Publisher Kasedo Games and developer Megapop have announced Life Below, a brand new reef building simulation game, with a story written by award winning video game writer Rhianna Pratchett.
The game is set to release on PC in 2026, and is set in a near-future Earth where the ocean is no longer what it used to be. In this world, coral is dying and it is up to the player to make a difference. To do so, players will jump into a beautiful world under the sea and grow their very own reef, while also attracting wildlife to increase and evolve the underwater ecosystem.
“We are thrilled to be joining forces with Kasedo Games. As fans of IXION, we know Kasedo’s background of nurturing innovative titles”, said Jørgen Tharaldsen, CEO of Megapop. “We’ve been incredibly lucky and we’re grateful to be supported by our publishing partner Kasedo, as well as Creative Europe, the Norwegian Film Institute and Viken Filmcentre with funding to allow us to make Life Below what we envisaged."
Despite releasing next year, Life Below has already received an honorable mention in the Unity for Humanity grant awards. The grant recognizes games that use technology to make a "social impact to build a more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable world." The also aims to be one of the most accessible city builders ever created, and is being developed in conjunction with Arevya. The charity SpecialEffect is involved in evaluating accessibility features for the game, and will be advising on how they might be implemented in more impactful ways.
Lise Hagen Lie, Game Director said, “We are hoping all players can have fun playing Life Below, in a chill but also strategic setting where you can get quickly into the world but need to think and use every aspect in the reef to reach the goal - a stable reef. We want this game to be about hope, about what can be, and about how we’re all connected, not doom and gloom. In the real world, life below water is struggling, and a key part of solving that will be for more people to know, care and appreciate problems facing the environment. So while I hope players will find the game a fun and interesting strategic challenge, I also hope that they feel hopeful for the future of life underwater."
Life Below will be featured at Steam Next Fest from June 9th to June 16th with a playable demo.
Features:
Navigate the push and pull between expansion of the reef and the challenges they will need to grow and evolve new solutions to.
Seek out new wildlife through the crafting and luring systems, while maintaining habitats and food resources.
The rules underwater have changed rapidly. Find solutions with the aid of the corals of the reef as well as permanent and visiting wildlife.
Navigate heatwaves, increased acidity, garbage clouds, jellyfish migrations and other constantly changing hazards.
See the reef from three perspectives - close to the wildlife, classic top-down and the whole playable map.
Experience the spectacle of life underwater, collecting species in the collection book as you go.
Narrative written by award-winning video games writer Rhianna Pratchett.
One of the most accessible city builders ever. Developed in conjunction with consultant Arevya and the charity Special Effect UK to evaluate accessibility features for the game and how we can implement these in impactful ways.
Additionally, the developers have provided a complete Q&A session, which provides a deeper insight into the game. Note that these questions were not asked by Netto's Game Room.
Life Below Developer Q&A:
Could you tell me a bit about Megapop?
Megapop is a 13 year old game development studio based in Oslo, Norway. We’re a team of 15 working on Life Below, with a diverse, women- and gender minority-led team. We have experience from making many different genres - deckbuilders, strategy, tower defence and puzzle games. Our team has experience from big and small studios, from AAA studios like Funcom to three-person indie teams.
In more recent years, we’ve tried to angle the studio more towards projects we think are meaningful. We want to create games which are both fun and impactful. With our previous experience as a foundation it simply clicked when we first started workshopping what became Life Below.
What inspired the concept for this game, and how did the idea evolve over time?
The inspiration for Life below comes from many aspects.
I (Lise Hagen Lie, Game Director) grew up in and around the Oslo (or really Tønsberg) archipelago. My grandparents had a boat my grandfather had built himself, so I spent time on the islands every summer. My favourite activity, next to swimming, was to watch the shallows - the crabs, fish and hermit crabs. A whole world was down there, so different to ours and yet they were completely linked. Since then marine life has always been a great interest and love of mine, and to be able to include this with one of my other great interests - games - is pretty much a dream come true.
