It Lurks Below - Terraria-like 2D sandbox RPG by the creator of Diablo

[LESS T_T]

http://www.itlurksbelow.com




https://af.gog.com/game/it_lurks_below?as=1649904300

Spoiler

He says this is a mix of more Diablo-like RPG structure and Terraria-like sandbox, whatever that means: https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/31/16952652/david-brevik-it-lurks-below-announcement

Diablo creator David Brevik is back with a new game, It Lurks Below
Terraria meets Diablo in Brevik’s new indie game

Graybeard Games


Game developer David Brevik, who once oversaw Blizzard North and Gazillion Entertainment, will release a new game later this year called It Lurks Below, via his Graybeard Games studio. Like Brevik’s previous work on games such as Diablo and Marvel Heroes, It Lurks Below will include action-RPG mechanics and lots of collectible loot, but unlike his other projects, this is a much smaller affair; Brevik made it by himself.

It Lurks Below combines Diablo-style dungeon-plumbing mechanics with sandbox-style worlds that let players dig and construct, à la Terraria and Minecraft. In an interview with Polygon, Brevik said he’s a big fan of those games (and Starbound), but wanted to add something of his own to the genre.

“I wanted more of a point to a lot of those games,” Brevik said. “I wanted to make an RPG, with classes and leveling up, random items, where you get more and more powerful as you go down into the core of the world and fight baddies.”

Brevik said It Lurks Below will be a roguelike mix of what he’s done before with games like Diablo and Hellgate: London, and the games he loves playing now. His side-scrolling 2D game will let players explore procedurally generated levels populated with randomized monsters to fight and items to collect. It Lurks Below is “random built on random,” he said.

Graybeard Games


The game’s combat will see players using wands — “basically guns” — and tools like a pickaxe to fight and dig through the game world. Those weapons will carry their own stats and elemental attributes, as will enemies. “I’m taking inspiration from the Diablo series, where every monster has its own trick,” Brevik said.

It Lurks Below will include three styles of play: normal, an easier “creative” mode and hardcore, essentially a permadeath mode.

Brevik aims to launch It Lurks Below on Steam this year, and will release a closed beta this weekend. That beta will be limited to 200 people. Brevik plans to stream the game this weekend on his studio’s Twitch channel.

It Lurks Below has been in development “in earnest” for about a year, Brevik said. It was originally a project of a much larger scope that he said might take 10 years to finish. But he scaled his idea down, and turned his new roguelike dungeon crawler into something simpler that he could make himself, from art to music to programming. Brevik’s been making games for more than 25 years — he programmed and designed the original Diablo— but he admits he’s inexperienced in making game art. Hence It Lurks Below’s low-res, pixelated aesthetic.

“That was the most difficult thing for me, because I’m not much of an artist,” Brevik said. “It’s definitely got a pixel retro kind of feel to it ... I’ve tried to make it as dark and creepy as I can ... creepy atmosphere and lighting.” Brevik said that the game’s art “took me the longest amount of time, but as I’ve gone along, I’ve gotten better and better at pixel art and animations.” He joked that as players dig deeper in the game, they’ll see his artwork improved over the course of development.

Brevik said he plans to continue to work on It Lurks Below, as its sole developer, after its release.

“I am going to be adding stuff to [It Lurks Below], listening to the community, getting feedback and making sure the game is the best it can be,” he said. “That is something I definitely worked hard on with Marvel Heroes, getting that feedback from the community.”

If you’d like to watch Brevik play his game this weekend, you can do so on Twitch. He’ll start streaming It Lurks Below on Friday, Feb. 2, at 9 p.m. PT.

 

[LESS T_T]

That just looks like a less polished Terraia/Starbound.

 

[mbv123]

Who does this appeal to? It looks worse than Terraria, a game that came out almost 7 years ago.

 

[Metro]

Initial look this seems pretty disappointing. It really does just look like a shitty Terraria/Starbound rip-off. Even looks like the same engine and assets as Starbound. Never mind the fact that, as a game, Starbound was fucking terrible.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I would've preferred it to be a Diablo 2 rip-off.

 

[shihonage]

fuck that loser

 

[rusty_shackleford]

there's ~ 10 terraria-like games on steam right now and nearly all of them look more interesting than this

 

[Elex]

I would've preferred it to be a Diablo 2 rip-off.

but it is.
Or more like “i can do only this game so all games have common elements”
it look like some terraria clone.
is actually a diablo clone.

the underground is a dungeon, with an npc you can reset the underground (the dirt level don’t change, is the level where you build your base)

and start the grind again

 

[mbv123]

Diablo (and it's clones) are one of the most boring, repetitive, tedious games I've played so I can't imagine stomaching this for more than 30 minutes

 

[LESS T_T]

It's now on Early Access.

Reading reviews, FWIW this indeed sounds more RPG-ish (read more stat and gear management, more dungeon crawl aspects) and bit more "hardcore" than Terraria.

 

[Kruno]

Watched a few videos, read a bunch of threads. I will sit on this one until it is at least a bit more mature.

 

[ColCol]

Played it for around two hours. Plays like an rpg focused terraria/starbound. Some thoughts:

Takes the mining/building loop of the former games and makes them tedious due to survival mechanics (sleep/eat), "survival tree" (unlock that copper pick axe, yo!), and slow resource gathering speed. Oh, and it also has not dealt with the annoying problem (found in these types of games) of being swarmed by mobs as you try to do something minor with your base .

