Very fairly/totally menacing rand-o-dungeon-o game Below has been tantalising us from a distance for half a decade. “It’ll never happen!”, bellowed Derek Misery from a Twitter account with 12 followers, someday in 2016.
Well, suck it up, Derek – hastily, the closest factor there may be to a follow-up to peerless journey/musical odyssey/exploratory disaster Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is out in seven quick days.
S&SEP feels, by now, like a game from one other lifetime. Seven years outdated, launched right into a world (gaming and in any other case) so very totally different from right this moment’s. It elevated the cellular gaming of the time to a better state of consciousness, and the PC version retained a lot of its mesmerising, shattering magic regardless of a profound change in format. For that cause, I can perceive why Below, from S&S co-dev Capybara Games, has taken so lengthy. Tall shadows, and all that.
Here, remind your self why so many issues begin tingling at any point out of Below and its tilt-shifty look with this new trailer, which additionally confirms the Dec 14 launch date:
Capy, as they’re additionally identified, have made a few games since Sworcery, together with Super Time Force, however Below is the primary time they’ve returned to the darkish, foreboding fashion and themes of their 2011 collaboration with Superbrothers. (The latter has but to launch their very own, nonetheless untitled follow-up, about which all we all know is “a follow-up of sorts to Sworcery only with no sword, no sworcery and no hard-edged pixels”).
However, the place Sworcery was mostly-linear (if full of non-obligatory surprises), Below’s subterranean labyrinths are procedurally generated. The focus is much less on puzzles/musical cues (though glorious S&S composer Jim Guthrie has returned for this undertaking too) and extra on fight and survival, plus it’s one among them there permadeath jobbies besides.
The prospect of an limitless game, within the roguelike paradigm, with this sort of aesthetic is delectable certainly. But can they pull it off? Can Below nonetheless make itself identified in a world filled with limitless monster-stabbing funtimes?
We’ll discover out December 14. Here’s a Steam page for ganderin’ and wishlistin’, if you happen to so please.
