Info about Beneath:

Official game description:
Beneath is a Lovecraft-inspired survival FPS from a micro studio founded by two brothers, with a lifelong passion in horror and shooters. Scarce ammo, merciless enemies and a sense of the unknown combine in a 10+ hour, story-driven single player campaign, built for both veteran gamers and those seeking a challenging old school experience. 
Seasoned diver Noah Quinn’s routine expedition plunges him into chaos, trapping him in the depths of the ocean, where an ancient evil lurks. As supplies dwindle and nightmarish creatures close in, Noah must confront horrifying mutations and unravel a sinister conspiracy that threatens humanity itself.  
With his daughter’s life hanging in the balance, Noah is pushed to his limits in a desperate race against time. Can he uncover the truth and stop an ancient horror from surfacing, or will the abyss consume them all?
**Story** 
----------
Created by two passionate brothers, Beneath fuses Lovecraftian horror with an action movie narrative set deep in the arctic ocean. You will race against time to find a cure for your daughter, fighting for survival as you travel between a series of research stations and discover the dark intentions of the Omnium Corporation.
**Survival**
------------
Face a terrifying array of foes, from ruthless soldiers to grotesque Lovecraftian monstrosities. With limited ammunition you must manage your supplies, upgrade your arsenal and make smart use of environmental hazards to survive.
**Supernatural** 
-----------------
Nightmares have awoken in the depths. With your sanity slipping, you become vulnerable to the twisted visions and Eldritch abominations that attack your body and mind.
**Going Old School:** Created as a love letter to the classics by a micro studio founded by two brothers with a lifelong passion for the genre. 
**Fight for your life**: Soldiers are hunting you with maximum aggression and unearthly horrors stalk your every move. 
**Lock and Load:** Use a variety of upgradable weaponry to survive close quarter fights in destructible environments. 
**Sanity Under Siege:** Keep your wits as you face nightmarish visions and creatures. 
**Secrets of the Deep**: Explore the remains of research stations, investigating emails, PDA’s and survivor accounts to unravel a dark conspiracy.

Release date: 27 Oct, 2025

Categories: First-Person Shooter, Survival, Action Horror, Single-player Story, Resource Management, Weapon Customization, Exploration, Linear Progression


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Strong old-school horror FPS appeal (weight 0.74): Players consistently praise the game for its excellent old-school feel, invoking nostalgia for classic horror FPS titles like F.E.A.R. This retro atmosphere, combined with intense and fun gameplay, is a significant draw.
- Engaging story and narrative (weight 0.32): The game's story is frequently highlighted as intriguing, well-paced, and capable of keeping players hooked from start to finish. This strong narrative contributes significantly to the overall enjoyment.
- Responsive developers (weight 0.27): Reviewers appreciate the developers' active engagement in fixing bugs and responding to player feedback. This responsiveness fosters a positive community perception and implies a commitment to improving the game.
- Challenging and rewarding combat (weight 0.23): Combat is described as challenging but fair, requiring patience and strategy. Overcoming tough fights provides a strong sense of satisfaction, making the combat experience enjoyable and dynamic.
- Impressive atmosphere and lighting (weight 0.2): The game excels in creating a fantastic and intense atmosphere, often utilizing impressive lighting to enhance the mood. This strong environmental design is a key strength, drawing players into the experience.
- High creativity for an indie title (weight 0.11): Players are impressed by the game's creativity and the remarkable achievement of its small development team. It offers more depth than initially expected for an indie game.
- Fair pricing and value (weight 0.1): The game is considered to be fairly priced, offering good value for its cost. This makes it an accessible and worthwhile purchase for many players.
- Good voice acting (weight 0.1): The voice acting is noted as being of good quality, with characters speaking just enough to enhance the narrative without becoming overbearing. This contributes positively to immersion.
- Detailed level design (weight 0.07): The game features well-made and detailed environments, with level design that keeps things interesting. This attention to detail enhances the overall player experience.
- Good optimization (weight 0.05): The game demonstrates excellent optimization, with players reporting no crashes or significant FPS drops during gameplay. This contributes to a smooth and enjoyable experience.
- Effective anxiety building (weight 0.05): The game successfully builds anxiety through its well-executed variation between calm and stressful moments. This dynamic pacing enhances the horror experience.
- Cool Lovecraftian premise (weight 0.04): The game's premise, described as 'SCP meets Lovecraft' in a modern setting, is considered refreshing and well-executed. This unique concept is a positive aspect for many players.

