Whenever I get the chance to play Below at any convention, it winds up bumming me out in the best way. Make no mistake, Capy's gorgeous dungeon crawler is absolutely as wonderful to play as it appears to be, but there's always a part of me that wishes that there weren't thousands of rabid fans bolting around my peripherals in a bright, open room. You see, Below is very clearly the ultimate game to play in the dark at the end of the day. It's the type of game that requires you to soak in its atmosphere, it's breathtaking visuals (the tech behind which is actually extremely impressive to a trained eye) and its ethereal soundtrack from the talented Jim Guthrie. The fact that Below has consistently blown me away throughout every second of the four plus hours I've spent with it at various shows over the years, despite the obnoxious shoutcasting that always seems to be occurring in the background, speaks to just how amazing Capy's magnum opus is.

Whereas my past experiences with Below were spent diving in with headphones on, I was able to sit down and chat with immensely talented graphics programmer Colin Weick throughout my latest hour of gameplay. Capy has made it a point to maintain secrecy, despite the fact that Below has been playable on show floors far and wide since 2013. However, it's not until you really break down just what's going on in this beautiful title that you realize how impressive the latest set of changes truly is. In the past, players have navigated down into the caves below the mysterious central island without much guidance, creating almost a Spelunky-like drive to create the best run possible. The fine folks at Capy realized that not giving any sort of guidance actually hinders the experience a bit, so a minimalist world map has been added to the proceedings. There is one major catch, though, so fear not if you're afraid of a title based heavily on mystery turning into a Ubisoft-style open-world game loaded with map icons and hand-holding. Below's map is entirely made up of squares with dotted lines that illustrate where one can find an exit. This compromise allows players to plan out their route a bit more while still maintaining the sense of discovery the entire experience is dependent on.

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The Pocket, a central hub in which you can store items for later runs, marks the second major addition to Below. By adding a level of persistence to the proceedings, Capy allows players to not only save themselves the trouble of having to completely restart their progress over and over, but it also creates a level of strategy that, in combination with the map, simply wasn't present in previous builds. The fear with these two additions is that they would simplify a game whose difficulty its calling card. Thankfully, all of the depth and brutality that players have been praising Below for are still there in spades. In past builds, dying meant that if you wanted to regain your inventory, you'd need to head back to the same general area in a new procedurally-generated environment. This is absolutely still the case, but now you'll be able to know exactly which section of the dungeon your body resides in, which prevents you from getting completely lost in an entirely new realm. Add this to the Pocket, which I used to store my lantern for a later run, and there's far more planning in Below than you see in literally every other game that uses procedural generation. So yes, Below is a bit more streamlined than before, but the levels of strategy that the map and the Pocket add give you the opportunity to concentrate on your past, present and future, rather than simply focusing on the former two.

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Weick's main role is making sure that Below's insane technical prowess doesn't come at the expense of its 1080p 60 FPS benchmarks (this is easily the most ignorant way to describe the job of one of the smartest individuals I've met in this industry, but I digress). If you take a look at screenshots from past iterations of Below, you'll notice that newer builds have more of a 3D aesthetic. This not only allows for more enemies to appear on the screen at any given time, but it also allows for additions like increased wind-affected foliage and denser volumetric fog. Of course, take these generalizations with a grain of salt, as I'm not a graphics programmer with post-graduate degrees and an advanced knowledge of code, but the entire concept of the 2D-to-3D switch can be boiled down into a simple explanation. Essentially, this allows for more stuff on the screen at any given time without sacrificing resolution and framerate. The good news is that Below actually looks far more gorgeous than it ever has, and it represents a clear argument against the ignorant idea that independent games are somehow less technically advanced than their AAA counterparts.

I also had the opportunity to see the difference between what Below will look like on the Xbox One compared to the PC, which seems to be its lead platform. To the untrained eye, there is basically no difference, though once you break it down a bit you can certainly see how the two versions will vary. The main difference comes in Below's breathtaking shadows, which are a bit noisier on Xbox One than on PC. Granted, the console audience isn't necessarily one that is actively looking to see whether or not tiny shadows are fuzzy or not, but it's definitely easy to notice once it's pointed out. The good news for Xbox One gamers is that Below is going to run at sixty frames-per-second at 1080p, so the gameplay will remain as tight and precise as it is on the PC iteration.

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PAX East 2016 was a unique show in that it represented almost a complete turnover in titles that appeared at previous conventions. Because of the dichotomy between convention frequency and development cycles, it's likely that PAX Prime 2016 and even PAX East 2017 will wind up having some of the same titles that we saw on the show floor in Boston this past weekend. Below represented one of the few exceptions to this generalization, but considering that its Summer 2016 launch is rapidly approaching, this is likely going to be the last PAX that we see Capy at for some time. The good news is that Summer provides the perfect opportunity for Capy to monopolize a week in this rapidly evolving industry, allowing for an inevitable rise to the top of the Top Sellers charts, much like Hyper Light Drifter earlier this year. After spending even more time with this beautiful, challenging action title, it's safe to say that it is 100% worth the wait.