Below - Action-Adventure Roguelike by Capybara

Thanks, that answers that. Those specs don’t seem very demanding to me?

Oh when you are an indie, and especially Capybara addict, they are a 300x fold jump!

Did you figure it out? I was going to reply but I realized I was only in the crafting menu once during my lunch break, all four items I added were literally in the top row and I would have never needed to tap “down” at all, so I couldn’t say and was wondering about it.

I tried another controller, and it worked fine. But it still doesn’t explain why the first controller didn’t work in the Inv UI, but did outside of it.

Yeah, that’s strange indeed.

Don’t really have the time to play this, but I bought it. It seems pretty.

I think I’ve solved the… Mysterio!

D-pad doesn’t seem to move the cursor in the inventory, rather it assigns (UP, LEFT, and RIGHT) that hot key. You need to use the thumb stick to navigate, and you may have just unconsciously done it correctly with the next controller. I find myself using D-pad to move around all the time (and then re-assigning all new hot keys).

So far my first run is going tremendously. I’ve found some just incredible locations, and some really neat crafting materials that led to even more interesting craftables. I even found some leather armor, so there is some equipment in the game to be found, which is an excellent start.

Really easy to just sink in and play, incredibly atmospheric. I find myself hyper engaged, almost painfully so after a 45 min session. Time for some Pillars 2, I think.

Yeah, I’m living out around a bit, too. So far liking it more than Ashen. I though the zoomed-out view would be bothering me, but I got used to it quickly.

I’ve died several times already, but now I’m down on level 3. I’m having a lot of fun puzzling out the various systems and secrets- again, it was annoying for a minute, but now it’s just the right kind of intriguing.

Still, one question: how does it save? Like, if I have to ‘turn my console off and go to work’ sort of save, not the using energy to light blue flames and find shortcuts to get back quicker after you die sort of save.

EDIT: with a little experimentation, it looks like it saves when exiting any room? I just selected “exit to main menu” in a safe space, and a message popped up: “Are You Sure? All Progress In This Room Will Be Lost”, so I said yes, then selected “Continue” and it put me back in that room. So that’s nice.

In my post (which I deleted before your reply), I referred to the Left Stick Down, so it was the analog stick, not the D pad. It remains a mystery!

I’m starting to think the greatest gaming accomplishment of 2018 for me will be that I just unlocked a shortcut (and got down) to level 4 and I still haven’t died. Plenty of food in my back pack so far (fingers crossed) and I’ve made some really interesting things with crafting (including caltrops!) and found some nice armor. I’m back tracking to fully explore three, which is vast first though. Probably a bad idea, but I don’t want to miss out on anything.

Anyone else find the Portal yet? Seems like a place to store items for future runs? Or the “bits” that seem to float to and attach to your lantern when you encounter them and shine the lantern on them?

There is a lot going on here, seems like, and I’m enjoying the shit out of it.

I made it down to 3 and died on a stupid spike trap. I felt so dumb- I’d actually already cleared the room of monsters. But, I’m in the habit of leaving them around so I can lure the big monsters into them- they one-shot anything. And I had like 50 light motes, but no campfire to use them on- I had actually died, teleported back to the campfire to retrieve my body, did so, but then went back up to 2 because I’d found the key to unlock the shortcut down there , and by the time I got back my campfire had burned out. I have a feeling it’s going to be difficult getting my body/lantern back.

I’ve found two of the light bits you mention. And the ‘closet’- that was actually the ‘safe space’ I mentioned earlier when I was talking about saving the game, heh. Learning to craft so many things! Potions! Fancy Arrows! Soup! And yeah, Caltrops! But I haven’t used them yet. This game is a nice blend of simple and complex.

I have questions:

  1. What is up with the ropes on the ground that light up red with the lantern?
  2. I know what the food meter is, but what are the other 2?
  3. Does lighting campfires do anything of note other than allow you to make soup and cooked items?
  4. Is there a way to get more lantern power other than killing enemies?

Thirst and warmth?

So this is more a survival thing than an exploration thing? I thought it was gonna be like Inside, am I way off?

@kadath, I’d say it’s more exploration than survival, but the latter is definitely in there- I’ve had at least one death from starvation. But there are definitely strategies to mitigate the thirst/hunger thing. I have a theory about the cold, but you don’t need to worry about that until you’re down to level 4.

@Vesper :

  1. I have no idea if they’re more than this, but you trip over them when running, which could make a difference if you’re being chased by something… bigger.
  2. Already answered.
  3. Collect a bunch of motes. Get to the entrance of level 3. And look at the left side of your choices when you sit at a fire. Those should answer your questions.
  4. Not that I’ve seen. But you want to collect as many as possible. I found a room on the third level…

Sorry to be cagey. I had all these questions, too. Just keep playing the game. They get answers. Well, except the tripwire thing.

Well, I’d say I was about an 8.5 before I played it. I like Capybara’s Super Ultra Time Force and I probably would have liked that Brothers game they did if I’d ever played it.

But now that I’ve actually spent some time with Below, I’m at a 7 on the 7-10 hype scale. It looks like a decent survival rogue-like, but I don’t see that it’s doing anything special. If someone discovers otherwise, let me know?

Yep, way off. It’s a survival/exploration find-sticks-to-make-arrows and collect-fox-asses-to-make-soup and save-up-gems-to-unlock-campfires game. Again, maybe something cool and unique happens after you get to a certain level. But after three lives and the first three levels of however deep the dungeon goes, I get the sense I’ve already seen everything it’s going to show me.

-Tom

OK thanks to you and @Don_Quixote I will wait for a humble sale or something on it.

If I’m ever invited to eat at your place, please don’t serve soup!

I really want to love this a lot - and I do love the aesthetics and audio and presentation overall -
but I’m bouncing kinda hard off the very long action/skill-free preamble when you die.

My first run I made it to level 5 and died on an insta-kill trap that looked like a pole with skulls on it - didn’t know it was a trap at all. Didn’t feel like it was my fault, just a ‘gotcha’.

After death, having to search the beach, climb the cliff, get to the boat graveyard and the stuff there, and basically do the busy-work to get back to the actual ‘start’ of the game feels really punishing and I don’t know that I have the patience for that.

It feels way beyond what other roguelikes and soulslikes ask of you. If there was something to do or some choice to make during that sequence that didn’t feel like just going down a preflight checklist maybe I wouldn’t be so put off by it?

Maybe something changes or unlocks that bypasses that but it’s hard to muster the time to find out, unless someone wants to educate me in a spoiler tag… ?

I haven’t played, just watch somebody stream for a bit. So maybe this isn’t what you mean. But…

IIRC the bonfires can be made into fast travel points with one of the items you collect (crystals? gems? something like that). And that seemed to be persistent across playthroughs.