Below the Blades Preview: Climbing with Lovecraft's "Little" Darling

The first-person horror game Below the Blades makes your career choice for you, putting you to work as a maintenance technician on a 660-meter-tall wind turbine. Having to repair malfunctioning equipment at that dizzying height is the least of your worries, though. A sinister, Lovecraftian giant crab is hot on your heels.

Ever been pinched by a crab while walking along a beach or exploring tidal flats? You have? Did you perhaps even shout "Ouch!"? Oh, then you really don't want to know what's waiting for you in Below the Blades (Steam page). 🤐 H. P. Lovecraft has his tentacles all over this survival horror game. Or rather, his claws. And as you probably know, the man had a thing for creatures of rather enormous proportions.

Maybe that's why Turbine 46—the wind turbine you're supposed to climb as a maintenance worker—stands a whopping 660 meters tall. How else is a Lovecraftian version of the Japanese giant spider crab supposed to climb up after you? More importantly, though, Below the Blades takes the climbing part very seriously. I wish I could say the same about BrokenLore: Ascend, another horror game that sends you up a towering structure.

Developer Dillion Muse doesn't let you climb ladders the way most games do. You have to coordinate your arms, manage your stamina, and contend with strong winds at dizzying heights. Repairs involve considerably more than pressing a button, too. And that gets particularly "fun" when you're trying to fix something while clinging to a ladder. Want the details? Good. That's what this preview is for.

A storm is brewing

My first surprise was how much actual gameplay Dillion Muse managed to squeeze into the roughly 330-megabyte preview build of Below the Blades. After all, in 2026, even some main menus take up more space than that. Part of the reason is the game's modest visual presentation. Forget glossy, cutting-edge graphics. Instead, you're treated to an almost crude PlayStation 1 aesthetic, at least when it comes to the environments. If low-detail, jagged 3D graphics aren't your thing, your trip into the clouds might be over before it even begins.

But if you're willing to look past that, you'll quickly find your open-mindedness rewarded. And I do mean quickly, because Below the Blades doesn't waste minutes on a lengthy prologue. Once you arrive at Turbine 46, a brief radio message brings you up to speed. A storm is approaching, various systems and electrical boxes are malfunctioning, and you need to fix them. Chop-chop! That's roughly the gist of the atmospheric opening transmission.

And yes, atmosphere is something this game certainly has. The ominous sea breeze doesn't exactly roar around the turbine's island, but even its subdued howling sends a clear message: This is no ordinary place. It might not even be entirely real. Some rather modern visual effects also help create a dense, foggy nighttime atmosphere, retro graphics notwithstanding. For now, though, the game keeps the actual horror on a fairly tight leash.

Press E to equip a tool? Think again!

The first thing you learn at the foot of the wind turbine is how to repair an electrical box. It's fairly straightforward, with colored indicator lights showing you where something has gone wrong. Sometimes you need to replace a fuse; other times, you use combination pliers to reset a relay. Pick the wrong tool, and a helpful little tooltip tells you what you actually need. The basic procedure is always the same:

1. Use a screwdriver to loosen the screws at the top and bottom left
2. Open the box
3. Turn off the main power switch
4. Fix the problem and, if necessary, move the contact arms to close the circuit
5. Turn the main power switch back on
6. Close the box and screw it shut again

If that sounds a little complicated, trust me: After fixing two or three boxes, you'll have the routine down pat. The real challenge lies elsewhere. You can't simply press a button to magically equip a tool. No, you actually have to pull the screwdriver or combination pliers out of your jacket pockets. To do that, you tilt the first-person camera down toward your jacket and click on the tool you need.

Monkey business on a ladder

Now here's why all this realism feels both cool and challenging. You climb ladders by alternately pressing and holding the left and right mouse buttons. This effectively makes your maintenance technician move one arm after the other, hauling himself up rung by rung. Switch between the buttons too quickly, and Mr. Fix might lose his grip and tumble off the ladder. Getting the rhythm right takes a little finesse.

