In 1994, there was literally nothing like Descent. While first-person shooters were still rigidly bouncing across four planes of movement, Descent swept in and allowed the player six degrees of freedom. You could move along X and Y planes, as expected, but Descent also allowed for left and right rotation, effectively granting use of a third axis. Descent and its sequels offered complete control over (albeit tightly confined) three-dimensional space. At the time, Descent spoke for an oncoming revolution.
The revolution never came. Two sequels followed Descent and imitators like Forsaken graced a similar landscape, but the “6DoF” concept died quietly at the end of the 90’s.
Roguelikes, on the other hand, couldn’t be more popular. Coined by (the obvious) Rogue in 1980, and recently broadcast through games like Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, and The Binding of Isaac, most roguelikes favor procedural generation over scripted levels, permanent death instead of persistent abilities, and a treasure chest of random power-ups or unique modifiers. Above all else, roguelikes leave room for a chaotic relationship between risk and reward.
Enter Sublevel Zero. It plays with movement and structure similar to Descent, but each of its six levels are randomly generated. Your ship can switch between an assortment of different engines and weapons, but they’re randomly earned each time out. Enemy crafts, rather than conform to tightly scripted encounters, seems to be deployed with little regard for suitable organization. Repair opportunities are slim, enemy’s hit hard, ammunition is hard to come by, and when you die, you’re done.
Traditional roguelikes aren’t expected to compromise, but Sublevel Zero obeys a more modern definition of the term. After punching through a level, for example, you’re granted a choice between three different perks (and if “regenerate ammo” is available and you pick something else, you must be insane). Meeting certain goals, like downing a specific number of enemies, over the course of every run eventually unlocks different ships. These bonuses may seem small, but they do well to compliment a burgeoning skill set. Like the best roguelikes, Sublevel Zero is more concerned with leveling up the player than leveling up their avatar.
To be great in Sublevel Zero you still need to default to an older-school style of play and get good. This lesson begins with movement. Playing with a controller, using two analog sticks to navigate 3D space feels natural. Introduce another axis, courtesy the rotation afforded by the east and west ends of the d-pad, and playing gets more tricky. Certain applications are obvious (and necessary for squeezing between tight spaces), but initially I found it more of a finesse maneuver. “Trichording,” as it’s called, is assuming master of three axes at one time, kind of the 3D space equivalent of circle-strafing. This takes a lot of time to figure out! I mostly got the hang of trichording—not enough to be considered good but enough to not wind up dead in idiotic ways—and it’s an appreciable asset for a 6DoF game like Sublevel Zero.
Once you’ve started to solve movement, combat makes its presence equally known. Modestly polygonal but easily identifiable enemy types roam the mechanical shafts and organic caverns of all six sublevels. Almost every encounter begins the same way. Cautiously creeping through a corridor reveals aggression on the opposite side. You can run in guns blazing and ramming the first one you see with a turbo boost, and you will (probably) die. A more patient and debatably more boring maneuver involves sliding in and firing off some potshots then running away before a volley of opposing fire is returned. At this point you’re playing Wild Gunman with one or more enemies, retreating to the nebulous safety of back there if it starts to become overwhelming.
In the long term, this isn’t exactly fun. For its part, Sublevel Zero encourages the player to be aggressive. Enemies explode into ammo and nanites, a currency used for crafting, when defeated. Interestingly, loot starts to fade shortly after the enemy dies, which incentivizes the risk to go and collect the stuff amid all the other bad guys that might be in the room. Enemies are also prone to dropping hull, weapon, and engine parts when they die. Even dead ends, which appear here and there, usually reward exploration with a hidden capsule of nanites or ship parts.
It’s difficult to tell if ship parts are anything more than a lateral movement. I liked the cannon that had a wide spread fire like a shotgun, and I thought the laser that fired slowly with additional damage was good for some concentrated, skilled shots. With that in mind, nothing really conformed to any sort of play-style, or at least not to the point where it influenced the way I wanted to play. I was heavily risk-averse, and no matter what weapons I had my hit-and-run style always trumped maniacal recklessness. I understand that this may be part of Sublevel Zero’s mission—it wants me to get better, not the ship—but I only found consistent success through cowardly play.
Building a mental inventory if enemy types is important, but resource management is a greater challenge. Sublevel Zero’s random drops reinforce a more careful and calculated decisions. Sometimes I got a ton of repair kits (which only repair a quarter of your health) and other times I only got one. Likewise, I had a few attempts where any sort of offensive firepower became precious; I found almost no ammo. During one particular run I made a mad dash through corridors, somehow avoiding bullet-hell levels of unfriendly fire, and somehow still knocked off the end-level energy core-thing. I stood in triumph, albeit with the understanding that it was mostly luck that got me through.
Personal stories are what power roguelikes. Narrowly avoiding death and creating ace runs develop into stories you tell friends playing the same game or, at the very least, tales of triumph you hold dear and remember. Most of these stories come from applying any sort of mastery over a game’s mechanics and creating some sort of exhibition of skill. Others come from insane one-off instances that seem impossible to recreate. With Sublevel Zero, however, all I want to do is tell someone to play it because it plays like Descent. The actual runs I have aren’t particularly interesting. There’s just not enough inside Sublevel Zero to tell them all apart.
Play Sublevel Zero long enough and you can see how quickly the economics of its construction fall into place. Randomly assembled bits of prefabricated levels are a great way to make an abundance of content from fewer resources. Likewise, Sublevel Zero’s Spartan visuals lack vibrancy or detail, but they’re incredibly smooth and hit a high-level frame-rate with ease. If we were going to get a 6DoF game in 2015, for it to be a viable product in the current game space, Sublevel Zero’s projected style was probably its safest bet.
Sublevel Zero’s novelty is how faithfully it resurrects concepts of a fallen genre. It’s cool that Sigtrap Games made a game like Descent, but pressing those ideas inside the mold of a roguelike leaves a significant amount of empty space.
