Below

Although it has a tendency to frustrate, both in terms of design and execution, Below offers a compelling adventure set in a mysterious world that's just begging to be explored.

Below presents a very evocative proposal, with a captivating atmosphere and a multitude of secrets to discover. It is a difficult game to recommend to everyone because its absence of information is not accessible from the beginning and takes place in a slow progression. Even so, we have a roguelike exploration adventure with Zelda inspiration and a very original design.

A special experience for a certain type of gamer. Try it if you're brave.

If Below is a game about the single-minded pursuit of a shape, about making your descent at all cots, it is also a test of your ability to find time for appreciation or understanding along the way. [March 2019, p.104]

Below is a quite convincing Rogue-lite with good visuals and great music, despite the lack of tutorial and narration, and a progression that can be very tough and frustrating.

Despite its frustrating refusal to teach you even the basics, Below’s sense of discovery is as good as anything already out there, and its gameplay is as deep as its name suggests.

Worth the wait, Below is a Rouge lite that doesn't hold your hand and asks you figure out the rules of this world on your own. It makes for a fulfilling, albeit difficult journey.

Quotation forthcoming.

Below is a unique game, masterfully blending elements from different genres to create a compelling mix where exploration and experimentation make much of the game's charm. Some design choices, like the survival elements and permadeath mechanics, can often make it more frustrating than challenging or satisfying. But thanks to its pros and its unique visual style, it's a game we suggest everyone should try.

Below is an experience where survival and exploration are the keys to success in a narrative and well-polished environment. Unfortunately, the roguelike aspect is sometimes too repetitive, and the lack of visibility messes with the pleasure that we take.

Below is a dark-space opera with strong imagery that revolves around the concepts of darkness and light, good and evil. It is a well-built hardcore game with procedural dungeons and traps. It is not suitable for casual players.

The audiovisual design is as unique as it is special, but the mechanics are unnerving, frustrating and suffer from repitition.

Below is a solid and well-designed game that will challenge every level of gamer. Steeped in mystery, fans of Roguelike dungeon exploring will feel right at home in this subterranean adventure.

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 can be a satisfying roguelike experience for anyone who is willing to persevere through its steep learning curve and difficulty. For others, the journey might come to a close after only a few failed attempts.

Below is a very mysterious and appealing roguelite, but it’s missing something more unique or deep to truly shine.

A frustrating mix of survival game and roguelike, that has absolutely no respect for your time and yet still hides an enthralling and rewarding action adventure within its murky depths.

Below is beautiful and endlessly intriguing, but also rigid and immensely frustrating.

Below has a precise idea but transmits it reluctantly. Finally, not everyone who understands it might want to indulge it.

Below simply leans too hard on roguelike and crafting elements, which create an urgent pace and conflict with its more admirable design ideas.

After waiting for Below for over five years, I’m left conflicted. On one hand, it’s a beautiful and deeply engrossing roguelike with fantastic art direction and stunning music from Jim Guthrie. But it also doesn’t quite jive with some of its gameplay systems and, at times, feels like a confusing mixture of ideas. Despite this, however, I still don’t regret my time with Below. Even though it doesn’t always feel cohesive, it’s certainly worth playing, especially if you’re a fan of roguelikes —just know that your mileage may vary in the enjoyment department.

Below’s strongest element is its gripping visual and sound design.

BELOW evokes a fantastically ominous air of foreboding with its soundtrack, and its visual style is unquestionably superb, but as an example of the roguelike, Capy's game does nothing new. Perhaps it's intentionally pared-down, but the resulting game is enjoyable for an hour or two, and a relentless chore thereafter.

Below's extreme demands for patience and tolerance remain right through to the game's mysterious ending. But despite its assured aesthetic and the initial pleasures of discovery, Below will eventually turn into a slog for all but the most committed of players.

Its art style is unique but darkly opaque and as action/survival/roguelikes go, it doesn’t add much new to the genre. With wildly erratic difficulty spikes, the necessity for uninspired grinding and the inevitable and frequent loss of progress, Below is a niche game for a specific target audience that has enormous patience and determination.

Uncompromising to a fault, Below is a unique and often hauntingly beautiful game but its punishing design eventually becomes a tedious slog, sucking out any intrigue or enjoyment of its initial hours.

Below’s moody gloom and atmosphere is spoiled by mechanics that really cramp its central quest.

There's a tacked on feeling permeating throughout the game's skeleton that it's hard to shake the feeling that maybe even after six years in constant development by Capybara, Below was simply unready for its time in the dark.