Crypt of the NecroDancer: Indie Diablo Meets Rhythm
Welcome to Indie Spotlight!
The insanity of this year’s Super Bowl left me wanting to dance the night away, so it’s only fitting we take a look at my latest rhythm craze — Crypt of the NecroDancer!
Brought to you by Brace Yourself Games, Crypt of the NecroDancer has been highlighted, awarded and recognized by dozens of conferences, festivals and editors over the past two years, and I’m here to tell you it was all well deserved.
The standard setup is a roguelike dungeon crawler, where your character of choice explores randomly generated zones in hopes of defeating the boss that awaits you. You face plenty of monsters, find a bunch of loot and deck yourself out for the fight. If you end up dying, you start from scratch.
Now here’s the kicker: it’s a RHYTHM GAME. Your only mechanic is moving up, down, left and right, and you have to move to the beat of the music. All of those monsters I mentioned follow the same rule too; everyone’s dancing their lives away!
Don’t worry, it’s not anything crazy like Dance Dance Revolution. You only need to follow the standard one, two, three, four. There is a heart at the bottom of the screen with scrolling ticks that visually tell you when you should be tapping along. And from what I’ve played so far, it’s pretty lenient, so you don’t need to “have rhythm.” If you miss a beat, you just reset your coin multiplier.
That’s entirely all there is to playing the game. It’s the enemies, items and music that make the game so much fun. You’ll come across swords, bows, guns and whips, all with different attack patterns. Armor, rings, necklaces and food will keep you healthy. Scrolls and spells will come along to make things a little unfair (in your favor). Each floor you enter has its own soundtrack to which you play along! But don’t be too passive — if the song finishes playing before you get to the stairs, you’ll fall through some trap doors and start the next floor trapped with some big baddies!
Survive through enough floors and you’ll reach the boss room, where you’ll face one of the NecroDancer’s leaders chosen at random. Currently (the game is, impressively, still in beta), you can go up against an evil chess set, a gorilla-led conga line, or the nefarious Death Metal, who summons the undead and casts fire to lay waste!
Outside of the zones, you have a home base with some fellow travelers that offer you new items and practice modes. Buying something from here means it will be able to spawn from chests on your travels. So keep bringing home the diamonds and unlock it all!
And for my favorite part of the game: The shopkeeper. He’s in a golden room on every floor and will have three random items available for purchase. But it’s not his wares that appeal to me, oh no. This guy has a full-blown opera voice and sings along to the track. Such glorious vocals, I tell you!
Crypt of the NecroDancer is easily one of the cleverest games I’ve seen in a long time. The fact that it’s only in beta and already this fun and polished makes me giddy just thinking what else they’ll come up with. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed!
Crypt of the NecroDancer is available on Steam.
