PAX East 2022 Exclusive: Below the Stone
Pax East 2022 Exclusive Look
The Apogee Entertainment booth brought us another upcoming gaming adventure at Pax East 2022. In the title Below the Stone, the developers at Stollart Studios have you diving deep into dozens of procedurally generated biomes, to find the precious resources hidden below in this rogue-like dungeon crawler. It’s filled with all sorts of monsters for you to fight while you explore to find the best minables. Below the Stone has familiar aesthetics to previous crowd favorites such as Deep Rock Galactic, Terraria, and Stardew Valley; all in which inspired the fantastic hand drawn pixel art design. What sets this apart from those tried and true titles, is the unique game-play, which will make you excited to play this exciting new title!
While we went hands on with the game on the show-floor of Pax East 2022, it was clear to see how much this game will have to offer with replay-ability and hours upon hours of content. I found myself wanting to dive back down into the dungeons over and over to find the next big cluster of shiny resources; however, you have to be careful because, once in the mines, dwarves are considered unrecoverable if they die. If you find yourself out of life in your mining adventures, you will re-spawn in the city above with everything you took in with you, and all the treasures found along your journey lost to the depths of the cave. Thankfully, there is vault system that will allow you to store extra resources and gear, so that if that fate ever befalls a dwarf, they can get back on their feet and back to mining in no time.
There will be plenty of missions available for miners to complete while in the mines, more dwarven friends you can save along your journey (opening up more craftables and shops), and plenty of beer for you to drink while waiting for the next mining session. Developers are working towards a co-op feel but, we will have to wait and see if that will be available when this game launches into early access sometime in 2023!
