Underhero

My first few minutes with Underhero already told me this was something made with genuine love: a chandelier drops on the Chosen Hero, a nameless masked minion accidentally kills him, and suddenly you are holding his talking sword, Elizabeth IV, who is absolutely furious about the situation. That cold open costs the game nothing and earns everything. Paper Castle Games, a small studio out of Venezuela, spent nearly five years building this, and the care shows in every corner of the Chestnut Kingdom. The combat is the spine of the whole thing, and it is smarter than it sounds on paper. There are no traditional turns; instead, every fight runs in real time, with a stamina bar pacing your actions. You pick from a sword for quick strikes, a hammer for heavy hits, or a slingshot for range, and you time each swing or parry to land at the precise moment the enemy telegraphs its pattern. Think early Paper Mario or Mario and Luigi, but stripped of menus and re-assembled as a reflex-and-observation puzzle. Learning the tells of each new enemy type is genuinely satisfying, and the boss fights push that logic into weirder, more elaborate territory. On top of that, you can talk to almost every enemy before the fight begins, and bribe them out of combat entirely. The game remembers you are a minion, and the whole system winks at you for it. Outside of combat the game is a sidescrolling platformer with large, secret-filled levels that lean slightly metroidvania in their layering. Scattered upgrades let you put points into attack, health, or stamina at each level up, and the shop offers further boosts if you have been thorough enough in your exploration. Tucked throughout the worlds are Puzzleman game-show sequences, trivia based on NPC dialogue you may or may not have read, plus left-field minigames like ice-skating contests that somehow fit the tone perfectly. The pixel art is cartoony and warm, and the soundtrack by Stijn van Wakeren is a chiptune-and-live-instrument blend that changes dynamically with gameplay. I found myself lingering in save rooms longer than I needed to. The rough edges are real. The platforming physics feel floaty in places, easy to overshoot on smaller ledges. The late-game pacing is where most critics land their justified punches: after the three main worlds wrap up, the game's structure gets looser, backtracking through earlier areas feels thin, and the final stretch leans heavily on platforming rather than the combat and character work that earned your goodwill. The closing boss fight is notably easier than several mid-game encounters, which deflates an otherwise emotionally charged finale. The story, which takes some genuinely surprising turns and does carry real feeling underneath all the weird humour, also does most of its thematic lifting toward the end, so patient players are rewarded while impatient ones may have checked out. Playthrough length sits around eight to ten hours, which for this kind of handcrafted indie feels right. If you played the first two Paper Mario games and have been quietly mourning what that series became, Underhero is the closest thing to a spiritual heir you are likely to find in the indie space. It is funny, it is occasionally moving, and it knows when a joke should give way to something more earnest. The pacing stumbles in the late game, but the craft that surrounds those stumbles is worth your time. Kai, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Playable. Runs flawlessly on Linux out of the box. Based on 5 ProtonDB community reports.

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