Diablo dev David Brevik goes solo with It Lurks Below
Terrari-what-now?
There are few accolades in PC games on the same level as 'Programmer and designer on the original Diablo', but David Brevik gets to wear that badge with pride. However, leaving Blizzard following the release of Warcraft 3, his career has been a little tumultuous, to put it lightly.
Since leaving Blizzard, he has since worked on Hellgate: London, Dungeons & Dragons Online and was creative lead on the recently (and sadly) shut down Marvel Heroes. For his latest project, he's going solo, old-school and indie, and his upcoming platform exploration/dungeon-crawling sandbox It Lurks Below looks more than a little like Terraria right now.
As it stands, at least going by the gameplay trailer above, It Lurks Below could pass for any of a hundred other Terraria imitators launched over the past few years. Fortunately, watching some extended gameplay footage on the official Twitch page for Greybeard Games (Brevik's tiny indie outfit) there's perhaps a bit more to it than just shameless imitation.
Watching it in action, it seems It Lurks Below is geared a lot more towards dungeon crawling than Terraria, with your town being a pre-fab assembled home base that you return to for healing and resupply rather than the main focus of your attention. Instead, you're assigned quests to carry out in the dungeon beneath, which reward you with new abilities, character stat upgrades and new crafting recipes, meaning that in order to get stronger, you'll always have to dig deeper and fight bigger, scarier monsters.
There's also a greater Diablo-like focus on loot, itemization and cooldown-based powers. Given Brevik's experience crunching those numbers on a multitude of other similar games, it doesn't seem unreasonable to hope that this one will play a little more tightly than most games in this particularly wooly and casual sub-genre.
It Lurks Below will be available to purchase via Steam Early Access soon, and you can wishlist its page if you want to keep posted on exactly when it releases.