Hello, this is The Gemsbok, and today's topic is Crypt of the NecroDancer, a game
developed by Brace Yourself Games and originally released in 2015.
Crypt of the NecroDancer is a 2D, top-down, rhythm-based roguelike.
That is, in the spirit of games like Rogue and NetHack, it's got permadeath,
randomized levels and items, high difficulty, dungeon exploration in an
initially darkened map, and grid-based movement. Yet, in the
spirit of rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution and
PaRappa the Rapper, it's also got a player-character and a set of enemies
that can only move or act in time with the beat of the game's music.
Right off the bat, if you're anything like me, then you're wary of a genre
mashup that seems on the surface to have most of its justification
in being a quirky gimmick rather than being a well-reasoned basis for gameplay.
But after the many hours I've spent playing it, it has become clear that
NecroDancer's genre mixture is its best attribute, is actually a very
clever idea, and trivially ascends from being a potential gimmick into being a
considered and well-implemented mechanical design. Nevertheless,
I would actually be fairly reticent to recommend the game to the majority of
players, and that fact has very little to do with
it being a mix between two already niche styles.
Much as I'd like to just go off singing its praises (preferably as a duet with
the game's vocally gifted merchant NPC), it's not all peaches and cream. To
explain why, I'll be dusting off the 'pro and con list' structure
I used previously to analyze Luftrausers. This one is likely to be a
bit contentious further along, but—just like in that previous video—
let's first start with some positives.
[OPERATIC SINGING OF MERCHANT NPC]
Interestingly and somewhat unintuitively, the core mechanics of Crypt of the
NecroDancer are closer to the forebears of the roguelike genre than many of its
most prominent titles of the past decade—like Spelunky,
FTL, and The Binding of Isaac. In addition to the procedural generation, permadeath,
and punishing difficulty shared by so many roguelikes and roguelites,
the movement in NecroDancer is grid- defined, the gameplay includes exploration
of initially darkened subterranean dungeon maps, and the enemies act at the
same pace as the player-character. That last detail essentially retains the
turn-based gameplay that those other modern takes on the roguelike formula
largely abandon. The rhythm mechanics merely make it so
that the enemies are not required to move because of the player-character's
movement (unless one plays as the character named Bard).
Instead, they merely happen to move at the same pace that the player-character
does. As such, after you become familiar with
the items and enemies, playing Crypt of the NecroDancer becomes an exciting
balancing act between strategic decision-making
and instinctive action. You're basically playing a strategy game with a sharply
limited time to choose each move before that action is lost,
making for an experience that is reminiscent of a much flashier version
of speed chess. In light of this comparison, it seems somehow poetic that
one of the bosses is a massive, aggressive chess set. The fact that it
uses rhythm mechanics as a form of time pressure for player strategy
is a big reason that i'm impressed by the game. It's a very effective way of
keeping a player on their toes without explicitly telling them that they have
to work fast, or even against a timer. Elements like the ghost in Spelunky and
the boss rush in Isaac also push players toward moving through
those games at a brisk pace, but they can't quite keep the pressure
on in the same way as the beat of NecroDancer. This is a blessing and a
curse, of course, as it can often make it much more tiring
to play Crypt of the NecroDancer for long periods of time than it is to play
seemingly similar games. Now, admittedly, I don't personally seek
out games in the rhythm genre. The only other rhythm games that I've played to
completion are some of the Guitar Hero games and the rhythm-based indie RPG
Before the Echo. Other than that, my entire interface with the genre is
limited to loosely—or even just arguably—rhythm-based games I have liked,
such as BIT.TRIP RUNNER, the WarioWare titles, and Super Hexagon.
I have no considerable pass with DDR titles or singing games or Elite Beat
Agents or Audiosurf or Beat Saber or osu!. My
interest in NecroDancer stemmed as much from the promise of a Danny Baranowsky
soundtrack as from the gameplay concepts on offer.
