BELOW Review Summary

Stunning art, music, and atmosphere make this world a joy to explore, though tedious combat, harsh item loss on death, and instant-kill traps make it frustratingly difficult.

Stunning Visuals and Art: Players frequently praise the game's graphics, art design, and visual style as stunning, beautiful, and captivating. The visual experience is often described as a piece of art, with meticulous attention to detail.

Exceptional Music and Sound: The soundtrack, composed by Jim Guthrie, is widely acclaimed as incredible, with outstanding sound design and high-quality ambient sounds. Music and audio are frequently described as excellent and atmospheric.

Immersive Atmosphere and Ambience: The game's atmosphere, immersion, and ambiance are consistently highlighted as excellent, top-notch, and masterfully crafted. Players feel deeply immersed in the mysterious and intriguing world.

Good But Simple Combat: Combat is generally seen as basic, simple, and not overly challenging, but it works beautifully and feels responsive and immediate. Some players appreciate its simplicity and functionality.

Engaging Crafting System: The crafting system is described as admirable, well-made, and entertaining, providing an objective that is not perfectly balanced but still enjoyable. Players find it a positive addition to the game.

Tedious and frustrating gameplay: The overall gameplay is described as tedious, exhausting, and frustrating, with many players finding it not fun or engaging enough to hold their attention.

Harsh death item loss: Dying causes players to lose all items, including the lantern, which remains at the death location; retrieving it risks losing everything again if the player dies on the way. This creates a punishing loop that many find frustrating and disrespectful of time.

High difficulty and instant-death traps: The game is very difficult, especially initially, with instant-death traps throughout that cause game over without warning, leading to frustration.

Obscure objectives and no purpose: The game provides no clear purpose or explanation, leaving players unsure of what to do and feeling that it lacks direction and story.

Lack of tutorial or explanation: There is no tutorial or minimal explanation for game mechanics, such as helmet effects, making it hard for players to understand how to play effectively.

Lantern is key item: The lantern is essential for lighting the way, finding essences, and unlocking certain zones. It serves as both a light source and a progression key.

Survival mechanics: hunger, thirst, cold: The game features survival mechanics requiring management of hunger, thirst, and body temperature. These meters add constant pressure to exploration and resource gathering.

Permadeath with new character: Death is permanent, restarting the game from the beginning with a new character. This roguelike permadeath system creates high stakes for every run.

Corpse runs recover gear: After death, players must run back to their corpse to retrieve lost items and gear, including the lantern. This risk-reward retrieval mechanic is central to the game's progression loop.

Crafting system with recipes: A crafting system allows players to create items using recipes, including torches, arrows, remedies, food, and potions. Materials must be gathered to craft healing items and other supplies.

Performance issues cause stuttering: Users experience lag, unstable frame rates, and stuttering, sometimes specific to lower floors or ultra settings. These issues detract from smooth gameplay.

Startup crashes frustrate players: Multiple users report crashes on startup or at the logo screen, including on Windows 10. This prevents players from even reaching the main menu.

Mid-game crashes hinder progress: Crashes occur mid-swing, on specific levels, or frequently enough to block progression through rooms. This severely impacts the player's ability to advance.

Error windows and messages appear: Players encounter error windows, including ones with developer comments, even when the game does not crash. These errors disrupt the experience.

Windows 7 compatibility problems: Some users could not play on release due to lack of Windows 7 support, but a day-one patch made it playable. Others still report problems running on Windows 7.

Polarizing, Not for Everyone: Many reviewers emphasize that the game is not for all players, requiring a specific mindset or preferences. It is often described as a niche experience that either deeply appeals or strongly repels.

Guides and Information: Opinions are divided on using guides: some strongly recommend reading them to avoid frustration, while others advise going in blind for a better experience. Many suggest watching gameplay videos first.

Atmospheric and Mysterious: Reviewers often praise the game's strong atmosphere, mystery, and immersive world. It appeals to those who enjoy slow, deliberate exploration and uncovering secrets.

High Difficulty and Tedium: The game is frequently criticized for its harsh difficulty, tedious gameplay loops, and lack of respect for player time. These aspects lead many to not recommend it.

Explore Mode Recommended: Multiple reviewers suggest playing on Explore mode as a more forgiving and enjoyable way to experience the game. It is often recommended for those who find the default difficulty too punishing.

Community fair range: $14.99 - $19.99.

Game completion: 30.0h.

Session length: 2.0h.

The game has a slow, opaque, and often tedious start, but multiple players report it opens up and becomes enjoyable once they understand the rogue-lite systems and become familiar with core functions. A substantial minority never reaches that point or reports a late-game drop, so the time-to-fun profile is best described as clicks after.

Friction: No tutorial or clear explanation of progression; Slow and boring introduction; Tedious walkbacks and corpse runs; Instant-death traps and cheap kills; Opaque rogue-lite elements and unclear goals; Punishing death and item loss.

Unlock drivers: Figuring out the rogue-lite elements; Becoming familiar with core functions; Persistence through the slow start; Discovering shortcuts and permanent fast travel; Ease of return to previous locations.

Atmospheric Mystery Seeker: Slow, observant exploration; experiments with systems and avoids external guides. Motivation: To unravel the island's mysteries and immerse in its dark, melancholic atmosphere. Stance: buy.

Hardcore Roguelike Veteran: Methodical, risk-aware play; learns from repeated deaths and rejects save-scumming. Motivation: To master a punishing roguelike through patience, insight, and incremental progress. Stance: buy.

Frustrated Corpse-Runner: Repeated corpse runs, resource grinding, and backtracking; often rushes through difficulty spikes. Motivation: To regain lost progress and escape the corpse-run and resource grind, though many eventually disengage. Stance: no buy.

External guides: Audit of external data dependency reviews found one explicit Tier 2 signal: a reviewer recommends a guide and references a recipe list for crafting, naming core recipes to memorize. Secondary concerns include navigation shortcuts requiring walkthroughs and wiki spoilers reducing discovery. No farming, drop-rate, loot-table, inventory-management, quest-outcome, build-guide, or bug/navigation-map keywords trigger Tier 1 or higher priority. The final score is 75.

Comparisons to Other Games: Reviewers draw comparisons to a wide range of games including Outer Wilds, Prey: Mooncrash, Rain World, Fez, and Enter the Gungeon. These comparisons highlight both similarities and areas where BELOW falls short.

Dark Souls Inspiration: Players frequently compare the game to Dark Souls, citing similar shortcut unlocking, exploration style, and death mechanics. However, some note that BELOW is more punishing and requires more preparation after death.

Mixed Reviews and Misunderstanding: The game received mixed reviews at launch, with many negative reviews stemming from misunderstanding the genre or playing on Survival Mode. Positive reviews often come from players with few hours, while completion rates are very low.

Hyper Light Drifter Comparisons: Frequent comparisons to Hyper Light Drifter highlight similar atmosphere, exploration, and mystery, but some reviewers note BELOW is darker and less polished. The game is often described as a darker version with similarities in important aspects.

Little Hand-Holding, High Discovery: The game provides no hand-holding or explanations, requiring players to figure out mechanics and progression through trial and error. Many negative reviews stem from this lack of direction and the steep learning curve.