
Embark on an epic journey into "The Darkness Below", a homage to the golden era of 90's cRPGs, with grid-based movement, turn-based combat and 2.5D perspective. Wander a vast and colorful fantasy world filled with puzzles, exotic creatures, forgotten dungeons and ancient guardians.
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About

The Darkness Below is a large-scale, single-player dungeon crawler inspired by the golden era of 90s RPGs — Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Might & Magic III–V, Lands of Lore — rebuilt with deeper character systems and modern stability.
Explore a handcrafted fantasy world through first-person grid movement and fast turn-based combat.
Train skills by using them. Advance through expertise tiers. Shape your party through meaningful progression and choice.
This is a true old-school CRPG — without the old technical limits.
• 40+ handcrafted maps spanning villages, cities, wilderness, towers and multi-level dungeons
• 30+ quests (main & side), woven across an interconnected world
• 50+ unique monsters, each with custom actions and tactical behaviors
• 40+ spells across multiple elements and expertise tiers
• 30+ skills, improved through active use and specialized trainers
• 15 races (with selectable subraces) and 7 professions, each shaping long-term character growth
• 50+ feats to refine your build
• Skill-based advancement (use skills to improve them)
• Expertise tiers: Initiate → Apprentice → Adept → Master → Grandmaster
• D&D-inspired challenge checks (passive & active)
• Spell slot allocation system
• Elemental damage & resistance mechanics
• 8 battle conditions (Poisoned, Maddened, Cursed, and more)
Build carefully. Train deliberately. Specialize with intent.
• First-person grid movement (mouse & keyboard, fully rebindable)
• Blazingly fast turn-based combat
• Recruitable NPC companions with distinct combat roles
• Interactable world objects: levers, locks, traps, banners, secret mechanisms
• Local map, world map, and completion tracking
Combat rewards preparation. Exploration rewards curiosity.
• 300+ handcrafted base items
• 50 enchantment types with dynamic magical item generation, creating thousands of equipment combinations
• Handcrafted relic items placed throughout the world, tied to quests and specific locations
Find rare relics. Forge powerful builds. Optimize your party.
The Darkness Below is not a simplified retro experience.
It is a full-scale dungeon crawler built for players who enjoy:
• Structured progression
• System depth
• Tactical combat
• Exploration without hand-holding
• Meaningful character building
If you miss the weight and structure of classic dungeon crawlers — this is built for you.
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All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English**languages with full audio support
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 44 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
This is a very fun romp in the realm of old school grid-based Dungeon Crawlers / RPGs :). If you liked the original Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, or Wizardry series, you'll probably like this. There's also a very strong dash of Bard's Tale in here with the towns.. I got 6-7 hours out of this, and enjoyed it all. While I don't feel the urge to finish the game, it was fun ratcheting up stats and specs during this time, and combating different monsters. The main "let down" for this game is that the difficulty scaling is kinda weird - in my playthrough I just became OP after the first 5 character levels or so. The game definitely favors strong fighter builds over magic, thievery, and other techniques -- so I'd say it's more of a "Basic" RPG than some other games. The magic is also standard D&D which is OK but not as engaging as the Dungeon Master system of symbols. The art work is fun in this -- paintings on walls, small shops, etc, and the music is alright for this type of game. Anyway, I enjoyed it, happy to have bought it to support the developer, and if you like crawlers, definitely buy this!
Firstly, it's really just a Might & Magic 6-8 copy, but with Lands of Lore's item system (where every magic item is named) and it's skill progression and combat. So, if you loved Lands of Lore and the later Might and Magic games, you'll really love this. Music is creepy, the cinematic art that plays during dialog scenes is fantastic, and the randomized loot keeps the game fresh, I would imagine, for multiple play throughs. I do have some nitpicks though. Like the overall lack of spells for a good portion of the game. I'm about to hit lv 10 and my cleric still has nothing but a heal, a bless, and a buff. No cure poison, paralyze, burning, or any status nullifiers. My casters have 5 slots of level 2 spells, but not a single level 2 spell is available in either of the two towns I've been to. Class balancing is a little wonky too, since it took me 4 failed parties during the demo (Spent 5 hours playing that before racking up hours here in the real game, BTW) before I finally made one capable of beating the first goblin boss. One of my problems was that I foolishly picked a cleric, which was useless. I had to make a paladin instead, and use him as a cleric, since clerics, oddly, could only equip leather armor and their low HP made them paper dolls. It's funny that Paladins have the same number of spells as a cleric and no actual drawback to having them be your healer instead of a true cleric. Crazy. Also Barbarians can only grandmaster in scale armor, but to learn scale armor you need 20 Technique. The problem is Barbarians worst stat is technique and they don't gain any in level up. So you COULD play as an elf, who can hit 20 technique if you reroll a hundred times, but then your strength is so low you would barely do any damage, thus making your barbarian a useless fighter. It would make more sense having Barbarians grandmaster Chain Mail, which is lighter in D&D rules, and they can use without needing 20 technique. Once again, crazy. I also don't like how Paladins/Clerics need to have a holy symbol to cast spells. Yeah yeah, eye of the Beholder, I know. But here, shields can give you damage boosts as well as protection, so I actually care about using them. One other small gripe is quest givers aren't marked, so I often forget who gave me a quest and have to consult the forums. Still, even with those gripes, it's an amazing indie CRPG. Like I said, if you're a fan of Lands of Lore or Might and Magic, this is a must play. Really fun and addicting, with a lot of atmosphere and challenge. It just needs some tweaks.
