Three years have passed since the release of the Prologue of one of the best modifications for Half-Life 2 – Underhell. I was looking forward to the release of Chapter One, and with this I had a fun story that I will share with you today. There will be a lot of letters.
So let’s go back https://tropicanzacasino.uk/login/ to 2013.
August 17
The morning did not foretell any trouble. I had breakfast calmly, lisped with the cat and turned on the laptop. I immediately open the browser and go to YouTube. I bookmarked it specifically for Subscriptions. And then I see a video with a title that made me wince “Underhell Chapter 1: Release Teaser”. Without hesitation, I click on the link. And at the end of the video the final release date is written “September 1, 2013”. That was the hype! There was already real fangasm in the comments: we have been waiting for this for 2.5 years!
Every day I spent time on the mod’s ModDB page, hoping to hear more news. I was a little upset by the fact that the game will be released in September, when school starts. And I really wanted to at least go through the Chapter before that.
August 28
Again in the morning on YouTube. And again there is an interesting thing in Subscriptions. The game’s composer, Tom Stoffel, uploads a Promo of the soundtrack for the new chapter to his channel. In the video, he announces that the soundtrack is available now, and those who buy it before September 1st will have access to the game a day before the release, on August 31st. The soundtrack cost 10 bucks, which for an album with 94 tracks (+ 10 from the Bonus that was given to the first 500 buyers) is a completely normal price. I realized that this is my chance. He ran to his hole and took the money. I calculated how much I needed to spend on VISA Virtual (QIWI) and ran to the nearest terminal. Threw the money and returned home. The laptop was left on, so I immediately go to the site and go through the purchase steps. A few minutes and here it is! I receive a link to download the album! Soon I receive the author’s gratitude for the purchase and with it a code for the Bonus Album, which I also immediately downloaded. I wrote a letter to the author, wishing him all the best, received gratitude in response, and I began to enjoy the soundtrack. Tom is a really good composer. The interesting thing is that I quickly figured out the music that was playing in the trailers, and Tom smiled at this discovery.
August 31
Here it is, the day of truth. I’ve already jumped out of bed and reached for the laptop. This time I went to Steam, to the Underhell group. Developers and 20 nerds like me were already hanging out in the group chat. We asked questions, received answers, and overall it was positive. The author did the last checks, making sure that everything went without problems. And so he uploads the archive to the server. Link in chat and we start downloading Underhell. But… the joy was short-lived: problems with downloading immediately began. In just 5 minutes, about 20 people managed to put the server down! Whatever one may say, half an hour of time was wasted, and I finally grabbed my copy. And away we go!
I first went through the updated Prologue, was surprised at the new things, and started Chapter One. I was happy like the last nerd. It was a pleasure to play. I got stuck once, but the author immediately helped me. As time went on, he remained in the chat, and then I found a couple of bugs and immediately “reported” them, thus making a contribution to the release version.
The chapter was long and I finished it when others were just starting. This was the first game in a long time that I didn’t spoil for myself on YouTube. Awesome feeling that was definitely worth your time.
And now I even became friends with the author (his name is Jeremy). He is very busy from time to time, but he has a couple of hours to chat and play.