Underquest

I've spent enough time with inventory-driven roguelites to know when one is bluffing with its depth and when the mechanics actually hold up under a few hours of play. Underquest, released in April 2025 by Otherside Bay Studio, is a small game that earns its hook. The central conceit is that your bag never stops filling with items - potions, spell segments, armor fragments, bombs - and you have to make snap decisions about what to combine, equip, or dismantle while combat is actively happening around you. That constant triage is both the game's strongest quality and the thing most likely to send a certain type of player to the refund screen. The item-merging system is where the decision-making lives. Two spell segments fused together forge a skill; two identical quality items fused upgrade the tier of your gear. On lower difficulty settings, time slows when your cursor enters the inventory, giving newcomers breathing room to read what they're holding. Crank the difficulty up and that mercy disappears entirely - the inventory becomes a live puzzle you're solving while your hero auto-battles enemies in real time. It is closer to an auto-battler with a frantic logistics layer than a traditional action RPG, and understanding that distinction upfront will save you a bad first impression. Three distinct dungeon areas form the backbone of each run, each capped by a boss with its own strategy, and five tavern characters sit between runs offering perk upgrades in exchange for gold earned during your dives. The tavern layer is light but functional - it gives a meaningful sense of meta-progression without bloating what is, at its core, a compact game. Where Underquest runs short is breadth. Three boss encounters and three dungeon zones is a thin content slate, and once you have internalised the merge recipes that dominate a given run the element of surprise fades. Achievement hunters will find the boss-specific challenges genuinely punishing, with community feedback pointing to the third-area boss as a wall that the current balance doesn't fully justify. There's no mod ecosystem to speak of, and Otherside Bay Studio is a solo-or-very-small outfit, so post-launch content velocity is worth managing expectations around. The game's origins as a 2021 Epic MegaJam entry are visible in the scope - it punches above that origin comfortably, but the ceiling is real. For who this works: if you find yourself theorycrafting item combinations in your head between sessions, you are the exact target. Strategy-adjacent players who enjoy real-time resource decisions - think Backpack Battles adjacent but with active dungeon combat baked in - will find more than enough to chew on for several evenings. The low price point and the existence of a free demo mean the risk of buying blind is minimal. Steam user reception sits near 97 percent positive across a small but consistent sample, which matches the vibe of a game that quietly does its one thing well rather than overselling a feature list. Approach it as a focused experiment, not a sprawling roguelite, and Underquest delivers. Diego, Scout Team

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