by 
It’s been a while since I’ve put anything into Tier Three, and I’m sad I have to do it to this game.
BELOW is a roguelike-ish set on an unknown island. You sail there and begin exploring, working out the mechanics as you go. The atmosphere is thick (in more ways than one) and the caverns are dangerous. Why do you delve so deep? What is the lantern you pick up? Why do so many adventurers come to this island?
Those are but a few of the many questions I suppose I’ll never know the answer to. For as much as the setup is attractive, the whole game is just too slow. Battles don’t happen particularly often (at least on early levels), your inventory is very limited, and the maps are mostly empty. Because of this, the “exploration” part of the game seems lacking (except, of course, for the set pieces that aren’t procedurally generated. Though now that I think about it, I’m actually only assuming that the caverns are procedurally generated; if it isn’t, I need a word with the level designer). While a slower-paced game can be good and atmospheric, BELOW runs too far in this direction.
Compounding frustration with the long, slow exploration are the insta-kill traps. The game ramps from a tripwire that slows you down to spikes that instantly kill you. Once you die, you have to go through the whole dungeon again, remapping the area until you get to your body. I died twice to the spike traps. This was an unpleasant (and entirely unnecessary) difficulty, adding no significant challenge. Good traps hurt and slow you (like the tripwires) – not kill you outright. Nethack only barely gets away with that sort of thing because that’s its schtick.
Overall, though I had high hopes for this game, I don’t see myself picking it up again.