The Luminous Underground

The Luminous Underground is a 660,000-word, text-based interactive science fantasy novel by Phoebe Barton. Your choices shape the story, which is presented without graphics or sound effects. You play a daemon dissipator who has spent years using a rainbow blaster and magic to zap electromagnetic monsters. After following jobs across Septenland, you settle in the old, strange city of Barrington to start your own company.

Build your company

Your team begins with you and McCowan, your friend and business partner. After the Barrington Transit Commission grants your company a subway contract, you need to recruit teammates, improve your skills and reduce the spirit population while avoiding the electrified rail. You can work with other outfits in town or act on your own.

Explore the underground

Barrington’s subway holds more than tunnels. You can explore a forest of crystalline trees glittering under your flashlight and enter the Vitalscape, a super-luminous alternative realm of being, through a mural. You need a crystal tuning fork to return. The underground is home to giants, robots, daemons and a giant robot daemon, and you can investigate mysterious disappearances and help time travelers integrate into the present day.

Trouble in Barrington

Corruption and mismanagement run through the underground. You can investigate whether competitors are trying to take the subway contract or whether City Hall’s stingy maintenance budget is to blame, and decide how much you can be paid not to fix the problem. The story also includes leading the mayor to safety through a gauntlet of terrors, saving a missing crew beneath an impossible sky and calming a giant woman who has you in the palm of her hand.

Choose your character

You can play as male, female or nonbinary, and choose to be gay, straight, aromantic or asexual.