By Chris Picone, 31 May, 2025

I loved the idea of Life Below as a citybuilder that might potentially break the mold with its underwater setting.  But after watching the trailer, which demonstrated precious little gameplay,  I went in a little worried that this might just be one of those terrible parabolic games that want to shove environmentalism down your throat at the expense of fun. It's not. Turns out, the various competing drivers in healthy sea life turn out to be a great building block for some genuinely interesting mechanics in what I found to be a delightfully engaging city builder. 

Aesthetics

Life Below looks just bloody gorgeous, doesn't it?  The cinematics and sea life view are beatiful. The rest of the game looks surprisingly like any other city builder, just aquatic themed.  You place coral and clams just like buildings in any other game, and on slabs that sit above the ocean floor. A few bits of decorative rocks and grass sit here and there to fill the void until your colonies get a bit bigger.  To finish the look, shadows and rays of sunshine flicker across the bottom and bubbles periodically release across the screen.  Oh, and as your colonies attract sea life, the various fish happily swim all about the foreground, interacting with their habitats and food sources.  The map starts small but you expand by pushing into adjoining territories, eventually forming a sprawling play field. 

Gameplay

Gameplay begins like any other citybuilder, just ocean-themed. You build sprout coral, which spawns pieces of coral you can use for building alongside pearls harvested from clams.  Weirdly, you need to "power" all of your underwater structures using moon coral. Thankfully, this is the only real breach in theme I've noticed. Brain coral provides research points used for acquiring new "growth," unlocking new structures, and you can also collect various grasses to craft lures which attract a variety of sea life which of course you need to accommodate and feed.  Diversity is the key to healthy life in the ocean, and that's where the games get interesting.  For example, the first fish you attract are clownfish, which live in anemones and eat algae, so you need to produce enough algae to feed them.  However, if you produce too much algae, blooms can occur, which slowly damages your colony over time, so you need to find balance. Algae also slowly lowers the PH, which you'll also need to keep within a safe range. Weather events occur from time to time; a heatwave causes the ocean temperature to rise. Too high (or low) and everything dies, so you need to research and build special coral that cools it, but of course these require more resources, space, and (for some reason), power. Each new zone you unlock brings with it new challenges and the not-yet-released full version of the game is supposed to bring us much more complex trials in the form of pollution and oil spills.  I look forward to seeing how that plays out in-game.

Verdict

If you're a fan of city builders, I think you'll enjoy Life Below.  The challenges so far have been fairly easy to manage but of course only the early game is available so far and I expect they will become more difficult as the game progresses.  Trying to maintain all of your health indicators while also collecting resources and expanding is fun. And the ocean theme's really neat. I'm really enjoying Life Below so far and I'm very much looking forward to full release.

Links: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2932150/Life_Below/