Combat is better in this game than in Terraria/starbound. This is mostly due to the fact that it is quick and not as cumbersome as the former games. One problem though is that besides skills everything is a laser gun ("Wand"). This may change but I have a feeling it will not.

Rpg mechanics are very items focused. You have armor which uses mined ore and improves linearly. You have weapons, runes, socket items, which are dropped randomly and can vary in power. You have your class's active skills, which are items that you are given every five levels (they can be dropped upon death). You can upgrade skills (belonging to your class) with gold and you can find skills outside your class as random drops (these can't be upgraded). The mechanics are standard Arpg fare for the most part. The linear items and random items balance out each other well. I just wish there was more done to distinguish the class you choose from the others. There are differences but it takes a few hours for them to become apparent.


Overall, the game is like Diablo 1 broken up with building/mining mechanics.

 

[redactir]

It may sayy Early Access. But It appears to be planned leave early access tomorrow (May 29th) according to a twitch video I came across on the main PR channel.



Quick summary:
It's an indie title by THE programmer who coded Diablo 1.. who actually wrote D1's original design doc as well. This is worth bringing up as this game also aims to clone some of the formula of the Diablo series.

It is quite technologically different in presentation however. In fact things now conform to a sidescroller perspective and the world is made up of 2d destructible blocks. There's also survival elements such as hunger.

TL;DR
The gameplay is basically diablo meets survival.


Personally I haven't played the game in a long time. I think last time was around January of this year. I wasn't satisfied with the breadth and detail of the tile pallette (I like to build). Otherwise it's well worth the time sink as an original title is concerned.

IMO it's actually a complete game already because the dev finallly added story today.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/697550/announcements/detail/1625149528382159906

 

[redactir]

Random trivia:

The community has been quite supportive of the developer and if your political-views fit in with the crowd, the developer can be quite supportive of you back. But hey that's twitch marketing and "positivity" for you.

Spoiler

I was kicked out.

They also plan to add multiplayer. Which could make ILB the next big thing a few years from now.

Btw: the space requirements are quite low.

 

[Catacombs]

Looks like a darker Terraria.

 

[redactir]

Looks like a darker Terraria.

That seems to have been the standard that stuck the most in the dev's perception.

I think it is sad because besides a couple lovecraftian creature designs, there's no BITE to the darkness artistically.
Most of the diabloly vibes are abandoned in favor of the intense battle or the survival angle.

But that being said I watched as the community put enormous demands and request on the poor guy in real time.
If you were ever in attendance during the average week there was no shortage of idea men. Most of them did mean well.
Everyone wanted to see this game succeed one way or another.

I'm about to do something that Leonardy Boyarsky is against... but you know what? It Lurks Below is better than Diablo 3. And automatically better than that mobile cash grab diablo-sequel blizzard try to push out recently.

 

[Metro]

It's a shittier version of Terraria almost a decade later. From what I saw on the forums the community coddled Brevik and/or were people who had never even heard of Terraria so they think the game is somehow refreshing or novel.

 

[redactir]

It's a shittier version of Terraria almost a decade later. From what I saw on the forums the community coddled Brevik and/or were people who had never even heard of Terraria so they think the game is somehow refreshing or novel.

That could be true. Maybe it is true. But I suggest you play it. Many things were delivered. And done all by one person.

 

[Metro]

Sure, when it's bundled.

 

[redactir]

Played the game tonight. Not much has changed in creative mode. I think there are some crystal scrapping issues and I couldn't unlock crafting of hoes on my old survival characters.
I've noticed there's some new FX and a handful of new buildings such as a barn or chicken coop to plant. The deathloop due to lack of food is as brutal as I can recall when when having no farms.

Stacks of gold coin appear more elaborate in their stacking. I won't know if survival is significantly improved until I try to make a real run down "south".

Odd the developer didn't tweet his own game being out from his indie company twitter. https://twitter.com/GraybeardGames
His personal twitter however adverts it: https://twitter.com/davidbrevik

--------------

Okay, David.

Well based on the steam sales who knows what direction the game might go. But I am definitely not a fanatic.
He and his sidekick PR mercenary are a very charismatic duo. But I've heard they're not taking their pants off anymore for receiving subs.

I'm excited to see what this all means and how they react.

 

[Grauken]

Graphics look somewhat generic, not that Terraria was much better, but at least it did it first

 

[redactir]

I acquired these screenshots. There's potential.

https://imgur.com/a/HM48o9O

 

[Mud']

It looks more similar to Starbound than Terraria, as for the game, i respect the dev that made it himself alone and he seems like a pretty cool guy but i dont think that with those graphics you can get some dark atmosphere going, so maybe someday i will buy it when i get a itch to play a game about grinding, but right now i will just watch how this game unfolds.

 

[Agame]

Do we really need more shit like this?

Bleh.

 

[axx]

He and his sidekick PR mercenary are a very charismatic duo. But I've heard they're not taking their pants off anymore for receiving subs.

An anonymous guy donated a hefty sum (something like $1000) during one of their streams and the pants were (supposedly) off!