When I started at Megapop, the team was turning 10 years old, and it was time to take a good look at what we wanted to do the next 10. As part of this, we put time into what our next project(s) could, should and would look like. We had a process where the whole team came with ideas, and Life Below was one of them. Instantly we felt there was something special about this concept, and we needed to explore it further. It also helps that several people on the team has a great interest in underwater life. In the beginning the concept leaned more towards a TinyGlade or Townscaper kind of interaction, but we moved away from that pretty quickly through prototyping and workshopping the core design.
We want to show the spectacle of underwater life on natures own basis, subverting the materialistic and human centred focus of traditional city builders. Games like for instance Terra Nil were of course a great inspiration for that, but we wanted to take a different approach to it. So where they are described as a ‘reverse city builder’ we describe Life Below as a Reef Builder. Taking traditional (or even “capitalistic”) mechanics in the more traditional city builders we put it into systems as they work underwater. We had for instance workshops with Marine Biologists, who helped us make sure we had a certain amount of “reality” in the game.
Can you describe the Life Below’s core mechanics and what makes its gameplay unique?
Life Below is a unique spin on the city builder genre - a reef builder. A never before seen twist where the player can build their reef on nature's own terms. No humans, only nature reclaiming and rebuilding the ocean. The game is a unique package of known and loved mechanics from city builders set in an underwater world, and founded on natural systems in our ocean. A game where you as the player can get immersed in a beautiful world, and take on the challenge of growing your reef in a climate impacted ocean.
- The core experience of Life Below is to grow your reef through building and resource management, seeking out wildlife to increase its biodiversity and flourish with life, which again gives the player the ability to evolve the reef to face the challenges underwater.
- The player will have to navigate the push and pull between expansion of the reef and the challenges they will need to grow and evolve new solutions to.
- Seek out new wildlife through the crafting and luring systems, while maintaining habitats and food resources.
- Not all wildlife live in the reef permanently, and the player can get help from wildlife visitors
- The rules underwater have changed rapidly, and this is what you as a player will need to find solutions to. Some come from the wildlife, and some from the corals of the reef.
- Hazards will come to the reef, and the player will need to navigate heatwaves, increased acidity, garbage clouds and jellyfish migrations.
- See the reef from three viewpoints - close to the wildlife, classic top-down and the whole playable map. Each viewpoint gives you information about your reef, or lets you experience the world from different perspectives.
- Building your reef lets you experience the spectacle of life underwater, and collect species in the collection book.
- Our narrative is written by Rhianna Pratchett, where the main character Thalassa finds her path as the guardian of the reef with support from Pontus, a previous reef guardian.
- Life Below will probably be the most accessible city builder ever, as we’ve worked with accessibility consultant Arevya and the charity Special Effect UK to evaluate accessibility features for the game and how we can implement these in impactful ways.
What kind of world or setting does the game take place in, and how did you build its lore and atmosphere?
Life Below takes place in a near-future Earth, where the ocean is no longer what it used to be. The rules have changed - fast. Coral is dying, ecosystems collapsing, and something ancient awakens. The voice of nature tasks the player, Thalassa, to protect the Heart of the Reef and reignite life in the deep. By channeling its energy and growing new coral structures, she must bring life back to the underwater world before it's too late.
The core setting of Life Below comes from the point of view we went into developing the concept with - that we want to subvert this genre into being on nature's own basis. We didn’t want to ‘muddy the waters’ with humans, and show that nature - life - goes on when we let it do so. The game is inspired by and founded in real world issues and systems as they are today, extracted in game mechanics we know and love from more traditional city builders. We want this project to inspire hope and understanding of how interconnected we and the ocean really is, rather than bring doom and gloom. We want to implicitly show the problems the ocean face packaged into a fun game.
You can feel the atmosphere of Life Below the moment you get into the game - chill, beautiful and intriguing, but also with an inching sense of hidden danger.
What kind of events are players likely to come up against and is the game narratively driven?
Life Below is a narrative experience as well as a strategic game. The player is personified through Thalassa, the newly minted guardian of the reef. Choosing her action as the guardian and architect of the reef, the player will help wildlife with their requests, meet lost spirits of previous reef inhabitants and ‘surface dwellers’, and learn about the reef that was there before - and its collapse.
