What is Underhand
Official description
Underhand is a CCG (Cultist Card Game) that puts you into the role of a cult leader. Your job is to manage your cult’s resources effectively as you respond to different event cards drawn from the deck. How you respond to these events will determine how far you’ll go-- will you succeed in summoning one, or maybe even all of the Ancient Ones? Or will you be just another would-be upstart falling prey to the trials and tribulations of time? Only you can decide!
My description
Underhand is a very cool card game. The idea and the design is just perfect. Once you try it out, there is no going back.
Karen’s description
Underhand is a mobile card game where the player acts as a leader working to summon the old gods. To do this, they must carefully manage their resources as they respond to events given by an event deck.
The truth
A casually evil card game.
Game history
Underhand was made at Cornell University within their Game Design Initiative (GDIAC) by a group of students with pseudonyme Spoopy Squad and released on Google Play in 20. 9. 2017.
That being said, we can not hope for updates or bugfixes since the developers are long out of college and each going after their own career. Any kind of sequel would need to be a community effort.
The Spoopy Squad
| Member | Position |
|---|---|
| Melody Spencer | Project Lead |
| Karen Zhou | Design Lead |
| Apurv Sethi | Software Lead |
| Sean “Hez” Thompson | Designer |
| Lily Li | Designer / Programmer |
| Aaron Sy | Programmer |
| Daniel Sainati | Programmer |
There is a Spoopy Squad Workflow in the links section you can view. It can provide a bit more insight about the Game’s authors and about application development. I also recommend checking out Karen’s Behance site.
Where did the idea come from
I remember Daniel pitching the idea of a resource management game, then it developed into cards. I believe all of us were joking around one night and talking about how funny a cult theme could be (there was an actual cult near our university that the Matcha Factor was based off of). I was really big into the art deco easthetic too, so that played into the design. ~ Karen
Trivia
Underhand was originally named Cults Against Humanity.
Underhand was originaly designed as a landscape (horizontal) game. It was changed for portrait (vertical) because the landscape UI was too messy and unintuitive.
Jhai’Ti being The Jasmine Dragon while also being a tea-centered god is inspired by uncle Iroh’s shop from the Avatar: The last airbender series.