Below the Stone

BTS is not Dynamite. *** BTS has the DNA of a knee-capped rogue-like Core Keeper clone. Extraction is one of the big mistakes of modern gaming. It takes gameplay and structure that would be fine and makes it worse. It's a niche genre for multiplayer games for very specific players. There's an audience, but it's not a mass market idea; a terrible idea for a massive-budget reboot of a single player 1990's Mac FPS game let alone a mining roguelike. The games owe a lot to action roguelikes, with poor choices applied. Imagine you were playing Hades, but if you didn't choose to exit before dying you lose all the meta upgrades you would have gained, plus also had to the meta upgrades you chose to bring in. *** BTS plays fine, if not Butter smooth. It's twin stick via keyboard mouse, comparable to Duckov. It says it can gamepad, there's too much drag and drop management to make that good. It's kind of janky, but the jank if more player-friendly than clunky, like being able to melee attack through solid walls. The loops is OK, but too dry. You generate a new Core Keeper-like world each run with biomes. You'll have to mine your way through the map like Core Keeper, but the floor doesn't have pits, just water you can walk on. You're going to be seeing a lot of the same things over again. Exploration procedurally gen maps need interesting things to find. BTS has places hidden in the rock, but none of them are a real MIC Drop. The actual extraction isn't good. Instead of having to get somewhere, you have to meet objectives. This part is easy enough. But you have to fight waves of enemies to get out. This encourages you to press your luck even less. You have to be able to take a few hits to leave, and you might just have to run back to easier areas to get healing so you can safely leave. It takes too long to get shops open if you can't rescue NPCs. You must rescue them to move up in crafting and they're a ways out. They're also surrounded by mini-mazes of enemies, sometimes with enemy spawners and guys who can do cheap hits. It's cheese or be cheesed. And again you may have to buff up to kill them. The crafting is standard get the ore then the better ore, but you don't base-build your way up. Here the game feels so much like Core Keeper with depth taken out, and maybe the exploration and combat could be enough if it was richer and if this is a roguelike. That extraction structure (and inventory) forces you to stop having fun all the time. They could make exploration richer but you're still going to have to run away when there's a huge map to explore, and when you run you have to start over. In Core Keeper, you can push because you can always get back, and try to pick up your stuff and pick up where you left off. In a Roguelike, you have to keep pushing and you keep the rewards you earned. Extraction games tell you that you do have to go home. The best Extraction, while maybe not maximizing the game, get around this with short runs. BTS requires huge runs and if you get punished you have to do so much boring stuff to have fun again. Why punish fun? In the end, BTS says you do not have Permission to Dance.

yes its awesome can we get a quality of life .make it so we can click to not pick up a certain item .like tin for intance something we can click so it auto ignore certain items

It's fun and mindless and addictive and I look forward to sinking more hours into smashing walls and whacking potato monsters and rescuing robot arms.

It's annoying... annoyingly good. Get too greedy, it'll punish you extremely. Get too complacent, it'll punish you heavily. Despite 2 layers only, and a bit of repetitive game play, finding a new biome is fun and extremely challenging especially when the void comes. Anyway, Below the Stone is really good. Hoping for more updates in 2025! AND remember, COAL is important, way too important, so go back to layer 1 from time to time. MossPlays2112, thanks for the Key!

Big Core Keeper vibes but on extra hard mode. Almost a rogue-like feel but you don't really improve if you die. Things are just worse. But finding and unlocking various quests and NPC is keeping me going.

Highly addicting gameplay and I always find myself fully immersed.

Nice game, still in development, but have a great potential! Stacked almost everything I could reach, waiting for more content :)

fun game just 100% needs multiplayer

Cute, chill, I like the pixel art, nice ambient music, has potential as in early access but happy to relax of an afternoon making my way downtown, walking fast, faces pass and I'm homebound DU DU DU DUH DUHD UDHA DHUADAUDDUAD

It's a challenge to get started, but that's just the style of game, but the setting and character of the game are wonderful.