The player might for instance experience lionfish infestations, where the (here) invasive species infests a zone, causing devastating wildlife death. The fish living in that area will be eaten by the lionfish as it spreads, taking over neighboring areas until dealt with by the player. The loss of wildlife is devastating to the area, the coral structures and the reef itself - slowly killing the Reef Heart and the foothold the player has made. Similarly, the reef will need to confront new problems, like the garbage wave. Nature, like the player, will not know how this can be dealt with, and will need to use all the resources of the reef to find a solution. You as Thalassa will learn as nature learns how to solve these hazards.
You will also need to deal with other hazards such as acidic waves, jellyfish migration, sea urchins and oilspill clouds. All of which affect the reef in their own ways, like destroying structures, eating up harvestable material which then delays crafting, or even eating up wildlife.
The player will need to be strategic in building coral structures that have both compatible and incompatible abilities, and managing the different biomes the reef will need to grow into to expand. Certain structures will for instance be needed for resource production, but will also make the surrounding area - zone - more hazardous. For instance increase the temperature of the water. The player will need to either build compatible structures which counteract those hazardous structures, or prioritise differently.
What kind of experience are you hoping to deliver to players?
We are hoping the players will have fun playing Life Below, in a chill but also strategic setting where you can get quickly into the world but need to think and use every aspect in the reef to reach the goal - a stable reef.
One way we’re very excited about the player experiencing the game is through our 3 map views. Wildlife view, Reef View and Ocean View — each offering a different perspective on the reef and your connection to it.
At Ocean View, you see the entire reef from above—the overworld. It’s where you chart your progress, plan your expansion, and get a sense of how your reef fits into the larger ocean. You can also see direction and hazards before they hit your reef.
Reef View brings you into a specific zone. This is where the core gameplay unfolds: building coral structures, responding to hazards, harvesting resources, and keeping the ecosystem in balance. It's where you roll up your sleeves and shape the future of the reef.
Then there’s Wildlife View — a more intimate, immersive space. Here, you zoom all the way in and experience the world you've helped create up close. It’s not about efficiency or action—it’s about wonder. You see the fish swim, the coral pulse, the ocean breathe. While this layer isn’t part of the demo yet (we want it to truly shine), it’s designed as a place to step back from the hustle and simply be in the world you’ve nurtured—together with nature.
What challenges have your team faced during development, and how did you overcome them?
Life Below uniqueness is also one of its biggest challenges - how do you make a reef builder fun, engaging and a good experience for the player? We spent quite a bit of time in preproduction defining what a city builder is, and what we wanted to translate, and how we would do that. To help us have a real world foundation we also sought out help from marine biologists who were instantly as keen as we were for this project. Which again caused a different problem - a reef has a never ending amount of complexities we had to make choices around. For instance we had to quite early in the process realise that we had to lean on magical realism for certain abstraction to not make the system too detailed or incomprehensible for the player. A real example is that the species of coral we use for our buildings were suggested by the marine biologists based upon what they would do in the game, but these corals often come from vastly different areas of the world or depths in the ocean. Many of the coral species we build next to each other would never be besides each other in reality. The same can be said for our wildlife. These were some of the things we had to reflect on when making the initial concept, and make some internal rules for.
Simulation games like Life Below have the added challenge of many layers of systems interacting and affecting each other. We chose to explore and commit to using Unity ECS for Life Below to handle the technical aspect of this challenge, which has been a big help, although the technology was relatively new when we first started off the project. We also had to solve wildlife behaviour and interactions in an optimized system - a technological challenge which we’ll be continuing to hone over the coming months.
The uncertainty in the games industry right now has weighed on us as it has many other developers. We’ve been incredibly lucky and we’re grateful to be supported by our publishing partner Kasedo, Creative Europe, the Norwegian Film Institute and Viken Filmcentre with funding to get Life Below to the finish line, but finding funding to create games has not been easy in our current market. It was also the fact that we do not have internal marketing or PR, which made getting the right partner - which we’re very happy we did get with Kasedo - to do this with us.
