Tired of Spelunky? Defeated Rogue Legacy? Don’t Starve finally do you in? Your next roguelike obsession has now arrived, smashing through the wall with a blast of techno. Crypt of the NecroDancer is here.
Of course, many of you already knew this. Brace Yourself Games has had their game out in Early Access for quite some time now, but hasn’t rested on their laurels. It’s been consistently one of the most updated games on the platform, the developers communicating with the feedback from players nonstop, and the reviews show it. It's almost ridiculous to say, but Crypt of the NecroDancer is currently the third best-rated game of all time on Steam. For a game that wasn't even complete that's unheard of. Of course, the core game has been “finished”, it’s just been constantly tweaked and added to, until now, when the full release is now available.
All of this has lead to one of the most addictive, wonderful gaming experiences in years, one that’s absolutely packed with things to do, unlock, and listen to. It’s remarkable how much fun it is, especially when you realize it only uses the four arrow keys on your keyboard.
You play as Cadence, an adventurer exploring the NecroDancer’s Crypt. The pixel art might look familiar but the ground looks like a disco floor, as your enemy uses music as a weapon and everything pulses to a beat. Each level has a different song and thus a different flow, as the beat of the song dictates the whole game. You move on the beat, as do your enemies. Want to attack an enemy? Simply move into them while they’re adjacent to you.
So it’s obviously the kind of game that’s completely different every single time you play it, with items randomly placed and hidden around the level, the walls of which you can dig through with your handy shovel to find secret areas.
The only issue with Crypt of the NecroDancer is stopping it. Not only will you constantly want to go on one more run after each death, when you do end up quitting the game you’ll find yourself doing everything in your life to the beat, with the catchy songs (which run the gamut of genres) staying in your head for weeks afterwards.
(One note- use a mechanical keyboard for this at your own peril. It certainly works just fine, but any coworkers or loved ones around you will likely try to murder you for the repetitive TAP TAP TAP of your keys playing to the beat.)
There is an insane amount of different modes to try and unlockables to find here- new characters with different abilities, a co-op mode, a hardccore mode, boss battles, as well as 28 achievements, just hours and hours of content. They have even offered two completely remixed soundtracks for those brave enough to start a new game+ (or newgame++), as if the original soundtrack wasn't brilliant enough. You can even use your custom music to play the game if you somehow get tired of it, with the game cleverly finding the beats in your songs and implementing them seamlessly (I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of Run The Jewels 2 as a soundtrack.)
I can go on and on about how brilliant Crypt of the NecroDancer is but the fact is that it’s an early game of the year contender, a pulsing, pounding, hell of a time.
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This review is based on months with the early access version and a week spent playing the final version, via an unlock code provided by the publisher. You can buy it on Steam this week at 25% off. Now if you'll excuse me I've got some necrodancing to do.
