Sublevel Zero Review

After previewing Sublevel Zero, I was more than eager to get my hands on the game upon its release earlier last month. Roguelikes are my thing anyway, and having known about Descent beforehand but never played it, I jumped at the chance and bought this game as soon as I could.

Sublevel Zero is a modern rendition of Descent, a game released in 1994 that utilises the feature Six Degrees of Freedom, in which there is no gravity controlling the environment, giving the player complete freedom on where to move and look.

The story behind Sublevel Zero is that, for hundreds of years, the universe has been simply destroying itself for no known reason. The survivors of these events have been scattered amongst the stars. Clans are formed, with no government to control the remnants of humanity who are left to fend for themselves across the decaying universe.

Some of these Clans attempt to seek out the secrets of the universe, including what happened/is happening, and in hopes of somehow reversing the changes that have been made to space itself. As a scout for your clan, you come across a station and an accident occurs, causing both your ship and the station to be sucked into a wormhole and spat out somewhere unknown in the vastness of space. You are forced to venture in alone, in hopes of finding technology to get back home and maybe discover more about what happened to the galaxy (and every other one while you’re at it).

Being a roguelike, death is a given; you’re going to die a lot and want to cry because these deaths were because you didn’t spot those 20 missiles that were all flying straight at your face. Enemies in Sublevel Zero vary as you get further into the game. The starting levels having simple, slow enemies that don’t deal much damage, whereas later levels including more intense opponents, such as enemies that dash for you, dealing high damage should their paths collide with yours, or fast firing and very rapid opponents that prove to be a lot more difficult to hit than it sounds.

Weaponry and inventory is important in Sublevel Zero. There are three types of primary weapons: bullet, plasma and energy. They all function the same, however with perks and crafting you can combine these weapons to give yourself a much more powerful arsenal. Throughout playthroughs, you can earn perks, called Nanocarts, such as giving you a small increase to your accuracy at the cost of fire-rate, or greatly increasing damage with one type of weaponry at the cost of the others, really throwing in the choice of which weapons and perks you should use.

The gameplay is procedurally generated, meaning that every time you play, you will be met with a different layout of the station, with different loot and enemies in different places. This means that dying and starting again does not yield the same result, and gives the game decent replayability even if you complete it. Audio logs are scattered across the levels and give a good insight to the station and even more reason to replay the game in search of them.

At the end of each level is a boss-type scenario that gets progressively harder as you progress through the game. At first it is simply a Sphere surrounded by low-level enemies, but the second level it begins to spew lasers out as you attack it, and these become more and more powerful the later in the game you are. This sudden surprise and crank-up in difficulty is sure to catch players off guard, and is what was responsible for many of my deaths in my time with the game.

The art style of Sublevel Zero is effective, being the right blend of retro goodness and perfectly blended textures to create an aesthetically pleasing experience that doesn’t try too hard to look perfect, but still manages to pull it off. The soundtrack follows the route, being a funky, upbeat 8-bit tune that never ceases to please my ears, it adds to the replayability, just to hear the soundtrack is enough reason to give the game one more try.

Overall, Sublevel Zero seems like a brilliant game, whether you’re a fan of roguelikes or not. The art style coupled with the music and the sheer amount of replayability in this game means it is well worth the price it is given, and will be one you’ll find yourself playing very frequently in order to just get a bit further than you did last time.