Picked this up on a whim after seeing an RPS ad and I’m absolutely loving it. I burned out on Spelunky after a thousand-ish hours and this game not only fills the niche nicely, but is clearly both inspired by and an homage to its spectacular predecessor.
CotND shares Spelunky’s tight design for combat, monsters, items and levels, but rather than a platformer it’s a 2.5D ‘rhythm’ game where you hop around to the beat of the music as you explore, attack monsters and grab loot. There’s certainly a twitch element to CotND, but no more so than Spelunky.
My disappointment in Rogue Legacy has been more than made up for by randomly stumbling across this game, which sure looks like a gem. It’s officially in Early Access on Steam, but it really, really feels like a complete game, so I wouldn’t let that label scare you off. I have about 6 hours in in the last day or so, and once I get a bit better I’m chomping at the bit to try my hand at the daily challenges!
Seconded. This game deserves the affection it’s getting – it feels solid and release-ready, and it’s in Alpha with frequent updates, so it’s likely to only get better. It’s got that Roguelike quality where each game makes you wonder what kind of crazy new situations it will surprise you with. I don’t think it has the depth of Spelunky, but it might actually get there.
It’s a lot of fun, and an approachable challenge with the default character (“hardcore mode” is just that, but the base game has you collecting items and powerups through your playthrough which make the high difficulty more approachable over time). Clearing rooms full of monsters is a fairly unique twitch-puzzle every time, which actually vaguely reminds me of Deadly Rooms of Death puzzle rooms where you have to quickly eyeball the layout combined with your knowledge of the predictable (but varied and often complex) enemy behaviors. However, each turn is a rapid-fire beat, and the deeper levels have a very high BPM. A quality Danny Baranowsky soundtrack helps too, since it’s a rhythm game, but apart from a few special encounters (like the rhythm shrine or the bosses) it’s almost closer to a mega fast paced turn based DROD in Spelunky clothing.
A unique and lovely thing, this Crypt of the Necrodancer.
Agree that it’s a notch below Spelunky… but given that Spelunky is probably my favorite game ever it’s hard to consider such a statement damning!
I think it goes beyond content and polish though. Trying to put my finger on why, perhaps it’s the extra freedom of movement in Spelunky. CotND also has some cool geography and items, but nothing like flying off of ledges and lending on enemies at the bottom, or buzzing around in a jetpack.
I’ve been playing this a lot, and it is super fun. I couldn’t really get into Spelunky but this is really great. I haven’t been able to beat zone 3 yet. You just get swarmed with enemies and I think you get less gold per enemie too.
I think they could even have a pretty good story if they wanted too. I was intrigued by the trailer.
It’s an early alpha, but nothing on the website or steam tells me what’s missing and what the planned features are. Even though it’s clearly not, my scam senses are tingling.
This is much better than I thought it would be. Rhythm game plus roguelike just made no sense as a pitch, but using the rhythm elements to push constant decisions is a great idea! Thanks for the heads up that this is actually good.
I definitely don’t think it’s a scam, it’s just there’s a product for sale that has 0 information on their steam page or website about a) what’s in this game, b) what’s missing from the game enough to warrant it being ‘early access’? KSP is a pretty complete experience today, though I imagine some people will have issues with it. But there’s a big official list about what they want to complete to make it “finished”. You can buy the game now knowing what to expect.
I think when you open the game, they say they will be adding zone four and the final boss by fall 2014. They also have an area where they will add 4 more characters…
Really though, this is basically a complete game. Even if they don’t update it you can spend many hours playing.
There’s a few places I’m sure they’ll polish up before release, but they’re almost all in the UI and innocuous for play. I’ve only played a couple hours. In that time it really does feel like a complete game, and it seems like there’s a lot more to see.
The forums contain a bunch of quite-old ‘ideas’ documents (that are spammed to death by everyone who isn’t the developer) and some todo posts. I guess this can be considered the missing features?. Also: A novel use of forums a issue tracking system…
Game is the Steam daily deal and I could probably be convinced to buy in, but I need a nudge or two. As it is today, how does the game handle custom MP3s? What have the recent updates added? On a scale of “very” to “hurry up and buy the damn game already”, how worth it is it at the $10 price point?
We are on Internet, use it for good guys, if you find a cool game, link to itso we can buy it too. What¡s the point of saying “such a great trailer!” if you don’t link it, how else are we going to see if is that great?
I have no idea on custom MP3s, but I’d posit you won’t really want to use them. The songs they have create a good difficulty curve since they ramp up in speed as you descend, as well as play with the beat in interesting ways.
I think one of the things that’s particularly unclear from the outside is Crypt of the Necrodancer is a roguelike first and a rhythm game (distantly) second. There’s no benefit to playing near the beat. You have a huge input window per beat for actions. You just need to make sure to use one action per beat. Being good at rhythm is much less important then learning the patterns of movement you need to take out opponents. In general, it feels like a roguelike that uses music as an excuse to get actions to happen in real-time. The biggest detour from traditional roguelikes is the feeling that maps have perfect solutions, but you have a limited time to figure them out.
I don’t know if that’s selling you on the game, but I adore it. It’s very fun, interesting, and exciting. It has a great extended tutorial (which never feels like a tutorial while you’re playing it), but has the full game accessible at all times. It also feels like you learn a new thing about the game each time you do it, whether it’s how glass items really work to the movement solution to take out red dragons. If you like roguelikes or arcade games, I think it’s a great recommendation. If you like rhythm games it’s probably only a decent recommendation.
It’s a great game, I’ve been playing it like crazy this week.
The only thing that gets a little frustrating is dying at times because the game keeps moving. After being used to Roguelikes that move at your own pace, this is a bit more challenging.
