The Darkness Below – In development dungeon crawler for the PC gets a BIG update and it looks GOOD!

First Person Dungeon Crawlers have a huge fan base on Indie Retro News, so many of us love games such as Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder and my personal favorite Ishar. Well here we are with another special announcement especially if you love dungeon crawlers, as Sabbas Eleftheriadis has not only shown off some brand new screenshots for the work in progress PC game of The Darkness Below, but there’s also been a very large update! A game that the creator says is “Set to be the largest single-player first person grid-based cRPG of all time”.

Here’s what the Facebook page says about the game, which is getting very positive comments from those that have played it during Early Access. “The Darkness Below” promises a rich tapestry of lore, skill challenges, and grinding gameplay that will captivate fans of the genre. Embark on an epic journey into The Darkness Below, a cRPG that draws its inspiration from Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, and Might and Magic. With high tier character generation, endless quests, grid-based movement, turn-based combat, and 2.5D perspective, the game transports you to a vast and colorful fantasy world filled with puzzles, exotic creatures, forgotten dungeons and ancient guardians”.

Features

• First person grid-based dungeon crawling experience, as traditional as it gets
• Pixelart aesthetic, event cutscenes and a colorfully vibrant world, straight from the 90′ golden era
• Grid-based animated movement, through mouse and keyboard (with custom key bindings)
• Blazingly fast turn-based combat, much like M&M 3-5
• Interactable items & objects (ground items, levers, doors, keylocks, text banners, traps etc.)
• Various NPCs and voice-overs (greetings, death, refusals etc.)
• Recruitable NPC companions (CPU based), each one with specific talents in combat (skill, weapons, spells, quest NPCs etc.)
• Skills learning based on usage (skill XP increases by using), expertise level (initiate, adept, master etc.) and requirements (profession, ability scores etc.)
• Skill advancing through multiple skill trainers on villages and towns, each one advancing characters to specific expertise (initiate, adept, master etc.)
• Spell system based on slot allocation, very similar to D&D mechanics
• Spells sorted into specific magic schools / elements (“Fire magic” etc.), sorted by expertise (initiate, adept, master etc.) and cast through staffs, holysymbols, scrolls and wands
• Passive / active skill checks, similar to D&D challenge checks
• Dynamic itemization, with about ~300 base items and on-demand creation of random items with various enchantments (“of Fire damage” etc.) or uniquely named (“Pyroblade” etc.)
• Enchantments to further improve items like “of Fire damage” and “of Titan”, allowing more strategic decisions on party equipment and leading to tens of thousand items
• Shops dealing with various trades (weapons, magic, books, general store, stable etc.)
• Create new characters or choose prebuilt ones, through a very fast and intuitive character generation system
• Local / world / mini map, with local and world completion %
• Unlimited saves with screenshot thumbnail, world completion % etc.