Below the Stone - A Pixelart Caving Roguelike about Dwarves
Created by Strollart Studios
A hand-drawn pixel art roguelike about dwarves, mining, and resource gathering.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
⛏️ Below the Stone: July Update
4 days ago
– Fri, Jul 03, 2026 at 02:32:44 PM
⛏️ Below the Stone: July Update
The cavern winds are shifting, Below the Stone 1.0 is just a couple months away - With a tentative date of August or September. Full launch is officially around the corner, and the team is buzzing as we lock in the final pieces. Years of digging, dying, refining, and rebuilding have led to this moment, and seeing the community still here with us makes the upcoming release feel even more special.
📦 Shipping & Physical Rewards
A quick update on physical shipments: We’re currently reviewing shipping options and costs, and the plan is to begin fulfillment after the 1.0 launch. Doing this post‑launch allows us to cover the shipping expenses responsibly while ensuring everything arrives safely and in the quality you expect.
If you need to update your address, please do it now so we’re ready when shipments begin:
Any of those routes will get your info corrected quickly.
🍕 Indies Helping Indies: Pizza Kidd Shoutout
You may have seen us boosting Pizza Kidd, the new action‑platformer being helped by Strollart. Their Kickstarter is packed with charm, fast deliveries, goofy enemies, pet rescue missions, and a whole lot of retro flavor. Supporting their campaign helps us too, because we’re working together as indie teams, sharing resources, art help, marketing momentum, and community energy.
Pizza Kidd is a stylish, story-rich beat ’em up inspired by 90's anime, arcade classics, and gritty sci-fi. While most modern beat ’em ups are reboots or nostalgia grabs, Pizza Kidd is something edgy and fresh: a brand new hero, an emotionally-driven narrative, wild enemy design / boss fights, and a combat system built to reward creative (expressive) play—not just button mashing + canned combos.
In the year 22XX, the world is in ruins, ravaged by a pandemic that wiped out nearly all life on Earth. Santos Corps., once an agricultural research company, became one of the last major suppliers of food and clean water. Using cloning and de-extinction technology, they tried to rebuild the food chain and bring lost species back from extinction.
The results were catastrophic.
Humans and animals suffered gruesome side effects, with many transforming into grotesque, violent mutations. And while the decaying streets of Fhiladelfia crawl with monsters, Kidd holds it down at the center of it all... Angela’s World Famous Pizzeria: a stronghold still open for business, and still serving up an oven-fresh ass whoopin’.
With an army of creature clones, corrupt soldiers, zombified ninjas, drone bots, militant mechs, and bio-engineered giants, Dr. Santos threatens to crush what little remains of humanity...
Kidd’s only shot is to recover the 8 sacred Seed Stones and channel their power through his golden medallion... can you find them all?
Strollart expanding into helping other indies is a win for all of us. The stronger the indie scene gets, the more Below the Stone benefits, and the more games we all get to make. If you want to peek at what they’re cooking, here’s a quick link to learn more about Pizza Kidd.
The final stretch is here. We’re polishing, optimizing, adding the last bits of content, and preparing for the biggest moment in Below the Stone’s history. Thank you for sticking with us through Early Access, through updates big and small, and through every cave dive that ended in a glorious, gear‑scattering death.
We're also doing a $9.99 sale! So if you know a friend who wants to dig into Below the Stone, this is the time to get a copy!
Full launch is coming, and we can’t wait to show you what’s waiting beneath the stone.
News on Kickstarter rewards + full release 1.0 this Summer!
3 months ago
– Fri, Apr 17, 2026 at 10:58:33 AM
We're slated to release Below the Stone by the end of this summer!
It of an "informal" update here, it's been a long journey to get here, and we still got a bit of road ahead of us, but now we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for our full release! We're incredibly proud to be here, along with all of you who helped us get there. It's not every day you see a game read this far into development for a first time studio, there's a lot of sad tales out there, and we're glad to add to the "happy pile" with our game!
Kickstarter built a huge community for us, and helped us get to that finish line. I still remember the time I was looking out at Boston's city lights at night during a PAX show, with tears in my eyes thinking "wow, People actually love something WE created."
The big things we're working on for our full release 1.0 is Layer 3, Magic items, new bosses, new biomes, new armor sets, and much more to explore.
What we want to share with you is development is very much alive, we're still working on this game, quietly with our heads down grinding at it, but we're working on being a bit more loud about what we're all busy with recently.
Here's some pics of recent things we've been working on:
Pew pew in Platinum
The Beviewer!
Gnomed
Rawr!
I wanted to experiment with a pink colored biome, since I felt like that would be a hard color to work with. How do you think I did?
Dinosaurs!
We had an amazing time at MAGfest this year in January, here's some of those pics we want to share.
