FOREST / SURFACE LAYER
Watch the forest change.
See trees, deadwood, weather, animals, human disturbance, and fruiting bodies—the visible consequences of what your network is doing below.
AN INDEPENDENT BIO-STRATEGY GAME
What if you
competed
as mycelium?
Become the hidden fungal network beneath a living forest. Grow through contested ground, exchange resources with trees, negotiate with other fungi, and decide what kind of ecosystem remains after you win.
OFFICIAL GAME ART / TITLE MARK
01 / THE GAME
A calm but sharp territory-control game played beneath the forest floor.
The forest is not scenery. Water moves through real terrain. Nutrients recover with the seasons. Trees remember whether the relationship has been reciprocal. Rival fungi can be fought, pressured, negotiated with, or allowed to remain.
Connection over conquest?
02 / THREE SCALES
One living network.
See the forest from above, plan your network across it, then enter the pressure and conflict inside one patch of ground.
MONTHLY / TURN-BASED
Shape the forest from below.
Grow a connected network, manage water and nutrients, and choose where to apply pressure, where to compromise, and where to live in harmony.
REAL-TIME STRATEGY
Fight for a patch of ground in real time.
Guide your network through a living fungal battlefield where every route, loss, and captured site changes the wider forest.
VISUAL INSPIRATION
Shapes of the underground.
Textures, structures, and living patterns guiding the world beneath the forest floor.
HARMONY
03 / YOUR NETWORK
Winning is only half the question.
You can build treaties, connect tree networks, share resources, and preserve living relationships. Or you can force control, sever routes, and take what the forest offers.
The real question is what remains when the conflict ends.
DOMINANCE
Living territory
Ground changes gradually instead of flipping between simple owners.
Resource flow
Water and nutrients move through connected tissue—and rivals can cut the flow.
Independent relationships
Trees and other neutral mycelial factions can become independent allies or obstacles.
Persistent conflict
The battlefield remembers what survived, what was damaged, and who still holds ground.
04 / CURRENT BUILD
The core loop is alive.
[ The Mushroom Underground ] is a playable prototype, not a finished promise. The forest, network strategy, and real-time conflicts are working as connected layers while the systems between them are being refined.
See the terrain and the visible consequences of the network below.
Grow, reinforce, digest, and manage a connected network over monthly turns.
Enter contested ground and resolve pressure in real time.
Want to watch an independent game become real?
FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT ↘05 / FOLLOW THE UNDERGROUND
Become part of the underground.
Gameplay, sketches, strange fungal problems, and the pieces that finally start working.
06 / THE CREATOR
Meet J.
Musician. Systems thinker. First-time indie game developer.
J balances a regular day job, a big blended family, and an obsession with learning how things work. He is building [ The Mushroom Underground ] independently—creating its music and sound, and shaping its visual world from his own sketches and references.
07 / CONTACT
Press, creators & curious humans.
For coverage, collaboration, playtesting interest, or a good fungal question, reach out through the project’s social channels.
The world we see is only half the story…
There’s so much more [ underground ]