Under A Rock is an open-world survival craft game, players must build, craft, and explore to survive and succeed on a colorful but mysterious and perilous island.

Under A Rock puts players smack dab in the middle of a colorful but mysterious new land. Stranded and faced with flora and fauna that diverted along various new evolutionary paths, along with mystical curses and illnesses, players will need to set up camp, gather resources, and explore this strange island setting full of mysteries and wonders. With multiplayer co-op for up to 10 players, friends can take on this survival challenge together.

Walk the path of an early nineteenth-century explorer, recently stranded in an exotic and strange new land. A world draped in mysteries once thought lost to time, this land experienced completely different evolutionary paths, with exotic creatures roaming dangerously. 

Survivors can build a base, explore dark caves, swim through underwater environments, and traverse a diverse surface world, facing a myriad of unique challenges and discovering much-needed resources. Players must fish, fight, farm, craft, and more as they build their new island base and hope to fight off the forces of nature and terrifying curses.

Under A Rock utilizes procedural level generation to offer a new gameplay experience every playthrough. With multiplayer co-op available for more than 10 people and a deeply diverse character creator, players can look forward to surviving a vast new world of fearsome flora and fauna together. 

Developer Nordic Trolls and publisher Gameforge have released a comprehensive Development Progress Update and dev diary for Under a Rock.

Across its core gameplay systems, this update signals a transition from foundational tech to interconnected, player-facing systems, showing how exploration, building, combat, and discovery intersect in meaningful ways.

The above developer video visually showcases many of these systems in action — from procedural environments and cave exploration to base construction, underwater traversal, and combat improvements — offering fans a clear look at the game’s current state and direction.

The development team behind Under a Rock has spent the past few months expanding and polishing the game’s core pillars, laying the groundwork for long-term progression and emergent play.

Highlights:

• Procedural World Evolution: Expanded world generation with new “epics,” improved starter crash sites, richer biomes, and more intentional structure, making exploration feel distinct and purposeful across regions.
• Caves, Oceans, & Lakes: Major content and technical upgrades to caves (new modules, creatures, underground resources), a full underwater visual overhaul, swimmable lakes, and early implementation of underwater combat and pathfinding.
• Base Building & Blueprint System: New crafting and construction stations, plus a fully implemented Blueprint system that allows players to capture, share, cloud-sync, and redeploy bases with color-coding and decoration previews.
• Research, Cataloging, & Journaling: The first phase of a deeper discovery loop, turning exploration into structured progress through researchable Creatura and Materia entries that expand the in-game Journal over time.
• Combat, Animation, & Balance Improvements: Refined combat timings, clearer visual feedback, new weapons (including cursed variants), improved parries, rebalanced creature tiers, animation polish, and preliminary steps toward underwater combat.
• Environmental Hazards & Survival Systems: New fire and drowning mechanics with clearer warning and damage phases, reinforcing environmental awareness and preparation.

Greetings explorers! 

It’s been a while since our last update, so we wanted to check in and share that development is progressing nicely. Many systems and features are now taking root, while we continue growing and nurturing ones already in place. This includes a wide range of core systems, including building and research, combat, animations, procedural world generation, and more. 

With that being said, we would like to give you a bit of insight into the current state of some of those systems, and a taste of what’s in store moving forward.

Procedural World and Epics 

We’ve continued polishing and expanding how worlds are procedurally generated, adding more variety and overall structure to them.  

• New epics were added across the world, including more corruption-based epics, making exploration feel more distinct as you travel
• We’ve done a lot of additional work on starter crash sites 

Caves, Oceans and Lakes 

Caves received a major content boost with the inclusion of many new modules, entrances and end pieces, which have been added across Soft Metal, Ant Hive, Bee Hive, Crystal, Mushroom and Generic cave types.  

• Cave generation has been improved, and caves are now less likely to end after a single room 
• Creatures have also started moving in – currently limited to Ant Hives – and they can now navigate and engage in combat inside procedural caves 
• Resources can now also be harvested underground, giving caves a value beyond exploration  

Underwater areas went through a major overhaul, with a lot of visual reworks, various additions, and a general polishing of the ocean. 

• Several new creatures have started appearing underwater and are using pathfinding to smoothly navigate the procedural underwater environments  

Lakes are now swimmable, both on the surface and underwater, complete with appropriate visual effects. Plus, effects and pathfinding have been added to creatures with the swimming ability. 

Base Building 

We added new construction and crafting stations to support upcoming gameplay:  

• The Research Table, a brand-new crafting station that will become central to exploration and discovery on your adventures 
• The Blueprint Table, a central hub for blueprint capture, management and placement 
• A Drying Rack, a vital survival station used to process resources into consumables 
• The Stove, your go-to station for cooking meals and baking tasty treats 
• A Smelter, where raw metals are refined into ingots ready for crafting 
• The Trinket Table, a workbench for crafting trinkets that will give you all kinds of helpful boosts 
• An Archery Target, because testing your aim should be a part of base life too!   

We’re also expanding the list of placeable backpack items, allowing many more materials, ingredients, and creature parts to be displayed in your base. Whether you want a cosy setup or something more... unconventional, that choice is yours!  

Additionally, we’ve adjusted some of the existing stations to streamline overall progression. 