But I have to admit that I've been blown away by the successful integration of
these two apparently disparate genres. There is certainly nothing wrong with a
mechanical choice that is simple or gimmicky, provided that (as I have
previously discussed in my video on Super Crate Box)
the execution is solid. Everything about the design of Crypt of the NecroDancer
is informed by the rhythm of its songs. Not only are movement and action by
players and enemies tied to the beat, but the different tempos of the songs in
each level parallel the advances in difficulty throughout the game,
including at least two elements that make use of irregular tempos for added
challenge. The designs and behaviors of the enemies
are fine-tuned for fast-paced, rhythmic interactions;
all of their movements and attacks are simple and clearly legible, making the
handling of a room full of enemies as much a task of prioritization as
dexterity. All of the game's bosses are designed
around—or in conjunction with—their music, lending them personality while
also making them quite memorable. The levels are perfectly sized to be
fully cleared and explored, plus a return trip to the shop, with
about enough time to reach the exit stairs before each song ends the level
(though obviously faster strategies are very possible).
And, of course, the dancing sprites, the abundant musical puns,
and the music-related narrative elements all do a reasonably good job of
providing further justification for the genre combo.
This simply does not feel like a roguelike with a rhythm game tacked on,
nor vice versa. In addition to its strong core gameplay,
Crypt of the Necrodancer offers a broad array of training modes, challenge runs,
and other forms of gameplay variety and customization. To be specific,
including the DLC, the ways that one can vary their experience of the game
according to their preferences include a level editor; 14 playable characters with
unique playstyles; different interchangeable soundtracks;
the ability to add custom tracks in place of the game's stock music; the
ability to play just one of any of the five primary zones;
the ability to play the entire game in local co-op; support for keyboard,
controller, and dance pad; fully re-bindable inputs
for all three control methods; and Steam workshop support for mods.
So, if you ever get tired of any aspect of the game as it is shipped (and you're
willing to do a bit of tinkering), you can rest assured that there will be numerous
alternatives available to you. Along these same lines, it's pretty
remarkable just how much content is crammed into the game alongside its
ostensible primary gameplay of repeatedly attempting to beat
all zones mode as the protagonist Cadence. Again including DLC content: the
game's main story sprawls out across cutscenes accompanying four characters,
each with their own final boss encounters; some of the characters can
dramatically change how the game is played,
including everything from a monk who must avoid all pieces of gold to an
explosives expert who attacks by lobbing bombs to a pacifist character who
literally cannot attack at all; and the practice areas surrounding the main menu
are incredibly thorough, rivaling the kind of tools one would
only expect to access through a developer debug menu or a speedrun
training mod in another title. The way that Crypt of the NecroDancer allows
its players to tear its mechanics apart, and hone their skills with each tiny
piece to their heart's content, is very laudable and considerate in light of the
high challenge level offered by the primary gameplay.
In fact, in addition to this aspect of the game being worthy of considerable
praise, it could have made NecroDancer one of
the most welcoming roguelike derivatives of the past decade . . .
if not for the next topic in this video. Unfortunately, Crypt of the NecroDancer
is not without flaws, and the biggest flaw that it has is how the design of
its campaign progression and difficulty both serve to undo
many of the merits of the variety and customizability detailed in the previous
section. First, the item unlock system, as well as
the associated item headstart and item culling systems, are entirely irrelevant
to the 'All Zones Mode' that very quickly becomes a player's primary focus and
goal. This basically means that five of the
nine rooms peppered around the main menu become obsolete
within a matter of hours of starting the game.
Perhaps, if All Zones Mode was not so heavily emphasized as the true way to
play the game by its achievements, daily runs, and training modes, these
systems would feel less like they were being quickly thrown in the trash.
Second, the gameplay challenges of NecroDancer's later bosses implement new
mechanics that the player will never have seen until getting all the way
there. While these fights are satisfying and
fun after you get the hang of them, this state of affairs basically
guarantees that no new player will be able to beat the game the first time
that they battle their way to the final boss.
This issue is combated somewhat by having those finales become unlocked for
training after first being reached, but this feels like a patchwork solution at
best. And since the final version of the game
has six final boss fights spread across its four story characters,
the experience of getting a run to the last boss in order to be immediately
destroyed is one they're likely to be forced through at least
six times. Either making the later boss mechanics more intuitively readable or
offering some kind of light tutorialization
at or before the first encounter of them would have gone a long way toward
mitigating this issue. Third, the final character in Crypt of
the NecroDancer's primary string of story mode characters represents a
jarring, staggering, unreasonable upward spike in
difficulty that reveals a more far-reaching issue with the game's
challenge design. So, you start the game as Cadence, who
begins each run relatively weak in what is already quite a tough game, but has no
special restrictions. You move on to Melody, who is given a
fairly useful weapon that she has to use, but otherwise has no special
restrictions either. Finally, you advance to Aria, who has half
of a single heart of health, is restricted to the game's worst weapon,
starts in the game's hardest area, can not obtain additional health, and takes
damage when a beat is missed. If she gets hit once,
she dies. If the player drops a single beat, she dies.
The restrictions on her weapon and health sum together to make nearly all
of the game's items and shrines literally useless for her,
leaving her with a tiny pool of mechanics to draw from. But you're given
one revive potion, though. So you get to make one small mistake,
provided you immediately recover from it and are
otherwise completely perfect. None of the stuff in this game is easy,
mind you. Without armor, even a small mistake can already lead to death, and
only 2.5% of players have beaten the game with Melody. But the share of
players that have then gone on to beat the game with Aria
is 0.5%. Without trying this out for yourself, it's hard to express what a
mess it is. Imagine you're playing Super Mario World.
You start off on Yoshi's Island, where you beat all of the levels, no problem.
You move on to the Donut Plains, and again you beat all of the levels,
good stuff. You enter the Vanilla Dome, open up a level, and the game
inexplicably becomes a Kaizo Mario romhack.
Unlocking Aria in Crypt of the NecroDancer is kind of like that.
Then you step back and consider all of the available characters, and you quickly
realize that most of them are nearly at that level of
difficulty, with a few being even harder. Including the DLC, there are 14
characters. But only six of them— less than half—have completion rates at
or above 1% of players. And then you
consider its other forms of customization, and you also notice that
nearly all of those alternate ways of playing are ways of making the game
harder, or more random, or longer. Even seeming
exceptions to this trend barely nudge the needle in the other
direction, such as the slightly easier 'Dance Pad Mode'—which is explicitly
labeled for a specific control scheme, and
ends immediately after the first zone, locking out all game progress.
Now, speaking for myself, when it comes to games, I'm a mountain climber. I don't
mind occasionally being shown a cliff and simply told to climb it.
Some of the famously difficult games in which I have 100% completion on Steam
include Spelunky, Dustforce, Spacechem, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth,
Celeste, Slay the Spire, FTL, and Dark Souls. I'm not saying this
as some kind of pointless brag. There are certainly people who are
familiar with Crypt of the NecroDancer, but not familiar with me,
who are likely to assume that I'm offering the criticism in this section
because I personally find the game to be too challenging. In point of fact, I've
personally unlocked all but one of the game's 14 characters, and I've beaten the
game with nearly all of them. I've even seen the final ending cinematic from
beating each individual zone as Aria, although I haven't beaten All Zones Mode
with her. All I'm saying in this section is that I
fully understand anyone who peers up at the wall of stone
NecroDancer is passing off as a difficulty curve, and chooses to just
walk away instead. For a literal 99% of players to look at
the list of the game's characters, in effect its list of ways to play—and
to see that the majority of those characters are completely inaccessible
to them in terms of gameplay— can't feel good, can't feel like the game
is valuing them as players. Crypt of the NecroDancer simply
features a very odd combination of design choices.
There are extremely few games that have as many training and accessibility
concessions as this one, that go to so much trouble to tutorialize
every mechanic and area to such a significant degree. And yet little of
that work on smoothing out the experience for most players
seems to have been directed at the core gameplay. There are so
many small things that could have been done to erode the game's jagged
difficulty cliffs into something more like slopes that could more reasonably
be climbed. Here's just a few ideas off the top of
my head: Monk could take damage from touching gold, instead of instantly dying;
Mary could take damage from her lamb being hit, instead of instantly dying;
Tempo could accumulate more than 16 turns before instant death by getting
kills on consecutive beats, or by maintaining a combo across 10 or more
kills; there could be another tutorial character that bridges the gap between
Bard and Cadence, by always allowing a dropped beat to follow a hit beat without
losing a combo; there could be a beginner character that recharges a one-hit
shield after a certain number of perfect beats;
some characters could afford to have their starting stats buffed by a heart
or two; and Aria could lose one or even two of
her current set of restrictions in order to avoid feeling like such a ridiculous
punch in the gut. I'm not saying that any of the game's
current set of challenges need to be removed—
just pushed back, so they aren't visible until further into the experience,
and even concealed to some degree, so as to make them come across as explicitly
optional extras. And no part of what this game presently
offers among its most difficult characters
belongs between the player and seeing the conclusion of the game's story.
Just seeing the end of a story is not something that should be restricted to
roughly 1 out of every 200 people that engage with a work. In light of its
actual content, the game's enormous quantity of training
features come across almost as a taunt or an apology,
moreso than a friendly gesture. As it stands, if you manage to obtain just 40%
of the game's achievements, you're already in the 99th percentile of
all players of Crypt of the NecroDancer on Steam.
Before I close out here, I'd like to mention that there are some elements of
Crypt of the NecroDancer that I didn't cover earlier because I consider them
neither pros nor cons. The most notable of these relate to the
game's aesthetics, including its art and music.
As for the art, much as I have avowed an affinity for pixel art in the past,
and much as the art in NecroDancer is very well-made, I can't fight the feeling
that the art assets in the game never cohere into a really interesting
style in the same way as some of its indie pixel art contemporaries.
And there are a lot of small visual elements that are noticeably unpolished—
such as the game using the same visibly female body armor sprites regardless of
character choice, and having no character animations for digging or attacking (so
it instead just slaps the shovel or effect sprites on adjacent tiles).
I should point out, though, that visual design is an area where Brace Yourself
Games have improved in the intervening years,
or at least acquired new people for, as evidenced by the more cohesive and
polished art in their more recent game, Cadence of Hyrule.
And, at any rate, regardless of what I think of the art itself, the animations
that are in the game are great: very clear and understandable, while
always keeping the entities dancing. As for the music, though it pains me to
say it, one of the more disappointing aspects of the game for me personally is
Danny Baranowsky's soundtrack. And that's not really fair to say,
because the music is quite good, and i do definitely enjoy it. The problem is just
that it's very standard video game fare, and it most assuredly pales in
comparison to the stellar atmospheric work he did for the original Binding of
Isaac, and the tonally perfect, in-your-face soundtrack he provided for
Super Meat Boy. The individual level songs in NecroDancer tend to blur
together, potentially because they all had to be so heavily and consistently
beat-driven, although admittedly several of the boss tracks are every bit as good
as I was expecting the entire soundtrack to be.
I say these aesthetic matters are neither pros nor cons for a few reasons:
first, because they're perfectly serviceable (not incredible, but certainly
not bad either); second, because they're highly subjective;
and third, because any perceived badness in them can be rectified through the
extensive customization options detailed earlier. So, in the final evaluation, I
would maintain that Crypt of the NecroDancer has two notable pros, and one
notable con. It is certainly a game whose virtues
outweigh its flaws, and, despite its imperfections, Crypt of the NecroDancer
is a fantastically fun game that I highly recommend . . . to
certain players. Crypt of the NecroDancer is very conceptually original,
looks and sounds nice, and feels great when you're playing well.
Add to that its high amount of content and high number of customizable features,
and you've got a truly solid title. Still, though, there are also plenty of
people to whom I would not generally recommend the game, for whom the
extensive customization and high quantity of content would almost seem
like a fiction or a cruel joke: newer players, younger players, more
casual players, players who are averse to roguelikes or rhythm titles, players
who are easily discouraged by losses, and completionists. Ordinarily, I would be
the first to encourage people to push themselves to try playing harder games
or harder playstyles. But this game starts out
very hard, ramps up to ridiculously hard, and then keeps climbing from there until
some of its final challenges are not physically achievable for most players.
The game doesn't pull a single punch, and assumes that its player's tenacity
will see them through (or else the various training features might have to).
The execution and design of the game's combination of rhythm and roguelike
mechanics is nothing short of impressive, and was
(at least when it released) very unique. So, if you're either a
particularly tenacious player, a fiend for rhythm titles, or a less
intense player who is explicitly unfazed by never being able
to even touch most of the game's unlockable characters—
then yeah, I recommend it; it's a lot of fun.