Journey Below
Adventure, die, repeat. Don’t stop believin’
The premise of Journey Below is easy to sum up: tiny knight moves through 2D platformer dungeons, with you vaulting and stabbing along the way. The nuances, however, would take far longer: gauging when to lunge for an extra combo multiplier, deciding between double-jump or anti-bat power-ups between levels, knowing when to cut your losses and just make a break for the exit – to name but a few.
It’s deceptively simple, really. Your only controls are jumping and attacking (the latter also serves as a sort of dash), and your aim is simply to progress downward through 12 levels (which are unique each time you play) and kill the end boss. As you might expect, that’s all more easily said than done: levels are thick with monsters, from Lovecraftian tentacles through to cannons that swivel. Turning a foe into a red splat tacks 0.1 onto your combo multiplier, which sounds pitiful but soon racks up across a densely populated expanse. Get hit one too many times and you’re back to the very beginning, with nothing to show but your latest score.
Unfortunately, the thing with a set of randomly created levels that you’re unlikely to finish any time soon is that your progress sometimes feels arbitrary. Sure, you might have died on level 5-2 , but there’s no physical milestone to measure yourself against next time – only a level number and a score. Still, you know there’ll be enough creepy-crawlies down there to lure you back for another try.
the bottom line. A steadily paced game that encourages enthusiasm, if not experimentation. EMma Davies