I had the chance to stop at The Apogee Entertainment Booth for another upcoming adventure game, Below the Stone; the game is currently being developed by Stollart Studios. It takes you on an undergrounded adventure to dive deep into a dozen randomly generated biomes to find rare resources below in this rogue-like dungeon crawler. The dungeon is filled with all sorts of monsters that will stop you from getting those resources. Below the Stone is the game I was most curious to check out and I couldn’t wait to know more about this game; the first time I heard of this game was when they had the Kickstarter campaign last year, which was a huge success for the team.
During the demo for the game, I had a nostalgic feeling about the game. It gave off fun memories of playing endless hours of Stardew Valley, Enter the Gungeon, and Core Keeper. The world level of the game is grid-based, and everything is destructible, so if you want to make a shortcut go for it, it might lead you to some hidden resources.
You will find so many different ore resources such as Iron, copper, and coal, which can be used to craft better weapons and armors to survive longer as you continue to delve deeper and deeper into the dungeon. You will also find other resources in the dungeons, but the ore is the main resource you going to need if you want to survive long. To start the dungeon, you will have to accept a mission request on the board in your home base, the mission is always different, and it can be “Find 8 copper Ores” and once you accept the mission you will start your run.
Exploring the Dungeon
As I explored the dungeon, I encounter so many different enemies and there were times I had to retreat to take a breather because they came in swarms. As I continued exploring the dungeon, I notice that some enemies that I saw in one biome looked different in the other biomes such as the slime in the ice area looks more like ice cubes while in the bee nest they look like honeycombs.
The enemies also drop resources when you defeat them that can also be used to craft items. If you find yourself close to death during your mining adventures, you will re-spawn in your home base above the dungeon with everything you took in with you, while all the treasures you found along your journey will be lost below. I can tell you one thing, I probably died multiple times because I was unprepared or I rushed into the dungeon without any plans.
Return Home
After all the exploring and coming back alive from the dungeon, I returned to home base, where you can store all the stuff you found in your storage boxes and start crafting items. In this demo, the home doesn’t have that many NPC available yet, but we can see there are spaces for them to move in when they are put in later on. The only ones available were the blacksmith, which enables us to craft our weapons and armors. The other is the potion maker who can brew healing potions to be used in the dungeon for emergencies.
I enjoyed this demo a lot as I can see myself challenging myself on how far I should go and explore to get all the resources that I can find to bring back. There is no safe approach in this game because every run will be randomly generated and the resources won’t be in the same spot. It was east to see how much this grinding for resources this game will need.
I find myself wanting to dive back down into the dungeons over and over to find all the resources I need to make everything, however, I’ll need to remember that once you die, you will lose everything and respawn. Hopefully, we will be able to hear more about this game because I want to play more of it and find all the precious resources hidden in the dungeon.
Below the Stone will be launching into Early Access in sometime 2023, however you can wishlist the game now on Steam. Follow Below the Stone on Twitter to get the latest updates.
