Crypt of the NecroDancer

Crypt of the NecroDancer

Rhythm game with a twist

Rhythm games are a breed apart that have fallen to the wayside in recent years. What was a hugely popular interest for a time with Guitar Hero and Rock Band turned out to be a passing fad a few years later, and is now something of a niche genre that turns up from time to time. Indie gaming seems to have taken the reins, first with BIT.TRIP RUNNER, and now with Crypt of the NecroDancer, a well designed game that is similar to other games in some aspects, yet utterly unique in its execution. It is a combination rhythm game and modern roguelike, in league with the likes of The Binding of Isaac and FTL: Faster Than Light.

The Details

CotND sets the tone right from the title screen, with an intriguing introductory cinematic that starts with a narration by the main character, Cadence, who tells briefly of how she seems to be in a bit of a bind. She should have died, but didn’t, and it seems like a Necromancer (-dancer?) is the reason, though to what ends remains unseen. As the cinematic shows the villain stealing our heroine’s heart and replacing it with necromantic (necrodantic? ..ok I’ll stop.) energy, the music rises to a crescendo and the beat of the underlying music kicks in, in time with the beating of Cadence’s heart. This turns out to be relevant shortly.

As with most games nowadays, you get put in a tutorial straightaways to introduce you to the game, and it’s a good thing too -- this is not an easy game to master by far. You control your character with nothing more than the arrow keys (or whatever equivalent your input device offers) and move around in the four cardinal directions, exploring through the dungeon you’re in, fighting slimes, ghosts and other monsters, and utilizing various spells and weapons. The kicker though is this: there is music playing in the background at all times, and at the bottom of the screen is a red slightly-anatomically-correct heart beating in time with the music, as with the intro cinematic -- and everything in the game moves in time with this beat. Blue slimes bounce back and forth every second beat, skeletons move and attack every other beat towards you, huge stone golems move every 4 -- and if you don’t act in rhythm, you lose the coin multiplier you’ve been building up, and run the risk of being injured when you’re not paying attention.

Of course, this game is a modern roguelike too -- if you die, you’re dead, and your run is over. There is no save file to reload from once your health hits zero, giving you a real desire to keep your character alive that you don’t get from non-roguelikes (or games with an ironman/hardcore mode, like Minecraft and XCOM: Enemy Unknown). The upside to this is that while exploring the depths, you will run across diamonds, which you can use after a run to purchase permanent upgrades that apply to all future runs. These range from adding a new ring that can randomly be generated, to a new type of weapon powered by gold, to increasing your maximum health right off the bat. This, like in other modern roguelikes, has the effect of giving even a doomed run the chance of not being in vain, and is a big part of why I didn’t rip my hair out when losing while 3/4ths through a particularly good run.

There are a large variety of weapons, armor, trinkets, health items and spells to unlock and obtain in this game. I confess I haven’t 100%’d the game yet, so I can’t say for certain how many there are to get, but it seems like a lot. They aren’t as varied or as game-changing as the items you get in The Binding of Isaac, but it’s probably for the best that the items don’t drastically alter gameplay. As it turns out, simultaneously navigating a dungeon, dodging enemies’ attack patterns, juggling all the possible actions you can perform at any given time, AND moving in time with a rhythm that changes with each floor...is not a very easy task. It definitely takes some time to get used to the control by themselves -- let alone doing them in time with the music. Now I must admit, I’m a fairly rhythmic person myself, so I’ve managed to pick it up fairly quickly, and so I can’t really say exactly how hard it is to do so otherwise. My non-musically-inclined friends have found it nearly impossible to keep up with though, while my musician friends take to it with relative ease, so take that as you will. Either way, this is one game that will be hard to play on mute.

Elements worth praising

The music selection is, in my opinion, perfect for this style of gameplay. The synthesized techno/EDM plays nicely with the pixelly art style, and is an excellent soundtrack to bounce your head to, which I find helps me keep the rhythm.

The controls are simple and easy to get the hang of -- restricting all actions to the four arrow keys and various combinations thereof has the twofold effect of making it easy to make use of new items that require up+left (et cetera) without needing to remember a list of keybindings, and also allows this game to be played with a DDR-style dancepad. Yes, you heard me right -- this game supports dancepad controls. I don’t own one myself, but if I can get my hands on one you can bet I’ll be giving this a go. I’m not sure how good this game is to play with one, but I’m willing to bet you can get a workout with it!

