Below, Rusted Gods is definitely an extreme edge case for me to recommend or not. TLDR at the bottom. I am going to recommend it, but I cannot stress enough how razor thin this margin is.
I've had my eye on Below for a year or two since a next fest where I was quite impressed with the demo and maybe that's part of the problem. A Next Fest Demo, what does that even mean. Does it mean the game is just in alpha or beta and there'll be a lot more content and features and mechanics as the game develops? Or is the game basically done already and the demo is more just for wish lists and marketing. You don't always get to know.
Maybe another part of the problem is that when I like something, I expect more? Could be true. I like seeing things live up to their potential. Or maybe I'm just unfair and insane and expect too much. That is a fair criticism.
Okay back to the game itself. Below, Rusted Gods,,, definitely has some good bones, there's just not hardly any meat on them.
I really like the bodycam realistic graphical style, the core gameplay loop as an idea, and the little bit of world building going on.
I just wish there was more. The game is about 2 and 1/2 hours long and has very little gameplay... and that's being extremely generous. I won't debate here if its intentionally just over 2 hours to prevent people finishing it once and making a return... Moving on...
You play as an operator leading a team into a supernatural lovecraftian elder god type cavern/liminal space. You have a terminal that you use to communicate with your 4 person team, a radar station, a health monitoring station, a log of communications, a TV monitor with VHS, a cassette player, and a radio. I can't express how much I love this idea for a game. However just about every mechanic in the game falls flat, is only used once or twice, or actually isn't interactive.
Using the terminal you really only make a very few limited choices during the entire game, a lot of it is one sided conversations as your team loses its mind confessing horrific things to you and your only reply is "understood" or "noted".
The radar station is used for one "puzzle" that you solve at a glace in less than a second.
The monitoring station is somehow both underused and annoying at the same time, you need to wait for it every time you want to switch between team members output, its a few seconds, but if you're trying to get into the game it gets old fast, but in reality, there's almost no point to monitoring your team's health, and its really only used for one "puzzle".
The log isn't used for any puzzles, but is used once to advance the story.
The TV monitor is only used once for advancing the story, but there are a few VHS tapes (collectables, no story impact or even really lore) with disturbing or creepy images, The cassette player is the same but obviously audio only.
The radio is used twice, maybe three times. Once to show you how to use it, then once to solve a mandatory "puzzle", then once for something optional.
You might be wondering why I keep saying "puzzle" well its because those are not really puzzles... in fact there's only two things in the whole game I would actually call a real puzzle. As a side note...one of them bugged out for me, and I had to restart the game from an earlier save.
You do get to explore your own space a little bit more, but this is just fodder for mild jump scares and collectibles and the two real puzzles, Once you've seen an area once... you typically don't go back. Well okay you go through the bathroom maybe three times and into the basement twice... but the deeper rooms you are done with after one visit.
Then its over. There are multiple endings and collectibles, but I very easily got all collectibles in my first play and I feel like I can easily decern what the other endings are.
I do dislike games that artificially inflate their play time with backtracking or unnecessary mechanics, but this is the other side of the coin. There's just too little of everything. Constantly the game would make me think, okay here we go, this is gonna be a thing, an interaction, a puzzle, something neat and then... nothing. Maybe 1 line of dialog..., maybe I can hold out hope for content patches or DLC (lol) but... I think for its low price point, Below, Rusted Gods (should really be just God singular) is what it is. Maybe Below, Rusted Gods 2?
TLDR: To sum it all up, If you're looking for a short, bodycam style horror experience... you've got it and you might feel pretty good about it overall. If you wanted more gameplay, puzzles, deeper lore, deeper everything... you're going to be disappointed. The game looks great, and has some really interesting ideas, and I actually love the setting and the whiff of what it could all become... but it just doesn't really do anything or go any where and its all over in a flash.