We also went to PAX East last month in Boston!
Had a great time meeting some of our developer friends out there, from Rightfully Beary Arms crew, to Cucumber devs, Sam from Mech Tech, Corgi's Cozy Hike devs, and many other awesome people!
It's an amazing feeling to have, and I go back to that memory often in times of need. It's a rough world out there, and making indie games is not easy as many of you probably heard. There's many challanges we've yet to share, but would like to in the future! You've all helped us get through this in a huge way.
Kickstarter Fulfillment
It's actually easier to list off the physical production thats not done.
The only physical rewards we hadnt produced yet are the art book, and the physical game USB.
We're choosing to make the physical soundtrack as part of the physical game USB because CDs and other formats are outdated for most people.
The Artbook actually already has a manufacturer figured out, but since we're in the last leg of development, there's art that is still being worked on that we'd like to have presented in the art book, so it wouldnt make sense to do production on a book thats meant to show the entire artistic representation of the game, while not having the full game complete.
Here's some pics of some of the rewards we've already produced!
We'll likely start shipping out rewards after 1.0 release that is slated of August, not only so we can put all our attention on the full release of the game, but also so we can have the resources complete, and abundant enough to handle all the shipping and final production of the game since we're a small indie studio.
We also released some merch on our website!! It's a huge experiment for us, but something we kept getting asked to do at the shows we were at, so here they all are in their full glory!
Thank you all for catching up with us. I'm hoping to ramp up our updates as we get closer to 1.0 launch, because who else will help advertise us if we aren't shouting our game down to the deepest caverns?
Thank you all for your support, and I hope you all have a great weekend ahead of you.
-Mike Strollart
ROADMAP TIME - Below the Stone + Shoutout to some cool developers.
almost 2 years ago
– Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 09:15:00 AM
Hey again depth dwellers!
We had an interesting time at PAX West this year, being both Andrew's first trip to Seattle, while also being his first time catching Covid. We got pretty darn sick from shaking hands and talking to people, so we needed some time to recover and get our health back. We're starting to feel close to our normal selves again, so that's good.
Art by Duncan
We've been putting together a roadmap for the next stretch of Below the Stone development, and we wanted to share it with all our backers here to let you know the thought process behind the dev team and what we're working toward before 1.0, Nintendo Switch release, and sending out Kickstarter backer rewards.
EARLY BIRD ROADMAP: A rough list of goals we have.
The thought process behind focusing on layer 1 and 2 is we'd like the foundation of the game to be solid before pushing toward making the 3rd layer of the caves. It's a process that's going to take a bit of time, but it will be entirely on making sure we implement the ideas and fixes that the community want so much. It is important to do this instead of focus on this, because it will give us the right jumping pad for all the flashy, cool features we want to add in the near future.
This roadmap is subject to change however, and we'd like to add some dates soon to let you know more about how this will roll out soon.
Thank you for all of your patience, and giving us the time to recover, and keeping up with us! Below the Stone is our dream project BECAUSE OF YOU! And we want to make it count when it's all said and done.
Thank you again, and please join our Discord for all the recent news
A KICKSTARTER PROJECT WE LOVE!
Ever wonder what it would look like if a Soviet state sponsored game developer designed a game to compete with classic side-scrollers while subverting western youth? Well Type 3 Studios sure have.
One of our team members is the developer of Super Marxist Twins, a parody propaganda platformer that's finally releasing after years of development! Fight for The People through the challenging campaign and contribute to the Common Good by making your own levels and sharing them with your Comrades.
"SMT" is a humble project of love, sweat, gamedev grit, and unyielding commitment. Type 3 Studios is finally releasing their game, and they fundraising on Kickstarter to get the word out. They have a goal of $2,500, and have 27% of their goal.
Send some support their way by visiting their Steam and Kickstarter page linked below -- There's only 2 weeks left in their campaign, so every bit counts!
New video for Below the Stone's development!
over 2 years ago
– Mon, Mar 04, 2024 at 06:01:44 PM
Below the Stone Roadmap + 250 reviews! THANK YOU!
over 2 years ago
– Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 07:21:43 AM
250 reviews!
THANK YOU for getting us to above 250 reviews!
We're getting so close to 300 now, a huge milestone for the team working on this game. It amazes us every day seeing you all pour your love into this game, and letting us know what you want to see us work on next. That is what gamedev is all about, and it's a gem to be able to wake up every day and see you enjoying what we created. It only takes a couple minutes, but helps us a ton.
2024, what's next...?
These are our plans we put together for the first half of 2024, based on what you the fans have told us you're excited most for. Feel free to dig on in.
Below the Stone has always been incredibly community driven, so please feel free to join the discussion here on what you'd want to see in the next update, or join our discord to be a part of our big dwarven community theorizing what we are crafting for the game next.
