Below's maddening edge is an open rebellion to its quiet sophistication. It's loaded with intrigue but resistant to modern methods of approach, creating a Rorschach test where losing patience with its internal contradiction is as credible of a reaction as relishing its idiosyncratic isolation and adversity. Ultimately, Below is a curiosity in which gratification is dependent on personal resolve.
Below’s opening moments follow a sailboat as it makes landfall on a dark and dreary island shore. It only lasts thirty seconds, but, in a medium that trains its audience to expect immediate feedback and gratification, Below takes an eternity to commence. This opening not only reflects Below’s history—debuting five years after its public announcement—but also acts as a measure for its intended velocity. Every move Below makes, no matter how peculiar, is performed deliberately. It demands patience and isn’t concerned with alienating its audience.
Below’s intentions are immediately realized in its reluctance to follow conventional introductory guidelines. It doesn’t tell you who you are or what you’re doing. It doesn’t tell you where to go or what to do when you get there. It doesn’t even tell you what any the buttons do, trusting you’re smart enough to experiment on the passive surface of the landing beach. Below feigns opacity as a path to create an attractive mystery. Everything inside of it is waiting, if not necessarily wanting, to be discovered.
Eventually you find a way to penetrate the surface. You’re greeted with a cave system shrouded in mist and bathed in darkness. Moving through the cave burns away the mist but retains the blackout, and then augments it with depth-of-field tricks. The presumed objective is to oblige the game’s title and find out what lies below. You move around until you can find a way move down. A segmented map allows you to collect your bearings, although it’s absent of fine detail. Each floor appears to have a finite number of rooms and landmarks unloaded in the same order. The contents inside those rooms changes every run.
Below is a partial but intense subscriber to roguelike (or roguelite, for pedants) ideals. You’re going to die, repeatedly, in ways that can be perceived as unfair or unmanageable. Instead of a random set of levels, however, Below procedurally generates each room in a manner consistent with its assigned floor. Dark cave systems, bitter and cold undergrounds, and abandoned crypts carry consistent themes and enemies, but are never exactly the same on each round. This system is intended to be a natural antidote to the poison of persistent repetition.
The secret best feature of roguelikes is their potential to deliver secrets. Perceived boundaries are broken and ways to cheat the system are soon apparent. Below’s secrets include a pocket where you can store a handful of items in each category and shortcuts to the last-visited campfire. Both of these features ease the sting of loss without compromising the severity of the wound. Below’s secrets are intended to drive progress by the omnipresent suspicion that there may always be another one within reach.
Combat in Below is deceptively simple. Actions from weapons are composed of a single attack button applied different context and combinations. Timing and planning are more important than flash or finesse. Slaughtering the fodder in early levels is easy enough, but patience and persistence are the only valid means of progression later on. I found the default sword and spear suitable for most encounters, leaving the bow (despite its specialty arrows) too cumbersome and inaccurate to use with any sort of reliability. Perhaps this is the point.
There is also a shield and blocking mechanic, which is something I neither recognized nor used for at least my first hour in Below. I have a 55” television (on which Below is displayed in 1080p on my launch Xbox One) and I sit about five feet away. My character was so small I had no idea he or she was sporting a shield. I could barely see anything as it was, and had no idea the a block button was blocking anything. Below is in love with its sense of scale and its ability to mask its environment in fear and uncertainty, an action it only finds achievable by physically minimizing the player’s character. I am sure there are many reasons for doing this but I am not sure if any of them make sense when applied to reality.
Survival is in vogue and Below elects to weave those threads into its fabric. Hunger and thirst drain steadily, both requiring maintenance and replenishment. Early on this is easy, as plenty of vegetation can be pulled and meat chunks can be carved from neutral entities. Both of these can be combined with water and made into soups, broths, and elixirs. Nourishment also restores health, unless you’re bleeding, which bandages can repair (bandages can also be made with other scavenged goods). Sometimes, when I couldn’t figure out where to go, I would sit and wait to die. If I died in a good place I would have an easier time recovering my items from my body.
Below’s other substantial idea is its lantern. It consumes crystals dropped by enemies and doubles as a magic key that can be directed to affect the environment. It’s also, obviously, an effective light when gingerly exploring the abyss. Torches can also do this (if you can craft any) but are predictably consumable. In any case the lantern’s trick is it is left wherever you die. So is the rest of your inventory, which infrequently contains rare items. The lantern feels like an essential piece of basic exploration and its absence leads the player into any number of otherwise avoidable hazards. I don’t know if Below is intended to be as merciless as it feels, but, like so much of the game, I can’t imagine the reasons why it behaves this way.
The vicious nature of roguelikes and Demon’s Souls’ push-back against leisurely progress are noble pursuits for any commercial videogame to undertake. It’s easy to see why someone with time and patience would fall in love with Below’s slow motion mystery and devilish operation. Its easier to see why a person—specifically a person trying to review it before an impending holiday—would find Below frustrating. I admire Capybara’s resolve to perfect their idea of Below regardless of how it might affect its reception. They made the game they wanted to make and delivered a skilled amalgamation of trends and traditions. Nothing like Below exists anywhere else.
Obviously I didn’t finish Below. I played for at least twenty hours, but I don’t think I even came close. I would die over something I perceived as unfair or foolish, even though the truth may be in between, and swear the game off. And then I always came back out of equal parts duty and curiosity. Below is so weird and so wonderful and so off putting. I don’t remember the last time I played a game and came away with a disheveled mess of appraisal where I’m anxious about assigning a score. I’m not uninformed but I’m unequipped. Writing this feels like I’m playing Below.
There is admirable craft everywhere I look. Below is visually accomplished and delivered with restraint and determination. Its soundtrack, from Jim Guthrie, delivers subtlety and power at regular, perfect intervals, providing Below with a mood that reflects its theme. All of Below’s pieces, its survival aspects, its simple but effective combat, and its steady sense of progression, make sense on their own but overwhelm when combined. Below is complex and simple and it breaks my brain.
Capybara knows what they’re doing but I don’t. Below plays like a familiar videogame but I know it isn’t. Below’s maddening edge is an open rebellion to its quiet sophistication. It’s loaded with intrigue but resistant to modern methods of approach, creating a Rorschach test where losing patience with its internal contradiction is as credible of a reaction as relishing its idiosyncratic isolation and adversity. Ultimately, Below is a curiosity in which gratification is dependent on personal resolve.