Blueprint System 

As a part of our ongoing base-building work, we have now fully implemented the blueprint system, to make building, sharing and rebuilding your bases easier.  

Here are some key features:  

• Blueprints can be captured, named, saved and shared, with all saved blueprints being synced through the Steam Cloud, and shared across all characters on the same account. The system will include its own interface, featuring a Crafting and Blueprints section. 
• We have also added the possibility to deploy externally hosted blueprints into the game client without restarting the game 
• When capturing or placing a blueprint, you can choose whether to include interactables and decorations and even preview the decorations before placing  
• Color-coding is also available, giving players an easy way to coordinate and plan construction more clearly 

Blueprints are our way of saying “That was cool! Now do it again, effortlessly.”  We hope this helps future builders bring their creations to life with ease!  

Cataloging and Research - Part 1 

We introduced the first part of our cataloging and research system, which will eventually tie into photography, missions, society communication, and rewards (more on these later!) 

For now, we focused on the core loop:  

• Players can craft a Research Table to begin studying their discoveries 
• Research currently includes Creatura and Materia, with Formulae and Curiosa coming later 
• Research works similarly to crafting: select an item, provide materials, queue it and wait for completion 

Players will receive in-game notifications as new research becomes available, with completed research granting rewards later.  

• Materia entries are one-shot unlocks, while Creatura research is designed to unfold in more steps over time.  

Each completed entry will add visual and written information to your Journal, gradually building a clearer picture of the world you are discovering.  

Journal Improvements 

Speaking of the Journal, to better support the cataloging and research systems, we developed it beyond our first iteration, and it now includes:  

• Question marks that will indicate unresearched information 
• A visual indicator that will highlight fully researched, unread entries 
• Researched items, which will appear with icons and expanded descriptions 

These systems will turn exploration into progress, give insight into the mysteries of the island, and good reasons to keep snooping around the island. 

Combat and Animation Improvements 

We’ve also spent a good amount of time refining combat and related animations, focusing on responsiveness and difficulty.  

Some of these adjustments and additions include: 

• Several improvements to combat visualization, including critical hits being more clearly highlighted, damage numbers fading out at a distance, improving collision detection during combat and polishing motion warping during combat to make movements and attacks feel more natural 
• We reworked and tuned combat timings for humanoids, and rebalanced combat values for T1, T2 and T3 creatures to better define early-, mid- and late-game encounters  
• Perfect parries are now slightly more forgiving, and enemies will properly react when you land one, making successful timing feel more impactful on both sides of a fight 
• Initial implementation of underwater combat, which will be expanded over time 
• New weapons were added 
• Performed weapon balancing, adjusting the damage and impact damage values of different weapons 
• We added 3D models for cursed weapons, including:  
  • Axe 
  • Spear 
  • Pickaxe 
  • Uncommon, Rare and Epic Ogre Clubs 
• Reworked the effects of item durability upon death 
• Changed item durability damage to a variable value rather than a flat one 
• A lot of improvements were made to various player-side animations, such as blocking and parrying 
• Lastly, we also added taunt animations for players, because sometimes combat is as much about attitude as it is about damage! 

Environmental Hazards 

Playing with fire  

We’ve started fleshing out environmental hazards, such as fire and how it affects gameplay. There are now two distinct phases: 

• Warning phase: When you stand too close to a qualifying heat source, a Burn bar will appear as a warning, giving you a clear indication that you will start taking damage. The surrounding environment and your Fire Resistance will affect how fast it fills. 
• Damage Phase: Once the bar fills completely, you’re on fire and will take damage until it depletes. Rolling on the ground, being in the rain or swimming can reduce the duration of the Burn effect. 

 Water-related improvements  

While working on hazards, we also improved water-related danger visualizations.  

• A new screen effect is now activated when the player starts taking drowning damage, making it much clearer when it’s time to surface. 

Miscellaneous 

• We implemented a lot of additional loot drops, harvestable items and craftable items, and made changes to existing ones  
• GPU-side optimizations  
• Game-side optimizations  
• and much more!    

This update is very much about setting up many systems that will grow over time, and we’re excited to keep iterating on them, so please keep in mind that things may be changed or adjusted in the future.  

P.S. After a busy Christmas season, we’re diving into work on the taming and companion system, while the Dodos and Snuggets keep us warm. Thank you for your continuous support of our journey and stay tuned for the next update!

Key Features:

• Expect the Unexpected: Featuring procedural world generation, no two playthroughs of Under a Rock will be the same. A once-safe base could be riddled with danger the second time around, and players will need to stay on their toes to keep up
• Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover: They may seem cute and cuddly, but some of these creatures sure pack a punch. Fight, tame, breed, and ride various creatures…or players can develop their cooking skills for nourishment and other potential benefits in efforts to survive various biomes, curses, diseases, and the forces of nature. 
• It Builds Character: Players can create their own unique looks with the in-game character creator, offering a variety of diverse customization options
• A Not So Desert(ed) Island: Explore this mysterious island together with co-op multiplayer support for up to 10 players
• Created with Unreal Engine 5, Under a Rock takes full advantage of Nanite, Lumen, and Groom technologies.

Under A Rock is in development for PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S and will be available through Steam Early Access in 2026.