• Completed & Reviewed by Neil Collins

Underwurlde is the follow up to the classic game Sabre Wulf by Imagine/Firebird. Once again you take control of the Sabreman, but this time you find yourself trapped inside a large castle that has a vast series of caverns below. Your objective is to reach the top of the castle and escape via one of it's three exits. Sounds easy, but it is really quite difficult. Guardians block access to certain parts of the maze, which require you to find special weapons to defeat them. Many other creatures within the game will knock you around and cause you to fall great heights. This will leave you very frustrated, so you will need quick reactions and good timing to navigate the maze without losing all your lives. The graphics are not much different from the spectrum version, the animation is poor and the sound is nothing special - but the gameplay and controls are pretty good so it's better than it looks. You will, however, need a map if you are to conquer this challenging 2D platform game.

Ending 1

Ending 2

Ending 3

HOW WAS IT COMPLETED?: Using an infinite lives cheat and disabling the sprite collision.

SO WHAT HAPPENS?: Once the final guardian is defeated you can make your way up through the castle to the surface by exiting through one of three exits. The endings for each exit are very similar to each other. You get a page of text which congratulates you on completing Underwurlde. A percentage is shown which represents how many screens of the maze you visited and another game is advertised as coming out soon on the C64. This game depends on which exit you take - the three games advertised are Sabre Wulf, Blackwyche and Nightshade. The game is then complete and restarts.

FINAL SAY: I'm gonna give it a point for each ending. Great idea, but a simple text message just isn't good enough. Very dull.

G.E. RATING: 3 / 10

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