From what I can read you are not the only one tbaldree. The mix of harsh roguelike, survival aspects, and total lack of information (that enhances the feel of discovery, but at expense of even more deaths until you learn aspects of the game) makes for a frustrating experience, with lots of deaths. Lots of deaths means more repetition, and the combat and randomization aspects aren’t as strong as to allow for that much required replays.
I’ve only gotten as far as exploring most (I think?) of level 3; your impressions are not encouraging, but they’re in line with my slowly growing concerns.
I bought it because hey, why not, Capybera is cool and I don’t mind taking a chance on it. And so I have intentionally done very little reading about the game, so very early on I was entranced by the aesthetics and looking forward to seeing what unfolded. But by level 3 I was starting to wonder if anything would unfold.
I was going to keep going to level 4 and if that still looked like more of the same, my desire to know if this was worth it was going to overtake my curiosity at discovering for myself what the game has to offer. But it sounds like you’re answering that question already, and that’s disappointing.
Has anyone gone farther? Anyone want to let me know if things get more interesting?
We’ve talked about permadeath a lot before here. The key to making it work is that there should be enough interesting gameplay at the start that you’re having fun again immediately.
What jsnell mentioned sounds like they went with more of a progression roguelite design where you do the same stuff but slowly make progress in the metagame.
I don’t plan to play this. I just like to talk about it because I see progression roguelites as a failed design.
I agree. Something like Spelunky is perfect because death is almost an excuse to play again, and you’re having from from the second the new game starts. There is no meta game, except unlocking different skins for the player character (none of them make any gameplay difference), and the more I play games with a meta unlock the more I don’t think I like it.
An example is Dead Cells. I really like Dead Cells, but I feel like from the moment you first play there is a 0% chance you can actually beat the game, you must unlock stuff to have even a chance. And that’s why the meta game is there. But something like Spelunky, or Unexplored, your own ability could theoretically carry you through to the end on your first attempt. I mean, it’s not likely, but the possibility exists. And more and more I think I prefer that approach to rogue like type games with permadeath.
That said, I don’t know if Below actually has a meta game. If you “unlock” something it’s more that you found it, like a set of leather armor, and it’s just existing at that point either on your corpse, or maybe in that limbo place where you can store stuff for future runs. I’m not sure that qualifies as a meta game, per se, but I could be mistaken.
But one could argue that the actual knowledge that one accumulates playing roguelikes was their metagame content, and that the progression system of roguelites is an attempt at a more casual transposition of it.
Personally, like both of you, I dislike that later hand-holding progression, unless it is part of easing off the learning of a very smart game which also vastly rewards the accumulation of knowledge, like it is the case of Desktop Dungeons, Has-been Heroes or Slay the Spire. They also have in common that you can accumulate succesful runs and pursue “deeper” runs, and just don’t ask you to die over and over, which seems to be the case here.
And this is the best kind of rogue like, but I’m not really talking about that as the meta game, I suppose.
When games have a built-in meta game (meaning - you accumulate some sort of currency, like XP or Gold or something, on your runs and spend it to unlock stuff later - like Rogue Legacy) I find that stuff a lot less cool than I had thought I would as the years go by and games come out that use that.
I compare something like Brogue to Rogue Legacy. Brogue is simple, and elegant, and I’ve played it for days. You don’t have a character class, you just accumulate loot and player knowledge while you play, and when you die it’s a joy to start over again.
But compared to Rogue Legacy, I played for like 2 hours and got really annoyed with the feeling that if I didn’t unlock stuff I’d never get out of the early areas of the game. Drives me crazy.
(EDIT: Sorry, this is wildly off topic, just something I’ve been thinking about, I think Dead Cells was the game that really put this idea in my head).
So it sounds like Below is kinda like a vertical Don’t Starve?
Sort of - but with more persistence. In Don’t Starve death means starting completely over, while in this you do start completely over, but you’ve hopefully unlocked some shortcuts to get deeper into the dungeon faster, and if you find your previous corpse you can collect your stuff (in theory, I’ve only died once and still haven’t found my corpse).
The idea the game would let me cut right down to level 4 makes me think you don’t ever really get more “powerful” in terms of weapons or equipment, which is kind of a bummer. Maybe I’m wrong about that.
E: I should also mention the crafting here is really lite and not the central element to the game, like it is in Don’t Starve.
Not quite what I meant. My understanding is that they’ve built in mechanisms to skip over any parts of the game you’ve already played through (the fast travel) and regaining other forms of progress with a little bit more effort (the corpse runs). So it’s not really a metagame grind, but just death being a bit of an inconvenience. Perma-death with no penalty.
But that was just my impression from watching some streams, I could be totally wrong about it!
Fair enough. I could be ranting about nothing in this case. Don’t listen to me!
I don’t usually go to Polygon for reviews; I don’t have a solid sense of how the taste of their writers aligns with mine. But I did read this review, and I think just what I can gather objectively about the rest of the game has killed what little curiosity I had for seeing what’s past level three. Oh well. I don’t think anyone will be talking about Below again for any reason in a month.
Maybe not… except for all those piles of GOTY awards and accolades!
I can’t tell if you’re serious. Did it win stuff I didn’t see? Most of those end of the year awards and lists for this year I saw were literally written before Below came out. But even if this time next year they allowed for that technicality and considered December 2018 games in their 2019 lists, I really can’t imagine Below developing more than a very tiny fanbase.
So far, my favorite part of Below is the soundtrack, which I’ve been listening to while playing a horror themed boardgame. It’s cool sinewy electronic ooh-scarystuff-might-be-happening music.
I still hope some of you playing will tell me if it starts doing anything unique!
-Tom
Thanks for the link, that early phrase:
The long-term strategy is really about management of my own deaths. Where I die, how I die and what I carry when I die is just as important as anything I do while I’m alive.
really told me what the game is about — and what a terrible design that is, in my opinion. It screams of a developer being caught in his mindset.
Haven’t played it, but it doesn’t look like my cup of tea. I think sometimes developers forget to step back and ask themselves if the gameplay is fun (which is subjective, of course). I feel like that happened with The Long Journey Home as a recent example.
I remember I commented on Brokenforum on this and being mocked about it, so I checked and there it is:
More than four years later some sweet retribution ;)
I’m actually reading across different forums and reddit lots of complaints about this.
I’ve only played it an hour or so and the game is nice, but I also wonder if it has something unique. It feels somewhat shallow and doesn’t seem to earn the frustration of going through its more demanding parts.
I don’t care that you were mocked by one of the game’s developers at Broken Forum.
I don’t get the “too far zoomed out” complaint. I’m playing this without any issue, well my issues with the game are not related to how close or far the camera is. In fact, I like I get a huge view of the environment, it makes exploring everything much faster.
My suggestion was that the game would have benefited from a dynamic zoom during combat, to facilitate movement and actions. It could have zoomed back to default during standard exploration.