It Lurks Below, David Brevik’s Next Project Enters Closed Beta

David Brevik, a veteran video game developer who was one of the creators of Diablo, worked on Hellgate: London, Dungeons & Dragons: Online, Marvel Heroes, and is currently busy being the one man in his one-man studio Graybeard Games, has announced that his next project, It Lurks Below, is about to enter closed beta on February 2, 2018, and be showcased on his Twitch channel.

The game itself is said to combine certain elements of sandbox digging and building games like Terraria, and Diablo-style action-RPGs. You can find out more about it, and see some early screenshots, in this Polygon article. An excerpt:

“I wanted more of a point to a lot of those games,” Brevik said. “I wanted to make an RPG, with classes and leveling up, random items, where you get more and more powerful as you go down into the core of the world and fight baddies.”

Brevik said It Lurks Below will be a roguelike mix of what he’s done before with games like Diablo and Hellgate: London, and the games he loves playing now. His side-scrolling 2D game will let players explore procedurally generated levels populated with randomized monsters to fight and items to collect. It Lurks Below is “random built on random,” he said.

The game’s combat will see players using wands — “basically guns” — and tools like a pickaxe to fight and dig through the game world. Those weapons will carry their own stats and elemental attributes, as will enemies. “I’m taking inspiration from the Diablo series, where every monster has its own trick,” Brevik said.

It Lurks Below will include three styles of play: normal, an easier “creative” mode and hardcore, essentially a permadeath mode.

Brevik aims to launch It Lurks Below on Steam this year, and will release a closed beta this weekend. That beta will be limited to 200 people. Brevik plans to stream the game this weekend on his studio’s Twitch channel.

It Lurks Below has been in development “in earnest” for about a year, Brevik said. It was originally a project of a much larger scope that he said might take 10 years to finish. But he scaled his idea down, and turned his new roguelike dungeon crawler into something simpler that he could make himself, from art to music to programming. Brevik’s been making games for more than 25 years — he programmed and designed the original Diablo — but he admits he’s inexperienced in making game art. Hence It Lurks Below’s low-res, pixelated aesthetic.

“That was the most difficult thing for me, because I’m not much of an artist,” Brevik said. “It’s definitely got a pixel retro kind of feel to it … I’ve tried to make it as dark and creepy as I can … creepy atmosphere and lighting.” Brevik said that the game’s art “took me the longest amount of time, but as I’ve gone along, I’ve gotten better and better at pixel art and animations.” He joked that as players dig deeper in the game, they’ll see his artwork improved over the course of development.

And here are some additional details about the beta reveal:

January 31, 2018 – San Francisco, CA – Two years after founding his one-man studio known as Graybeard Games, industry luminary David Brevik has returned, set to debut his first major release since 2013. Coming to Steam later this year, It Lurks Below combines Brevik’s love for the creative spirit behind such titles as Terraria and Minecraft with the revolutionary RPG mechanics he himself conceptualized for Diablo, all with a delightfully indie/retro aesthetic. Those curious to see exactly what lurks below can tune in to Twitch this weekend to view a closed beta comprised of 200 players experiencing the game for the first time—except for Brevik, of course, who has spent many months with the game and will also be streaming it.

The closed beta begins on Friday, Feb. 2, and ends Monday evening, Feb. 5. All participants are actively encouraged to stream the game via Twitch, and Brevik will be doing so himself at the following times from twitch.tv/graybeardgames:

• Friday, Feb. 2: 9 p.m. – 11 p.m. PST
• Saturday, Feb. 3: 3 p.m. – 5 p.m. PST
• Sunday, Feb. 4 (it’s the biggest game to watch of the day!): 10 a.m. – Noon PST
• Monday, Feb. 5: Noon – 2 p.m. PST

Brevik also promises to randomly surprise beta players who are checking out the game—there’s no telling where else you’ll see him pop up! “Though I certainly had creative influence as CEO of Gazillion, I feel like I’m finally right back where I belong—actually getting my hands dirty and creating great games,” says Brevik, who moved on from his position as CEO of Gazillion Entertainment in 2015. “It’s humbling going from large teams making content based on huge properties like Marvel to a one-man team with a brand new idea no one has heard of yet—but I’m loving every minute of the process. It’s all very exciting…and a little bit scary, too. I’ve always been a huge proponent of community involvement in game creation, and I heartily welcome all feedback from players and Twitch-stream viewers—anything that can make It Lurks Below the best it can possibly be.”