions On this map, blow up the rocks blocking your way w/ TNT or Jackhammer. Defeat the Rathounds. Remove the rocks at the northeast corner of this map, go down. Walk East and blow up the first bunch of Rocks you see, take this exit. Arrived at Hephaestus Research Station. this guide is correct until. >Defeat the Rathounds. Game Review: UnderRail The population strained against UnderRail's carrying capacity, and there was unrest against corruption and rumored "immoral" experiments at the Hollow Earth research facility. 189 years ago, the Apex Technocrats lost power in a revolt sparked by what would later become known as the Hollow Earth Incident, which resulted in the birth of a ... Coretech research facility : r/underrail Coretech research facility. Ok, i'm going crazy. I can't find the facility. The one you need to infiltrate for the last step of the oligarchs mission. Says lower Corecity, but I've been wandering for 2 hours. Any help? lol, I'm confused too, three years after you. Ok, i'm going crazy. I can't find the facility. Lehigh University is a Core Institution of New $26 Million NSF The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $26 million to establish a new Gen-4 Engineering Research Center (ERC) named Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub (EARTH) to create a sustainable and circular refrigerant economy.. The University of Kansas is the lead institution, joined by partners at Lehigh, University of Notre Dame, University of Maryland, University of ... Super Steel Refining Data Cannot be sold. Super Steel Refining Data is an item that can be brought to Bernard in order to increase the average quality of the Super Steel Plates he produces. Four drives are needed to reach the maximum quality range. These drives can be found scattered across Underrail, and there are more than the required four. NSF announces 4 new Engineering Research Centers focused on Engineering innovations transform our lives and energize the economy. The U.S. National Science Foundation announces a five-year investment of $104 million, with a potential 10-year investment of up to $208 million, in four new NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) to create technology-powered solutions that benefit the nation for decades to come. Hollow Earth This section needs expansion. Hollow Earth was old Biocorp's vast research complex located far below the Underrail network in Deep Caverns. The research complex itself consists of four large main zones and all surrounding infrastructure serves the research complex's needs. Mutagen experiments were performed at the Mutagen Tanks in north, Caerus ... National Research Center Kurchatov Institute 1 Designated a national research center in 1991, the Institute is also one of the four organizations comprising the pilot cooperation project at the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, established in 2009. 2. The Institute is focused on the study of thermonuclear fusion, plasma physics, solid state physics, and superconductivity. One ... Istra High Voltage Research Center Construction of a large ovoidal dome, officially named the "High-voltage test bench of the enterprise R-6511" (Russian: "Высоковольтный испытательный стенд предприятия Р-6511"), but also known as the "Istra dome []", began in 1982.The building was to be used as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons testing facility, with commissioning planned for ... Huawei Russian Research Institutes Huawei Russian Research Institute. Huawei's end-to-end portfolio of products, solutions and services are both competitive and secure. Through open collaboration with ecosystem partners, we create lasting value for our customers, working to empower people, enrich home life, and inspire innovation in organizations of all shapes and sizes. How to get into Organic Processor (Hollow Earth Research)? :: Underrail How to get into Organic Processor (Hollow Earth Research)? (Minor Spoilers) Powered up everything that can be powered at Arke station. Rescued the space ghosts out of cryostasis. Gathed all machine parts. Fixed the machine that works the gate. Collected Mycokardia. Kurchatov Institute Until 1955 known under a secret name "Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences", the Kurchatov Institute was founded in 1943 with the initial purpose of developing nuclear weapons.The majority of Soviet nuclear reactors were designed in the institute, including the on-site F-1, which was the first nuclear reactor outside North America to sustain criticality. assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis