We interrupt your regularly scheduled intellectual videogame analysis WITH COMPLETE 100% HYPE OH MY GOD PERSONA 5 LOOKS SO GOOD YOU GUYS I THINK I’M GONNA DIE.
YOU THOUGHT THAT WAS IT? HECK NO, WE GOT A DANCIN ALL NIGHT TRAILER TOO.
BEST THURSDAY EVER.
I have the rythym of a cow with four left feet. Okay, that isn’t totally true — with a bit of coercion, you can get me to hit up the dance floor, but only for a few minutes at best — I’m always worried that I’m going to embarass myself. But I think I can consider myself lucky, considering the circumstances present in Crypt of the Necrodancer. In the dark depths of this game’s dungeon, you don’t have the luxury of being embarrased by a lack of rythym, because you’ll be too busy getting murdered by all manner of monsters.
Crypt has been my go-to game for about a week now. I’d been interested in it for a while, and the recent Steam sale finally convinced me to purchase it. So far I’ve been enjoying myself greatly, far more than I would with many early-access games. This is because, besides the fact that Crypt already feels like a full-fledged title worth its admission price, its gimmick is a unique and entertaining one.
Crypt of the Necrodancer has a pretty simple conceit — it’s a rythym game, mixed with a dungon crawler. Movement, combat, even purchasing items, all have to be done to the beat of the song being played, helpfully indicated by a DDR-like meter at the bottom of the screen. I love blended-genres like this, but Crypt takes things a step further by making sure the mix of dungeon crawler and rythym game is compatible.
By this, I mean that the game didn’t just slap the rythym coating on top of a dungeon crawler interior. To be honest, this wouldn’t have worked in the game’s favor. Instead, the developers made sure that combat within the game makes sense from a rythym perspective. For example, some skeleton enemies are equiped with shields. One attack (or beat) is used to knock the shield away from the skeleton, one beat is used to dodge backwards from the counter-attack the Skeleton will use, and the final beat is used to finish off the enemy.
In this way, each enemy encounter feels like a “dance” in and of itself, letting you move to the beat of the game’s (rather wonderful) soundtrack, attacking them, jumping, and attacking again. This “dance of death” is what seperates Crypt of the Necrodancer from other, more traditional dungeon crawlers, with enemies taking a turn after you do.
The game also has a Binding of Isaac-like quality of having a multitude of items that you can use to effect your dancing, dashing about with a rapier, demolishing enemies with your broadsword, or using magic to get the upper hand on your foes. Switching between weapons and items is also easy to perform, as the whole game can be played using only the four directional keys — or even with a USB dancepad, if you happen to have one!
In my opinion, the most exciting feature is the ability to add custom music to the game. Though I’ve already experienced a majority of what the game has to offer, I keep coming back and adding some of my favorite songs to be used for dungeon crawling. The game did a pretty solid job of tracking the beats of each song I threw at it, though I definitely recommend that you pick songs that you’d find yourself dancing to in real life — slow ballads need not apply.
I think I’ve already talked enough about Crypt of the Necrodancer, and I haven’t even touched upon the newely opened Steam Workshop, that lets you add mods like character skins and custom dungeons without any issue. Needless to say, there’s a lot of game in this game — and it’s not even finished yet! If you were on the fence with Crypt because it was Early Access, have no fear — it’s definitely worth playing now, and with weekly development updates, I can only see the game becoming even better. Check it out!
Eight-Bit Samurai 