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Hours played at review time, across 44 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Very tough in later stages. Make sure you pick correct party.
Fun retro clone to Beholder or Magica.
找不到训练师很烦,总体不错
It's a banger! My only complaint is the resolution restrictions. This mad man is dedicated to the source material.
I liked the game. I love games of this kind. I like: - the atmosphere, the design, a lot of weapons and armor, magic, good quests, generally addictive. I dont like: - there are no lines in conversations, some skills don't seem to be used, at first it's not clear how to get some skills (fixed in the last update)
Gra w stylu mm3-5. Zwiedzanie lochów, czyszczenie map, proste zagadki. Idziesz naprzód uczysz się nowych umiejętności, zdobywasz lepszy ekwipunek... Proste, bez zbytniego skomplikowania i to nieuchwytne coś, co nie pozwala się oderwać od gry. Polecam fanom starych RPGów.
Great game and if you like Eye of the beholder, this is for you! The game maneges to create that "I just need to se what's around the corner" vibe in the player, and when the game is best, it is abseloutly difficult to let it go. BUT Even though I highly recommended it, and enjoyed it, there are some issues which are imposible to ignore. Decided if you want to know, it may make you think twice about trying this. If you want to know look at the following... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... The following are things I noted during my two gameplays, whereas number 2 was forced by the game do to a bug/bad gamedesign! But let's take it from the top: 1) The game has a time varible like in the real old school 1980's games, but the difference is, that while these games time varible was planed in that, if the game went into night time, there were still things you could do, or, certain shops that only opened at night - the time variable in this game feels like something thrown without much thought. -- In the game there are some side quests which can only be sorted by night, BUT, the time variable mostly brings a LOT of irritation in that you often miss shops or traveling because they are closed, and then you nothing else to do then litterly use the wait function, and that gets real fast pretty boring. -- I think my party all in all spent like a week of game time just standing waiting ... 2) Inventory is way to small -- especially in the 3 level dungeons there are times when you have to leave a dungeon to sell stuff and then come back. -- why not just introduce bags of holding??? 3) With all the traveling, food can be an issue in the start of the game -- again, you find yourself forced to leave a dungeon to go get food. -- gets better once you learn the "create food" spell, which is esential. 4) In two of the late game dungeons, suddenly, every enemy can paralyse! It's like somebody got lazy and just decided the enemy can either paralyze or make your mind go mad. -- Like with "create food", this makes it vital to keep/buy all "protect against paralyse/mind mad" stuff in the begining of the game, and then the late game will be a breeze. 5) There are no indication which spell books are for cleric, wizard and paladin. This again seems lazy, because only by trial and error can you find out which spells you can use, and realize that all those which you thought you could use once leveled up, are only useable for fx. the paladin which you don't have in your party... 6) The game gives the impression that you can go and explore, to get more xp, or just because you are curios. Well DON'T. If you don't follow the quest line, you risk ending up like me: I explored to get xp, and then found out one of the enemys I killed, was a part of a later essential quest, and because of that I could NOT get the item which moved the game forward. Goodbye 20 hours gameplay, and hallo new game... 7) And lsatly - the game is not finished!!!! There are two levels of spells, one of which are in the game, but with no trainers. There are one city which hints at quests, but the quests can not be started. There are one dungeon which ends abrubtly by water, and no mean forward... 8) If some of the above gets fixed, this game has every chance to be there with the best, but as of right now --It's entertaining, recommendable but it lacks a lot which especially becomes obvisous if you have to play through it twice.
this game brings back fond memories.
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