Below (2018)

This title is a hauntingly atmospheric top-down adventure that drops you onto a mysterious island to explore its dark, labyrinthine depths. The game’s minimalist storytelling and lack of guidance create a powerful sense of mystery and discovery, rewarding people who are patient and curious. Its visual style is striking, combining sharp geometric design with moody lighting that perfectly complements the amazing OST. Together, they craft an atmosphere that feels both lonely and mesmerizing.

However, Below is as punishing as it is beautiful. Its survival elements, hunger, thirst, temperature, and permadeath, can make progress feel grueling, especially when exploration demands repetition after each death. The sparse explanations of its mechanics often leave you confused, turning intrigue into frustration. While later updates added an “Explore Mode” that softens the difficulty, the game still maintains its slow, deliberate pacing, which won’t appeal to everyone.

For those who value mystery, solitude, and the satisfaction of figuring things out on their own, Below is an absorbing and meditative experience. But for people seeking momentum or clear goals, its beauty may feel trapped behind layers of tedium and trial. This title was patched a lot since it's first release, and this is what made me want to come back to it, because as much as I love difficult games, this one was a very unbalanced one, especially on later sections of the game.

I admit that I used cheat codes in order to finish this, since the first time I played it was insanely frustrating, and this time around, even though it was heavily patched for balancing reasons, it still has some frustrating sections by the end of the journey. Despite all this, this is a very valuable experience to go through if you like titles such as Zelda, even though they don't have a lot of similarities, they achieve the same goal: making the player curious enough to explore on it's own and find it's secrets. I just advise a heavy dose of patience because you'll lose some hairs playing this.

Below is an isometric rogue-lite dungeon crawler with some souls elements. I was excited for it during development, but when it dropped on Steam in 2018, it received generally unfavourable reviews. The game wasn't fun, and many of the survival mechanics, permadeath and rogue elements were just too punishing. Thankfully a year later the devs launched a new update to balance the gameplay experience, and I think the game actual feels much more satisfying in this mode. They have fixed the game, but sadly I don't think that these changes will ever be reflected in the review scores or sales. But I would urge anyone interested to come back and give this gem another shot.

You start the game by arriving at this mysterious island on a little boat. You ready your lamp, sword and shield and enter the first layer of subterranean caves. Below this island are layers upon layers of randomly-generated dungeons of increasing difficulty, and as you move deeper, the story begins to unfold and things become stranger and more intense. You can gather crafting materials to make potions and other items, as well as finding special weapons/armour in chests. Bonfires are situated along the journey, allowing for resting, healing and inventory management. Combat works really well, feeling something akin to Nuclear Throne where you can switch between melee and ranged, while also using your shield and dodge-roll. At certain points in the dungeon you can unlock shortcuts, which allow you to fast-travel back to that layer even after you die (though the whole maze is always re-shuffled).

The aesthetic of this game is gorgeous. The sound design, music and the beautiful environments, it's all detailed and highly refined. Most of the time there's no HUD, so it's very immersive, like ICO or Monument Valley, just your character on the screen exploring this peculiar world. Light and darkness become important mechanics later on as you need light sources to navigate the deeper layers, and you can see the shadows and reflections playing across the stunning surroundings.

Even with the new "explore mode", the game is still very challenging, and it took me a long while to beat, with a lot of deaths and learning. But it was so satisfying, by the end, to feel the mastery of the mechanics and to be able to breeze through layers which previously felt daunting and overwhelming. It was so rewarding to finally reach the next bonfire or shortcut after hours of deaths and attempts, to be able to save your progress and move on to the next zone. Like the Bloodborne chalice dungeons, things become stranger and more dark and eldritch as you travel deeper; so I never knew what to expect, or what horrors would be lurking in the next shadowy layer. I've never been so thrilled by a game's conclusion since Fez; the ending of this thing is truly jaw-dropping, and I felt chills down my spine.

This is a fantastic game, and it's a shame that the devs screwed up the launch. It might be the best game I've played so far this year. The gameplay loop is intensely addictive and satisfying. I'm looking forward to giving it another shot on the original intended "hard mode." If you knew about this game, but didn't bother to grab it, I would suggest giving it another look!