Substructure is a multiplayer automation game with a deep, dark twist

Substructure reveal trailer - PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted 2025 - YouTube Substructure reveal trailer - PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted 2025 - YouTube
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From the minds that brought us UltraCube, one of the most popular and darkly unique Factorio mods out there, comes a new take on the automation genre. The UK-based Dubious Design game studio has been working on something altogether different: Substructure, a game about farming, automation, and dredging up far more than you bargained for.

Add it to your wishlist

In the reveal trailer aired during the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, the top-down camera pans over subtly pixelated production chains. While it begins all rather benign, there's something lurking deep beneath your carefully crafted network of winding conveyors: a subterranean world of dim, purple light. As the trailer goes on it becomes clear this alien world extends far deeper than anticipated. And who knows what forgotten horrors await in the abyss.

It's an homage to Factorio, but with a sinister twist. After a strange interstellar body appears inexplicably at the edge of the solar system, you're tasked not with trying to escape it, but to define it. Morbid curiosity insists that you, and maybe a team of trusted friends, explore its depths to uncover the endless mysteries buried beneath.

Together you'll design vast, automated systems both above and below the crust of this unexplored planet. Connecting wildly distinct worlds via grandiose lift mechanisms, you'll bridge the gulf between sunny scrubland and eerie fungal forest biomes. All in the name of science, of course.

Substructure doesn't have a release date as of yet, but we've been told it's coming soon. Wishlisting it now on Steam is your best chance to stay up to date.

If subterranean horrors make you want to crawl back into your spaceship, why not check out the host of other games announced during the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted 2025 Powered by Xbox Game Pass.

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.

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