Common complaints:
- Numerous game-breaking bugs (weight 0.99): Players report frequent severe crashes, freezes, and progression blockers, making the game unplayable. These issues range from application instability to specific bugs preventing door opening or item interaction. This severely impacts playability and enjoyment.
- Bad gunplay and combat mechanics (weight 0.96): Gunplay is described as unsatisfying and generic, with poor weapon sound effects, inaccurate aiming, and a lack of impact when hitting enemies. Combat encounters are boring and often frustrating due to repetitive enemies, bad AI, and frustrating enemy spawns. The overall combat experience fails to engage players.
- Poor visual quality and optimization (weight 0.92): The game's graphics are consistently criticized as outdated, blurry, and low-detail, resembling older titles rather than a modern release. Additionally, performance issues like stuttering and unoptimized rendering are prevalent, leading to motion sickness and headaches. The lighting system is also problematic, contributing to an overall unpolished visual experience.
- Unengaging story and characters (weight 0.66): The plot is described as uninteresting, stale, and even 'dumb,' failing to maintain intrigue after the initial hour. Characters are seen as unlikable and solely plot devices, without depth or emotional resonance, contributing to a lack of player investment.
- Tedious progression and level design (weight 0.62): Players find the game's progression slow, repetitive, and artificially lengthened. Level design is characterized by generic corridors and empty rooms, lacking meaningful storytelling or engaging elements. Certain sections, like slow underwater movement or constant back-and-forth travel, are particularly tedious.
- Unbalanced difficulty and ammo scarcity (weight 0.26): The game suffers from imbalanced difficulty, with enemies capable of one-shotting players even on easy mode. Specific missions, like 'Lost City,' are highlighted for severe ammo shortages against overwhelming, fast, and damaging enemies, making progression nearly impossible.

Gameplay feedback:
- Genre is Survival Shooter (weight 0.29): The game blurs lines between a shooter and survival horror, leaning heavily into survival elements with exploration, combat against various enemy types, and a slower narrative build-up reminiscent of classic horror shooters like FEAR or Half-Life, rather than a pure action shooter.
- Slow Paced Beginning (weight 0.27): The initial game experience is characterized by a slow narrative buildup, focusing on story and intrigue before escalating into action. This slow burn involves extensive exploration, particularly in underwater segments, with limited combat until later stages.
- Combat System Nuances (weight 0.22): While gunplay is generally considered 'OK', it rewards patient and defensive tactics. Players must manage ammo carefully, as it can deplete quickly, especially against larger groups of soldiers and less intelligent zombie enemies. The combat becomes more action-oriented later on.
- Technical Issues & Solutions (weight 0.12): Players have encountered bugs, such as glitched UI screens and an infinite stamina bug, though the game remains completable. Some issues, like partially displayed computer screens, can be resolved by adjusting FOV, and performance can be improved by disabling volumetric lighting.
- Story and Atmosphere (weight 0.1): The story is described as 'okay' or 'a bit cheesy,' but it tries to maintain a grounded, realistic tone despite its sci-fi premise. The game features expected elements like mad scientists and evil soldiers, but it's noted as not being a typical Lovecraftian experience despite inspirations.
- Weapon Variety & Customization (weight 0.08): The game provides a decent arsenal, including machineguns, and offers weapon customization, which includes cosmetic skins. Players will eventually find a weapon modification table to enhance their gear.
- Repetitive Mission Design (weight 0.03): One specific mission, the radio tower, exemplifies a repetitive design with a sequence of slow-paced, back-and-forth objectives involving suits, water levels, and pushing buttons, interspersed with combat.
- Linear Progression (weight 0.03): The game follows a linear structure, guiding players from one objective to the next within its defined progression.
- Graphics are Acceptable (weight 0.02): The game's graphics are generally considered to be acceptable, though not outstanding.

Performance notes:
- Numerous gameplay bugs (weight 0.22): The game suffers from a variety of bugs impacting core gameplay, such as inability to reload or switch weapons during combat, and a critical 'monitor screen bug' that prevents progression by locking a door. Corpse animations also exhibit erratic and glitchy behavior.
- Frequent game crashes (weight 0.21): Players experienced frequent and severe game crashes, often leading to hard freezes, necessitating Task Manager intervention, and even requiring PC restarts to resolve display issues. These crashes often occurred in specific game sections or randomly during various activities.
- Camera jittering fix available (weight 0.16): A common visual issue involving violent camera jittering or stuttery motion blur can be resolved by disabling 'camera smoothing' in the game settings. This suggests an enabled setting might be contributing to a negative visual experience.
- Graphics quality and performance issues (weight 0.09): Players noted that the game's graphics are poor, describing textures as 'muddy and ugly,' and giving them a low rating. Overall game performance is also reported as poor, with general instability and visual jittering.

Recommendations:
- Positive Gameplay Experience (weight 0.34): Many players are enjoying the game, finding it fun and a pleasant surprise, often recommending it despite acknowledging current issues. They appreciate its value and single-player focus.
- Recommend Waiting for Fixes (weight 0.23): A significant number of players advise against purchasing or playing the game in its current state, primarily due to bugs and other issues. They suggest waiting for patches and improvements.
- Niche Appeal to Horror Fans (weight 0.12): The game is recommended for fans of specific horror FPS genres (like FEAR or DOOM 3) and those who enjoy a neat, engaging, and simple single-player horror experience.
- Alternative Game Suggestions (weight 0.05): A few players recommended playing other games instead, suggesting 'new Painted In Blood' or 'Tormented Souls 2' as preferable options. This indicates a perceived lack of value or quality in the current game.

