While the world may have forgotten the “Great Old Ones,” players strive to wake these slumbering horrors and see them reign once more. Settled at the head of mysticism in early 1900s America, they must guide their cult by managing resources, gathering relics, and performing rituals as they seek to restore the age of the eldritch gods.
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.
Underhand is now available for download on both the App Store and Google Play Store absolutely free.
The Final Cards
All cards shown here are ones that I have specifically illustrated. The general style and layout was also determined by me.
Above are sample cards from the event deck.
Above are the resources cards that the player need to manage. They are held in a "hand" from which the player draws from.
Ultimately, the player must complete what are called "summoning chains" in order to summon the old gods and win the game. Each summoning chain requires different resources and strategies.
Concepts, Mockups, & Storyboarding
We first came up with the idea that we were going to have a cult-themed card game. It actually took me quite a bit of time to think of a satisfactory art direction. I did not want it to be overtly horrific or antediluvian, yet I still wanted the game to have some visual gravity to it. I was looking for an old but bold look, with mystic elements.
What came to mind when I thought of old and bold was art deco. Art deco is clean yet intricate, and certainly can be considered "old". Happily, American mysticism also reached its height at the same time as art deco.
There were still some tricky design problems to solve. Since this game was developed for mobile platforms, screen real estate was limited. The original layouts were horizontal, as shown in the storyboards below.
However, playtesting showed that players had a hard time realizing that the options on the right were responses to the event on the left because the two were separated by a large space in the middle.
After a lot of consideration, I decided that the game's UI should be made vertical, and rearranged it so that responses directly followed events while still keeping the game's visual composition balanced and order of events (draw event card, see responses, choose resources, choose response, repeat). Below is a visual map and flow of the game with its different decks.
Acknowledgments
This game was developed by a team of Cornell University students - Lily Li, Daniel Sainati, Apurv Sethi, Melody Spencer, Aaron Sy, Hez Thompson, and myself.
Special thanks go to Tristan Pruner for making the game's radio announcer come alive.