As you climb, your stamina steadily drains. When your vision starts to darken, it's time for a break. You do that by holding down both mouse buttons simultaneously and waiting for your stamina to recover. If you just keep climbing like there's no tomorrow, well ... you'll soon find yourself heading down a lot faster than you went up. Fall too far, and your technician won't actually die, but you'll be sent back to the last checkpoint.

Now imagine there's an electrical box mounted right next to your ladder, with no walkway in front of it. What do you do? I'll tell you:

1. Press and hold a key to lean over toward the box.
2. Pull the screwdriver out of your pocket. Meanwhile, your stamina drains much faster because you're hanging on with only one arm. The strong winds up there make matters even worse.
3. Loosen the first screw, then quickly take a break before you fall.
4. Rinse and repeat ...

I know, that sounds pretty fiddly. And to some extent, it is. But with a little patience, even the trickier repairs are perfectly manageable. Personally, I quite enjoyed all that fiddling around, partly because Below the Blades challenges me in meaningful ways without relying on the usual combat encounters or puzzle-solving routines. The preview build suggests there's more here than an interactive horror movie, something the platforming sections and occasional little brainteasers also make clear.

And then the giant crab drops by

Which brings us to another point: Below the Blades isn't just about climbing ladder rungs and performing slightly awkward repairs. When you're navigating the turbine's walkways, the next route upward isn't always obvious. Sometimes you simply have to experiment. "Can I make that long jump to the next walkway?" "Will that narrow ledge hold me?" In other words, Below the Blades isn't afraid to occasionally just be a game. The same goes for the recently released immersive sim RetroSpace, by the way.

But how does Below the Blades fare as a horror game? Well, that's precisely where the preview build kept most of its cards close to its chest. In fact, the monstrous crab only made a single appearance, right at the very end of this little taste of things to come. I was climbing a ladder when suddenly, an enormous, crabby nightmare of a face appeared directly above me. No roaring (a roaring crab would be a bit strange, wouldn't it?), no snapping claws. Just sheer Lovecraftian excess and an eerie, otherworldly presence.

Judging by the latest trailer, which you can watch at the end of this article, that encounter might mark the beginning of a longer, on-and-off chase. And from the looks of it, such a pursuit would put even more emphasis on the platforming elements. I'd certainly welcome that change of pace. After all, there are already enough horror games that have me hiding from monsters inside wardrobes, Ming vases, and laundry hampers.

My big journalistic toe is tingling, telling me that Dillion Muse hasn't neglected the scarier side of his creation. Still, a brief glimpse of the actual chase gameplay would have been nice. Let's hope the developer simply considered the crab's final appearance the perfect way to end the preview, rather than a necessary cutoff because there wasn't enough horror content to show.

Verdict: Below the Blades puts the GAME back in horror game

My time with the Below the Blades preview has left me hopeful. Hopeful for a horror game that doesn't just funnel me down a narrow story corridor. One that gives me things to do, mechanics to experiment with, and plenty of surprises, both in its skill-based challenges and its action sequences. But hey, no pressure, Dillion Muse. 😉

So if you also think horror games lean a little too heavily toward haunted-house rides and scary movies these days, Below the Blades is worth keeping an eye on. You'll need an appreciation for 32-bit-era 3D graphics and a taste for Lovecraftian crab-and-tentacle horror. The latter might be getting a little long in the tooth, but that's also what makes it a refreshing alternative to the usual vengeful ghosts and slashers.

For now, Below the Blades is only planned for PC, where the full survival horror game is scheduled to launch on November 12.

Alex Nitschke

I’ve been into video games since 1982, spending 12 of those years in professional games journalism. I’ve also been developing games since the early ’90s, starting with a humble C64. Outside of code and keyboards, I’ve been a musician since 1989. Man, I have no idea how I can still be alive...

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