Life Below First Impressions - Saving the Ocean with Corals

 

Who knew that managing corals would be both relaxing and intense? 

Life Below is a new twist on a City Builder genre that takes place deep underwater in the Ocean itself. I had the pleasure of getting to play through the demo recently, and I wanted to share my first impressions with everyone. 

 

So lets dive right in!

Story:

You play as the newly awakened Guardian named Thalassa, and get appointed by a being called Gaia to resurrect the Coral reefs. You learn real quickly that the Ocean is dying due to various environmental reasons, but primarily because Coral Reefs are disappearing at an alarming rate. With a bit of guidance from Gaia, and help from new friends called the water sprites, you set out to save the Ocean.

Because it's a demo there isn't too much story to speak of, but from the small sample I got to playthrough it has a compelling setup for the future. It kept me intrigued through the entirety of the demo, and left me with a hunger for more. 

Gameplay:

Life Below is basically a new take on a city builder genre, or in this case, a Coral reef management simulator. 

 

You have a small starting amount of water sprites that will follow your orders, and do all the different tasks you need to make this Coral reef thrive. To do that, you primarily will have to balance a few things, including: resources to be able to make the different Coral structures (that either provide you with resources or power to other structures), you need to do research to unlock different types of Coral, you need to lure in fish to increase the biodiversity of the reef, and lastly you need to be careful of the temperature and pH (Potential of Hydrogen) values that some of the Corals can produce.

Following the advice of real Marine biologists, the developers want you to learn what kind of ideal conditions a real life Coral Reef needs to be able to be formed in our actual Oceans, and the game does that quite well.

While all of this sounds like a lot of things to keep track of, the game thankfully teaches you everything step by step, and gives you heads-up in time when something is starting to go wrong, so it never fully felt overwhelming. Occasionally though there can be an event that affects the reef like a sudden rise in heat, and if you don't counter balance it all the Corals will start to slowly die out until it's fully a game over. 

 

If you have been diligent in your research, you will have unlocked new Coral structures that can counter balance any major situations. For example, against heat you can use a Chill Coral to put the temperature down a few steps, and then you make enough of them for your needs. You can repair the corals for a small cost of the materials you gather, so there are ways to minimize the damage. Also, the structures automatically put themselves in standby mode when they are not needed, so you don't have to destroy the structures after they have served their purpose.

As you keep on building the Reef you will learn that to expand to another territory you need to increase your biodiversity, and then use it as a resource to "buy" the new territory. To get biodiversity you need fish to inhabit your reef, and the more different fish join in, the more diverse the habitat is. As you gain access to new areas there are new challenges present, which can be anything from temperatures being a lot lower then you would like, or even the pH value being too high. As a Guardian you will have to carefully tackle these new environments to be able to nurture life and expand your Reef even further.

In the Demo we have only access to one new area, but I could preview some of the other areas by just hovering over them with my mouse. By doing this I saw that there will be an underwater ice and underwater lava areas later, which definitely will pose their own unique challenges.

Pros and Cons:

Right out of the bat I want to mention that the atmosphere and the music makes this game into a very calming and almost Zen like experience (unless your reef is dying to heat). More often than not I would let the game just do it's thing while I listened to the soundtrack and Ocean sounds.

I found the UI fairly useful, though at times it felt like it would popup a few too many notifications, which could occasionally make it feel a bit cluttered, and you had to "clean it out."

The biggest con I can say (and I have to remind you all that this is a demo of a beta build so whatever I say here will most likely be drastically different in the full release, but I feel that it could be useful for the developers) is that the Water Sprites in their default AI had weird prioritizing when it came to fixing structures. They kind of started with the cheapest and then went upwards, when ideally they should have fixed the core first because if that breaks its game over. I did noticed a grayed out option that will allow us to change their behaviors and priorities, but it is a bit weird that by default they don't go for the most critical structure so to speak. Hopefully that is something we can set as a default in the full release.

Closing thoughts:

For the very short time I got to spend with Life Below I had a surprisingly enjoyable and calming experience. There is a lot of potential here for a rather unique take on the city builder genre, and I highly appreciated the fact that it is grounded in reality in the sense of how actual Reefs work. So it felt like I learned something while just having fun enjoying the game.

I could see this game being a new pioneer for "learning by playing" type of games for both Children and Adults; it is a scene that sorely needs new takes on it! Either way, I am optimistic with this game and what it has shown, and can't wait to see how it continues to develop. As of writing this article there is no confirmed date yet when the game is going to be released.

If you want to give the demo a try yourself you can find it on Steam page for the game.