The game's title art
Curse of the Necrodancer is that rhythm-based roguelike that plays surprisingly close to an overly simplified Rogue or Nethack but the twist is everything needs to happen on rhythm or you end up in a bad spot. Also there’s digging. That game has always seemed extremely cool to me but everytime I try playing it I fail miserably.
It’s not that I’m just bad at rhythm games, even though I’m not incredible at them. I have bad hand coordination and I get easily overwhelmed, but I can play and I like certain rhythm games. But the combination of Rogue and Rhythm always eludes me and so I find that game incredibly hard to play.
The regular gameplay loop, a bit like Guitar Hero but more stylized
Enter this game, then: Rift of the Necrodancer. It seems to do away with the pretense of being two things; it’s not a dungeon crawler like its predecessor. It looks a bit like Guitar Hero and it’s basically a four button rhythm game. Simple, right? No, not at all.
See what you end up with here is a rhythm game where the things you need to hit are still those dungeon crawling monsters, and they move on the track according to a myriad different rules. And they all have varying ranks and exceptions and more. Much like the original game’s mix of Rogue and Rhythm, it’s a bit too much for me to handle.
There's more gameplay in the form of minigames, but the demo had none
In the end I think it seemed very well put together and a good game, but it’s just too hard for me. I did the three tutorials and the first song included in the game and thought I was going to be good. But immediately from the second song I got floored. Dang dude.
As of writing (2024-11-09), Rift of the Necrodancer is still only available as a demo.