The gameplay flows nicely, with the motions of early-level enemies being fairly easy to predict and move around once you’ve learned them, giving you the chance to try out the new whip you picked up, or the new fire ball spell you just learned. It also scales pretty well, with new enemies being introduced on each floor at the edge of your vision, so you can at least being to formulate a plan to deal with them. I never feel like I died to due to anything other than my own lack of skill, and each new run is another chance to improve that skill. The beat is different enough on each new level that it doesn’t feel boring and repetitive, and when you have to return to an earlier level after losing a run, hearing that same music as before might just put you in the right “I’ve got this beat beat!” spirit to move forward.

The gold and shop system is well implemented -- each floor has a shop surrounded by golden bricks, containing a shopkeeper and two or three items. The shopkeeper also, at certain parts of songs, sings with the music -- allowing you to determine if the shop is nearby by the volume of his vocalizations, which I find hilarious and fitting. Each enemy drops gold when killed, and when you’ve killed an enemy you start stacking a gold multiplier, increasing the gold you get from each new enemy killed. As mentioned above, this bonus wears off if you miss a beat -- and this feels like an appropriate punishment. You don’t lose health, you don’t lose items, nothing that will immediately kill you -- but you do lose the opportunity to get as much gold as possible, which can mean not getting that awesome titanium broadsword you were hoping to buy.

Elements less praise-worthy

Honestly, I don’t have a lot to complain about for this game. If there is something hideously broken and unfair, I haven’t seen it yet, and I really think this is an excellent game. That being said, I do have a couple minor things to nitpick.

The music, while both quite good and fitting for this style of game, is a bit on the short side, and so are the levels as a result. If you haven’t descended the stairs to the next floor by the end of the song, then you are dropped down a trapdoor and proceed to the next level, regardless of what you were doing. This puts a ticking timer on each and every level, and unless you know exactly how long the song is, you won’t have any warning as to when you’re running low on time until the rhythm meter at the bottom of the screen starts sending red bars instead of blue.

Playing this game with any keyboard other than a low-raised one is more than a bit off-putting. I started playing with my mechanical keyboard, and by God was it difficult to focus on the beat with my fingers clacking away ever-so-slightly out of rhythm with the game itself. That’s not the game’s fault though -- using the relatively silent builtin keyboard on my laptop removed this issue and allowed me to really enjoy the game.

I personally really enjoy this game -- I love modern and classic roguelikes, I love the pixelly art style, I love techno-EDM music, and I love pressing buttons in time with a beat and being rewarded for it -- but that comes with the caveat that I fulfill all of these things. If I didn’t love the kind of music they offer, I doubt I would have played this game much beyond the first few levels. Fortunately though, for those of you who don’t like the music and would rather substitute your own, you can! The game supports adding your own music in place of the score they provided, though I haven’t tried it myself. I fear though that this is going to be imperfect, as either this will allow a player to extend the time they have on a level or force a player to quit to the next level partway through a song. Neither of these is ideal to me, though the former is preferable, and so I have to point out that the style of music may be a barrier to entry.

It’s worth noting too that there is almost no story to speak of -- not that I’ve seen, anyway. There are brief interludes after you beat a boss the first time which carry Cadence’s tale onward, but they’re almost non-existent during the course of the game. As I mentioned before, I haven’t entirely finished the game, so there may well be much more to it that I haven’t seen, but if the game is consistent then I doubt it.

Final scoring

The gameplay is excellent. It keeps you coming back for more, with a great soundtrack that complements CotND and is of course central to the game itself. I do have to say though, although I personally enjoy listening to the same tracks over and over, I know many people that don’t -- and I can imagine it would be grating after some time. Since this is my own perspective on the game I won’t score it less for that, but it’s worth keeping in mind if you’re considering buying it. 9.0/10.0 for gameplay and music each.

The art style is great, perfect for this style of game, if a bit blocky at times. The enemies are varied in not only behavior but appearance as well, and it’s easy to distinguish them from one another. The in-game bestiary also has some higher-resolution images of each of the monsters in the game, which provides a nice touch. It works very well with the game, and gets an 8.5/10.0.

The story is fine -- no real problems with it, it does what it needs to considering the type of game, but there’s little explanation for what’s happening so far. The game may well deliver tomes of revelations later on, but from where I’m standing it’s lacking a lot of context. Story gets a 6.5/10.0.

By pure numbers, this game would get an overall 8.25/10.0 from me, but I won’t count its middling story against in, because in this type of game, the story that exists here is plenty. This is a fun game to play when you have some time, while still having enough variety to keep you entertained for hours. And of course the procedurally-generated nature of the game means that you’ll never play the same level twice (strictly speaking)! So my personal overall score is:

9.0/10.0
Highly Recommended

A very fun game, very musically creative, and a stellar combination of rhythm and roguelike that I don’t think has ever been done before. I look forward to seeing what else Brace Yourself Games comes out with, and to playing a lot more Crypt of the NecroDancer.