Other player notes:
- Needs polish, possibly Early Access (weight 0.11): Players feel the game was released prematurely and would have benefited from an Early Access period or more development time to address its current rough edges and bugs. However, some bugs are not game-breaking.
- Missed genre expectations (weight 0.08): Players were hoping for a refined experience akin to classic titles like F.E.A.R. or Half-Life but found the actual gameplay quality more comparable to lower-tier, janky games. Some reviewers specifically dispute claims of influences like DOOM 3.
- Strong potential, but unfulfilled (weight 0.07): Many players acknowledge the game's inherent potential and good core ideas, but feel it hasn't fully realized that potential in its current state. They believe with further development, it could significantly improve.
- SCP-style atmosphere present (weight 0.03): Some players noted the game successfully evokes an SCP-style experience, suggesting a particular atmosphere or thematic feel is present within the game.
- Concerning review manipulation (weight 0.02): One reviewer specifically warns against trusting positive reviews, implying a potential issue with review bombing or misleading feedback, though this is based on limited information.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.2): Players experienced satisfaction from the game's well-executed survival-horror elements, including its atmospheric horror, engaging story, and unique Lovecraftian spirit. This was enhanced by rewarding combat, good pacing, detailed levels, and solid value for the price, often drawing comparisons to classic titles like FEAR.
- Frustration (weight 0.18): Frustration stemmed primarily from severe technical issues such as frequent game freezes, crashes, and game-breaking bugs that prevented progress or enjoyable play. Other causes included unbalanced difficulty, repetitive gameplay, janky design, and poor performance, leading to an overall irritating experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.13): Disappointment arose when the game failed to meet expectations, often due to outdated graphics, a boring plot, and a lack of effective horror. Technical issues, weak Lovecraftian elements, poor combat feedback, and an overall cheap or meager feel contributed to the feeling that the game was not worth the money spent, especially for a modern release.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.1): Players found enjoyment in the game's cohesive overall experience, particularly its atmospheric and intense moments, engaging narrative, and fun gameplay. The classic horror shooter atmosphere, good writing, and rewarding progression, despite some jankiness, contributed to a positive and immersive experience.
- Annoyance (weight 0.09): Annoyance was caused by poor design choices such as long corridors, excessive backtracking, and perceived manipulative design aimed at preventing refunds. Additionally, issues like trivial story elements, dull tasks, poor sound effects, and problematic lighting contributed to player irritation.
- Interest (weight 0.06): Interest was sparked by the game's refreshing and risky concept, unexpected features like weapon customization, and an intriguing story progression with evolving scares. The immersive locations and the terror-building aspects also captivated players.
- Hope (weight 0.05): Hope was tied to the game's significant potential for improvement, with players expecting that future patches would address visible bugs and enhance the overall quality. This indicated a belief that the game could become much better with developer effort.
- Excitement (weight 0.03): Excitement was generated by the game's old-school vibes, compelling horror elements, and engaging combat and atmosphere. Actual fear from surprises also contributed to a thrilling experience, making players eager to continue the story.
- Joy (weight 0.03): Joy was experienced through the game's nostalgic elements, reminding players of retro gaming experiences and bringing back positive memories. The transformation of reviews from mixed to positive also contributed to a sense of happiness.
- Anger (weight 0.03): Anger was expressed by players who felt the game was of poor quality, calling it 'trash,' and believing that positive reviews were misleading. This emotion arose from a culmination of numerous flaws and a sense of being deceived.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Appreciation was directed towards the developers for their effort in a niche genre, active communication, and dedication to patching bugs. The passion and soul evident in the project, especially for bringing back a specific genre feel, were highly valued.
- Surprise (weight 0.02): Surprise occurred when the game exceeded low expectations, offering more depth, story, and NPC interactions than anticipated, especially after initial impressions from a demo. This positive unexpected quality delighted players.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.02): Nostalgia was a strong emotion, as the game's retro style and gameplay reminded players of a favorite era of PC shooters, specifically evoking memories of old Doom titles and earlier gaming experiences.
- Gratitude (weight 0.01): Gratitude was felt towards the developers for providing a game that successfully fulfilled a niche in the gaming market, catering to specific player preferences.
- Caution (weight 0.01): Caution led players to recommend waiting for bug fixes before purchasing the game, indicating that despite some positive aspects, the current state of the game warranted a delayed investment.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Relief came from the knowledge that recent patches were actively addressing and fixing existing bugs, alleviating player concerns about the game's technical issues.
- Disbelief (weight 0.01): Disbelief stemmed from the game's poor quality despite being a recent release, suggesting that players found it hard to believe a contemporary title could suffer from so many issues.
- Discomfort (weight 0.01): Discomfort was specifically caused by motion sickness due to jittering visuals within the game.
- Physical discomfort (weight 0.01): Physical discomfort was reported as headaches resulting from the game's visuals, impacting the player's ability to enjoy the experience.
- Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration was expressed for the game being an impressive achievement, particularly noting its development by only two individuals, highlighting the significant effort involved.}