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Below, Capy’s long-in-development roguelike, has cultivated a sense of mystery across the course of its entire gestation. The question of what Below is, exactly, doesn’t go away once you’re playing it–the game offers minimal instruction beyond the occasional button prompt, and much of the first few hours is spent figuring out how everything fits together. Your objective is simple enough and spelled out in the game’s title–you’re on an island, and you need to go as deep below the surface as you can. How you do that slowly becomes clear, although reaching any suggestion as to why you make this voyage takes far longer.

Below opens with a long, slow cutscene of a boat arriving on an island, with no context or explanation. It’s a suitable introduction to a game that you’ll want to take at a considered pace; from the beginning, there’s no instruction, although it won’t take you long to find the lantern at the island’s apex and begin your journey through the first floor. From there it’s a matter of exploring each floor of the island’s depths, finding keys to unlock doors that will take you further down, and managing your resources and health as you deal with a series of hardships.

Whenever you die in Below, a different boat will arrive at the island’s shore and you’ll be given a new disposable character to take up the quest with. The distant camera and simple character designs mean there’s not much to differentiate each individual you control: they’re not named or unique in any way, and the game never makes it explicitly clear how or whether they’re connected. You start each life armed with a sword and hunting bow, which can be used to fend off any enemies you encounter, as well as a single refillable bottle of water that’s needed to replenish your character’s thirst meter. From there it’s up to you to gather the resources you’ll need to survive–by defeating enemies, finding chests, and exploring any part of the world that’s sparkling–as you delve deeper into Below’s world.

Early on, Below can feel generous by roguelike standards. You unlock multiple shortcuts as you go, allowing you to jump to a deeper level from the beginning of your next life, so that you don’t need to go all the way back through the whole game every time. Before long you unlock the ability to activate campfires as single-use checkpoints, letting you warp straight back to them with your next character. Resting at campfires will take you into a little room where you can store excess items that your next explorer can collect if need be, although storage space is limited, and if you exit out of the game you’ll start right back in the room you left when you start the game up again.

It takes a while to encounter an enemy that can do real damage too, meaning that instant-kill traps are a much greater danger for the first few levels, conditioning you to take a slow, cautious approach. Each time you respawn, the layout of every floor will have changed slightly, with room positions shifting and your map (which helpfully shows which direction you can exit each room from) having reset. It’s essential that you return to where you last died when you were carrying your lantern, which provides some challenge–you can retrieve resources from any corpses you leave behind, but your lantern is absolutely vital for progress.

For the first seven or so hours, Below hits a good balance between the intrigue of its atmospheric aesthetic and the punishing nature of its mechanics. Unfortunately, the balance shifts in a major way later on, and the game’s increasing difficulty is matched by harshened conditions. While early floors are rich in the essentials, letting you exploit swarms of bats for meat and enemies that drop gems that power your lantern, later floors are more miserly. Gathering resources from chests and defeated enemies is important–there’s a rudimentary crafting system letting you combine them to create weapons and items, but which resources you have access to depends on which floor you’re exploring. It’s not unusual to end up with an inventory full of items that can’t be combined or used for anything.

Once you’re midway through the game, each new restart is going to involve some early grinding, as jumping right to a lower level without the resources needed to keep your character fed, and without retrieving the lantern from where you last died, can turn the game into a disastrous slog. The areas you can use to gather resources need light so that you can avoid the instant-kill traps planted all over them, and although you can craft limited-use torches, that’s not going to do you much good in later stages where the lantern is your main way of fighting back against some of the game’s harsher nasties.

Your mileage may vary depending on your patience, but this isn’t a case where the game’s brutality works in service of its excellent combat and astonishing world. Below’s main thrills come from discovering new things, and when you’re forced to repeat the same sections multiple times, the game’s difficulty feels excessive and unnecessary. Below’s combat is simply not interesting enough to make the tough sections feel worthwhile–the rudimentary dash/shield/attack system has little room for nuance, and when enemies can do extreme damage with a single hit (often with a “bleed” effect that requires you to use resources to patch yourself up), death doesn’t always feel like your fault.

Later floors ask you to play very differently compared to the earlier ones. Suddenly you need to keep moving constantly, and the slow, methodical exploration that made the early parts of the game interesting is lost. The game’s sense of foreboding mystery begins to dissipate as well, as the mechanics reveal themselves to be relatively uncomplicated and the game’s art design relies on some tired tropes and enemy designs. Overall, the art design and Jim Guthrie’s imposing soundtrack are both excellent but become much harder to properly appreciate when you’re suffering through the game’s more tedious sections. Below also feels much better suited to PC–the distant camera and tiny characters had me moving closer to the television while playing on Xbox One.

