The Luminous Underground Demo

Grab your gear, build your team, and blast angry spirits down in the subway! Can you prove to everyone that you're the best daemon hunter in town?

The Luminous Underground is a XXX,XXX-word interactive secondary-world science fantasy novel by Phoebe Barton, where your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

You've been a daemon dissipator for years, carrying a rainbow blaster and learning the ins and outs of magic to zap electromagnetic monsters into static. After following the jobs from one end of Septenland to the other, you've settled down here in Barrington: an old city. A weird city. A city boiling with daemons. It's the perfect place to start a company of your own.

Things have been okay, but not great. You've got McCowan, your friend and business partner, but it's hard for two people to run an operation like this. When you applied for a contract with the Barrington Transit Commission, you didn't expect anything but a flat rejection. They had other ideas.

You've got to find more teammates, sharpen your skills, and put a dent in the daemon population while staying well clear of the electrified rail... but that's not even getting into the secret war you stumble into once you're in the darkness beneath the city streets. Maybe you should've set up that daemon zoo after all.

Plus, there's the relationship angle. Do you still carry a flame for your old boss, or are you looking for deeper connections elsewhere—or at all?

Are you ready to patrol your patch of subway, or will you stand by and let it crumble?

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, aromantic, or asexual
  
• Help time travelers integrate into the incredible world of today
  
• Dig up megacorporate corruption while you dust off vacuum tubes
  
• Investigate mysterious disappearances down in the underground
  
• Cooperate with other outfits in town, or act on your own
  
• Lead the mayor to safety through a gauntlet of terrors
  
• Save the lives of a missing crew under an impossible sky
  
• Calm down a giant woman who's got you in the palm of her hand