Messaging and Tone Guidelines
For anyone writing about Underroot — store copy, social posts, press replies, trailer captions. Follow it and every surface sounds like the same game.
The voice
Warm and human up top, with a countdown running underneath. A little folkloric, a little melancholy. The calm of an idle game carrying the quiet dread of a clock you can't stop. Write plain, write in second person ("you"), and stay confident. No emojis. No exclamation-point spam.
Both halves have to stay in balance. All warmth and it reads like a farming sim with no stakes. All dread and it reads like a horror game with no reason to care. Underroot is both at once: quiet work, loud ending. Keep the peace of the task and the dread of the clock on the page together.
What to lead with
Lead with the player's stakes, not the systems. "Keep a doomed village alive one more day" before "idle/incremental crafting loop." Feeling first, mechanics as the how.
Six pillars carry the whole thing: dig to survive, hold the line, tend the village, lineage not game-over, idle-friendly, free and yours. When in doubt, say one of those in plain words.
Do / Don't word lists
Use these words and moves
- buy time, hold the line, one more day, borrowed days, make it count
- doomed but defiant, fragile people, souls sheltered, tend, keep them alive
- dig, tunnel, deeper, the dark, the deep, layer, wall, hold
- lineage, take up the shovel, dig on, past the graves, remember the dead
- quiet, calm, melancholy, folkloric, stubborn, human
- confident and plain: "You cannot kill it. You can only buy time."
Avoid these
- hype-inflation: "revolutionary", "the best ever", "genre-defining", "unrivaled", "insane", "epic"
- generic idle-speak that hides the stakes: "number go up", "grind", "AFK farm"
- overpromising verbs that imply winning: "conquer", "defeat the Maw", "beat the game" — you cannot beat the Maw, and the copy should never imply you can
- emoji, exclamation spam, all-caps shouting
- corporate filler: "immersive experience", "seamless", "next-gen"
How to describe the key ideas
The Maw. A vast creature at the edge of the world that advances from the right and eats the world one wall at a time. The deeper and longer you go, the hungrier it grows. Frame it as inevitable, not as a boss to be slain — the honest hook is that you cannot kill it, only buy time against it. Never write it as beatable.
Lineage. Death is not game-over; it is inheritance. When a digger falls, the next takes up the shovel and digs on, past the graves of those before. Describe it as a chapter, not a reset — warm, not gruesome. The graveyard hill "remembers your dead." Keep the dignity in it.
Idle / offline. It keeps running while you are away; drop in and out. Say "keeps working while you are away" or "progresses while you're away" — describe it as a kindness (fits a long session or a two-minute check-in), not as automation that plays the game for you. It is idle-friendly, not idle-only.
The village. Fragile survivors you feed, shelter, and grow — the reason you dig, and they help you back. Storms threaten them. Keep them human; they are people, not a resource meter.
Endgame. The Astrolabe ritual reshapes the world at a permanent cost. Challenges — including the design-your-own Artificer's Harrow — are opt-in difficulty for veterans. Frame these as choices players reach for, not as required grind.
Reusable boilerplate
One-liner (logline). Use verbatim wherever a single line is needed.
Every layer buys time. Underroot is an idle survival-crafter about digging deep to keep a doomed village alive one more day.
Short "about" paragraph. Use in press replies, footers, and profile bios.
Underroot is an idle survival-crafter from Swavvy AB about a lone digger holding back the Maw — a world-eating creature at the edge of the world. Tunnel deep for the materials to wall it out, feed and grow the village of survivors above, and when you fall, your lineage takes up the shovel and digs on. It keeps running while you are away, plays free in your browser or on PC (Windows and Linux), and is name-your-own-price. More at underroot.se.
Tagline. Every layer buys time.
The truth rules (do not break)
These protect the game's credibility. They apply to every surface.
- State only confirmed facts. If it is not established as true, do not write it.
- Do not invent review quotes, press quotes, star ratings, sales or player numbers, awards, release dates, or specific system requirements. If someone asks for a quote or a metric you do not have, say it is not available yet — never fabricate one.
- Do not invent download links or asset URLs. Point to
underroot.se, and describe assets generically (for example, "trailer available on request / at underroot.se"). - Confident, not boastful. No hype-inflation. Let the honest hook — a game you cannot win, only hold — do the persuading.
- Keep the facts straight: free / name-your-own-price; browser plus PC download for Windows and Linux; single-player; built in Godot 4; launching on itch.io; published by Swavvy AB.
When a claim would be nice to have but is not confirmed, leave it out. Underroot's pitch is strong enough on the truth.