What are the key themes and messages that the game explores?
The game explores themes of underwater life, ecosystem balance, and nature's resilience in the face of rapid change. It’s about learning to adapt, understanding the delicate interplay between species, and confronting environmental collapse. At its heart, it’s also a coming-of-age story—of a guardian, Thalassa, awakening to her role and responsibilities as she learns to protect and nurture a fragile world beneath the waves.
How does player choice or interaction affect the game’s story or progression?
Players will need to choose how to prioritise their expansion, how they grow the reef as well as how they solve the hazards they face. Those choices have vast consequences as the game progresses. As the hazards are randomly selected from the hazard pool, the player won’t be able to plan for “day 5 garbage wave”. Prioritising evolving and growing the reef in one way might in fact hinder progress, and make certain areas - zones - more vulnerable to hazards and therefore set the player back. Depending on their playstyle critical structures can be left unattended and die, which can escalate until the reef colony collapses.
Since the game contains levels of randomness - like the hazard pool and generated seafloor - no two playthroughs will be alike in the full game. This means your reefs will also be different, and the challenges you need to face will not be the same each time. Each playthrough the player will have learned more about the solutions to each hazard, which can also help you develop the reef more effectively. At the same time the changed seabed can offer new or different challenges you might not have had to handle the previous playthrough.
Can you talk about the visual and audio design — what tone or feeling were you aiming for?
The visual design of Life Below was set quite early in the process of defining the game. We wanted it to be clearly natural and organic, clear (as there is a lot going on on the screen) and reflect how magical nature really is. We loved the combination, and the end result is deeply inspired by magical realism. For our structures, or buildings as they would be in a traditional city builder, we found real species of coral and sponges, combined this with an interesting shape, and included a magical element inspired by nature, media or our imagination. Our main characters are the same, inspired by famous media but based on real underwater creatures.
The end result we think shows these original intentions well - we wanted to keep it as clean and clear as we could, while also including all those things that make the biomes underwater so fantastical. My one ‘demand’ was that I did not want Life Below to feel “plasticy” which I feel some underwater media tends to do. Our visual style is a collaboration of the entire art department, and I’m so excited to be working with such talented artists.
The audio in Life Below is composed and produced by the amazing Julie Buchanan. Julie is an American composer based in Berlin, who has previously worked on among other things League of Legends: Wild Rift and Rocket League. Early on we explored what is important to us, what approach we wanted to take to underwater style sounds, wildlife sfx, and what kind of music we like in general. It has been a joy to work with Julie through this process, as she delivers amazing soundscapes and quality every time. With each added UI sound, music track or fish ‘grunt’ the world comes more alive. We have tried making a soundscape which can both be listened to for hours at a time, and which drives you forward. The music changes intensity based on how developed different areas - zones - are, and we’ve used references from real reef recordings to make the sounds for different wildlife. We’re very grateful to get access to the recording archives of the Polar Institute, Ocean Research Institute and the The Marine Acoustic Research Station (MARS).
What do you hope players take away from the game after they’ve played it?
80% of our planet is covered in water yet it's something not too many people know much about. We eat fish and wildlife from there, but it’s not very commonly known how life underwater works or looks like or interacts. I hope this game will give people a peek into this amazing world that is so attached to ours, a world we are totally dependent on to survive, that deserves our time and consideration. Life below water is struggling, and a key part of solving that will be for more people to know, care and appreciate it. So while I hope players will find the game a fun and interesting strategic challenge, I also hope that they feel hopeful for the future of life underwater. We want this game to be about hope, about what can be and how we’re all connected, not doom and gloom.
I also hope players are excited about the potential for the game! We hope to create a living game, where the players can come with suggestions for further biomes, species and strategic challenges for the game.
How are the Norwegian Film Institute involved in the game?
The Norwegian Film Institute has funded Life Below through 3 development phases, preproduction, alpha and release. We’re incredibly lucky to have the support of the institute, and grateful the expert review panel saw potential in our project and chose Life Below each time we applied.
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