Below’s extreme demands for patience and tolerance remain right through to the game’s mysterious ending. But despite its assured aesthetic and the initial pleasures of discovery, Below will eventually turn into a slog for all but the most committed of players.

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The long-running and wildly popular American sitcom The Big Bang Theory is ending with its current 12th season, and now we’ve learned more details about how it will wrap up. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Harold & Kumar actor Kal Penn and Lord of the Rings star Sean Astin will guest-star in the show’s final season.

Penn and Astin will play physicists who by accident confirm Sheldon and Amy’s super-asymmetry theory, which could have a major impact on how things turn out. There is no word yet on when the episode featuring Penn and Astin will air.

There were reportedly discussions about a 13th season, but they never materialised. The five original actors are set to make around $900,000 per episode for the 12th season, according to Variety.

Season 11 averaged 14 million viewers per episode, making it one of the most popular shows on TV, according to Variety. A spinoff, Young Sheldon, premiered in 2017.

In other news, Home Alone actor Macaulay Culkin says he was pursed for a part in The Big Bang Theory years ago but he turned it down multiple times.

The Big Bang Theory airs on CBS, whose parent company–CBS Corp.–owns GameSpot parent company CBS Interactive.

If the established rotation for which developer is responsible for each Call of Duty game continues into 2019, then it’s Infinity Ward’s turn next. And a recent tweet of a skull by the company’s senior communication manager Ashton Williams may confirm that it is Infinity Ward that’s at the helm and also hint at what the next Call of Duty title might be. Although there was no accompanying text, the skull itself could imply that Infinity Ward is working on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Since Infinity Ward is the developer behind Call of Duty: Ghosts, many first suspected the tweet was teasing Ghosts 2. However, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier has since claimed in a forum post that isn’t the case. Prior to Ghosts and Infinite Warfare, Infinity Ward was responsible for the widely popular Modern Warfare series. Fans may recall that one of the major characters from Modern Warfare 2, Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley, wore a skull-patterned balaclava. Williams’ tweet may be in reference to that, which could mean there’s a Modern Warfare sequel starring the character scheduled for 2019.

However, considering the popularity of Modern Warfare Remastered, Williams tweet could instead just as easily be a hint that a remaster for Modern Warfare 2 is in the works as well. Infinity Ward released Modern Warfare Remastered alongside Infinite Warfare, so the developer could be planning to do something similar with whatever new game is planned. This is all conjecture though, and the tweet could just as easily be a tease for a brand-new Call of Duty series that has nothing to do with Modern Warfare.

Treyarch’s 2018 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was the first game in the franchise to not feature a traditional single-player campaign. Instead, Black Ops 4 included the franchise’s first battle royale mode, titled Blackout. There hasn’t been an announcement of whether 2019’s Call of Duty will implement either of these changes.

Pokemon Go‘s first in-game event of the new year is now underway. Developer Niantic has kicked off the Adventure Sync Hatchathon, which is scheduled to run until January 15 and will reward players with extra Candy and Stardust for hatching Eggs.

During the event, you’ll be able to earn twice the normal amount of Stardust and Candy for each Pokemon Egg you hatch. On top of that, Niantic says you will have a higher likelihood of receiving 5 and 10 km Eggs–which can hatch into Pokemon like Elekid, Magby, and Chansey–by spinning the Photo Disc at PokeStops and Gyms.

Adventure Sync is one of the many new features Niantic introduced to Pokemon Go in 2018. When enabled in the settings menu, it allows the game to keep track of the distance you’ve walked even when it’s idle, making it much easier–and much less taxing on your phone’s battery–to hatch Eggs.

Before the Hatchathon ends, Niantic will host Pokemon Go’s first Community Day of 2019. That event takes place on Saturday, January 12, and features increased spawns of the Gen 2 starter Totodile. Moreover, you’ll be hatch Eggs at a quarter of their typical required distance during the Community Day, which means you’ll potentially be able to earn a ton of Stardust and Candy thanks to the ongoing Hatchathon bonuses.

With January’s arrival, Niantic rolled out a new set of Field Research tasks for Pokemon Go. As in December, completing enough of these to achieve a Research Breakthrough can lead to an encounter with one of several Legendary Pokemon, including two new possibilities: Ho-Oh and Lugia. Meanwhile, the game’s latest Legendary, Heatran, will remain available in Raid Battles until January 15.